The Moon and Sixpence Themes

In The Moon and Sixpence, beauty in art comes from the truthful expression of the artist’s individual vision. Thus, beauty and individual truth in art are inextricably entwined—and to be a great artist, one must be truthful even if it harms others. This necessity for the artist to be truthful even if it harms others is clearest in the story of Charles Strickland, a conventional English stockbroker who abruptly abandons his wife (…

The Moon and Sixpence suggests that collective society is the enemy of individual authenticity: it is only by defying or fleeing society, then, that the individual can live a truly authentic life. The novel tells the story of Charles Strickland, a conventional English stockbroker who abandons his inauthentic family life in London to become a painter and express his authentic, individual vision. After abandoning his family, Strickland moves to Paris, where he begins to…

The Moon and Sixpence represents morality as a form of social control: according to the novel’s unnamed narrator, morality is not individual conscience, but rather an internalization of social norms meant to protect society from individualistic behavior. Fittingly, the novel’s individualistic “hero,” Charles Strickland, is someone who casts aside morality and social norms in order to express himself. Strickland abandons his wife (Mrs. Strickland) and children in London to become a painter…

The Moon and Sixpence represents the mind, intellect, and spirituality as essentially superior to the body—but it suggests that, under the right conditions, the body can serve the mind. In the novel, the unnamed narrator sometimes compares the protagonist, painter Charles Strickland, to a “disembodied spirit”: someone totally attuned to his own internal vision and intellectual perceptions, which he expresses in his art. Yet Strickland also has periodic outbursts of extreme physical lust, which…