Essay Questions

Who is the “loser” in this bizarre love triangle and why?

At its center, this is a narrative about a love triangle and romantic competition. Although the details are a bit more unusual than the typical conventions and standards of this common trope, it is essentially the tale of one man who beat out another to win the hand (if not the love) of a woman. Because the climax of the story is one in which the two who do not wind up together remain separated because they cannot even recognize the other on appearance after such a long estrangement has produced such withering effect of aging on their former physical perfection, it would be easy to assume that they are the losers here since at Neilson gets to keep not just Sally but the enjoyment of the irony of the “reunion” all to himself.

The problem, of course, is precisely the basis of that irony: neither Sally nor Red recognize each other. Nielson cannot fully feast upon the irony because the “reunion” has imparted a much more terrible “secret wisdom” to only him. The irony is only bones with no meat because neither Sally nor Red have actually been living fully in a fantasy of the past still beating within their hearts. He is the only one who has been doing that while all the time assuming it was universal among the three. They long ago moved on and it is only he who has wasted the quarter-century holding onto the past.

What clues does the author plant that Red and the skipper are one and the same before that truth is finally revealed?

The attention reader might well guess long before Neilson makes the connection that fat, old, balding skipper is none other than this “Red” he had heard compared to a Greek god in the salad days of his youth. The symbolic attribution to the pernicious effect of aging represented by the current state of the skipper’s schooner is one of the more ambiguous clues. Far more to the point is a detail included in the physical description of the captain: “He wore a blue flannel shirt, open at the neck and showing his fat chest covered with a mat of reddish hair.” In addition to reference to his hair color, immediately after Neilson describes the young Red’s skin as “dazzling white, milk, like satin” the skipper asserts—“with a twinkle in his bloodshot eyes”—that he too possessed the same complexion when he was kiddie. And, of course, at around the midway point of the story occurs this strange interlude in the flow of conversation: "

"You know, I can't help thinking that I've seen you before somewhere or other," he said.

"I couldn't say as I remember you," returned the skipper.

"I have a curious feeling as though your face were familiar to me. It's been puzzling me for some time. But I can't situate my recollection in any place or at any time."

One thing that Maugham certainly cannot be accused of in this story is withholding key information for the purpose of making the plot twist come as a shocking jolt. Keep M. Night Shyamalan and Bruce Willis as far away from this story as possible to preserve that integrity.

What does the story have to say about ignorance and misery?

There is something about the captain that absolute drives Neilson mad. The skipper is entirely comfortable with his oversized girth and his lack of education. As for Sally, not only is she a woman, but an uneducated island savage woman whose only attribute of attraction for him seems to be the great beauty which has long since faded. Of the three, it is only Neilson alone who seems truly miserable, sinking deeper into the abyss of nihilism with each passing day. The captain is astounded by the sheer number of books which Neilson owns and questions whether he could even have possibly read them all since his only reading material seems to be limited to the irregular arrival of the latest editions of the Saturday Evening Post. By the end of the story, Neilson is truly tightly clutched in the grip of despondency. The message can be taken as either good or bad news depending upon your stance relative to the case, but is nevertheless clear enough: knowledge is the keystone of misery and ignorance is the only antidote.