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Frame Story
Genre
Explanation and Analysis:
The Moon and Sixpence, written by W. Somerset Maugham, is a fictional biography of Charles Strickland, intended to mirror the life of 19th-century French painter Paul Gauguin. The novel can be defined as a Künstlerroman, which is a story that follows an artist's development. This story marginally differs from other Künstlerroman novels in that it follows both the narrator and Strickland's development as artists, the former as a writer and the latter as a painter.
This novel is considered part of the Modernism literary movement, which is defined by rebellion against formulaic writing structures. The Moon and Sixpence is a paragon of such a movement with its frame story style and nonlinear timeline. The story is told from the perspective of a narrator many years after Strickland's death. The narrator speaks about himself in the present, recalls moments with Strickland in the past, and also interviews people who once knew Strickland in the more recent past. For this reason, the story can more accurately be defined not only as a fictional biography of Charles Strickland but also as a partial fictional autobiography of the narrator. Such an unprecedented concept rightfully places The Moon and Sixpence in the literary canon of Modernism.
