Walls Symbol Analysis

In The Moon and Sixpence, the painted walls of the house that Strickland shares with his young wife Ata symbolize Strickland’s antisocial individualism, which makes his art an act of self-expression rather than an attempt to communicate something to others. The narrator learns of the painted walls when Dr. Coutras, the doctor who witnessed Charles Strickland’s illness from leprosy, tells the narrator that he was summoned to the house as Strickland was dying and saw painted on the walls a stunning masterpiece that proved to him Strickland’s genius. After examining the corpse, Dr. Coutras realized that Strickland likely painted the masterpieces while going blind—a detail that suggests Strickland was painting his inner vision, or his individual mental perception of the world, rather than an objective, external rendering of the world as other people see it. Later, Dr. Coutras reveals to the narrator that Strickland ordered Ata to burn the house down after he died, destroying the paintings. Strickland’s command to Ata reveals that he painted his masterpiece not to gain fame or to communicate with others—he has no desire for others to see his work—but simply to express his singular inner vision. Thus, through Strickland, the novel suggests that great artists create their work for themselves, not to communicate with collective society.