The Razor's Edge

Summary

The Razor's Edge is narrated by Maugham himself, appearing as a character, who says that he has invented nothing and has simply set down what he knows of a man he met at long intervals over some twenty years. That man is Larry Darrell, a young American from Chicago who served as a pilot in the First World War and returned changed after a comrade died saving his life. Larry declines the comfortable career expected of him, including a job in a brokerage, and announces that he wants to "loaf", by which he means reading, thinking and searching for an answer to the problem of evil and the meaning of life. His fiancée, Isabel Bradley, loves him but wants a conventional, prosperous life. When Larry will not change, she breaks the engagement and marries his friend Gray Maturin, a wealthy young stockbroker. Larry's search takes him to Paris, to work in a coal mine in France, to a German monastery and finally to India, where he spends years studying with a swami and has an experience of illumination in the hills. Meanwhile the Wall Street crash of 1929 ruins Gray, and he and Isabel move to Paris to live with her uncle, Elliott Templeton, an expatriate snob devoted to European high society. Maugham's portrait of Elliott, comic and finally touching as he dies anxious about an invitation to a party, is one of the book's great pleasures. Larry, returned to Europe, helps Gray with his headaches by a kind of hypnotic suggestion. He also meets Sophie Macdonald, a childhood friend from Chicago whose husband and baby were killed in a car accident and who has fallen into drink, drugs and promiscuity in Paris. Larry resolves to marry her and save her. Isabel, still in love with him, leaves a bottle of Polish vodka within Sophie's reach; Sophie disappears on the eve of the wedding and is later found murdered in Toulon. At the end Larry gives away his small fortune and plans to return to America to work as a mechanic or taxi driver, living simply and anonymously. Maugham concludes that each character got what he or she wanted: Elliott social eminence, Isabel security, Gray a job, Sophie death and Larry happiness. Published in 1944, during the Second World War, the novel was a best seller and was filmed in 1946 and 1984. Its picture of a Western seeker drawn to Vedanta anticipated later Western interest in Indian spirituality.

Top Lessons

• The search for meaning

  Larry gives up wealth and status to look for answers to the questions the war raised for him. The novel asks what a life well spent looks like and whether everyone can or should choose his path.

• Getting what you want

  Maugham's closing claim that every character got what he or she wanted invites readers to examine what each one valued, and whether those desires were worth having.

• East and West

  Larry's encounter with Vedanta in India is presented sympathetically by a skeptical narrator. The novel shows an early Western engagement with Indian thought.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Sophie's descent into alcoholism and drug use after the death of her husband and child is a study of grief and addiction, and Larry's relief of Gray's headaches by suggestion reflects interest in hypnosis and mind-body healing. Maugham himself trained as a physician.

• The Paris chapters

  Sophie's drinking and relapse.

• The Paris chapters

  Larry relieves Gray's headaches by suggestion.