A Clockwork District
Warburton is well-liked by both his employers, the British government and his workers because of his efficient management. As observed, “he ran his district like clockwork.” This comparison is meaningful more than merely showing the kind of managerial skills Warburton possesses; it is Maugham’s way of voicing an opinion on British colonialism. His opinion expresses what was becoming the subversive perspective that colonialism was about commerce and not domination.
Formal Dinner Attire
Warburton’s steady—daily observed—habit of formally dressing for dinner is a holdover from his days of respectability when his life included gambling with the Prince of Wales. This process of changing clothes is not just going into a closet and picking out something to wear; Warburton himself describes it as ritualistic almost to the point of pretending he has a proper British valet in the house with him. This is ritual as metaphor; he is metaphorically recreating the customs and traditions that helped to define his former life in part because it is one of the few ways that life can be simulated every single day and made into a rite.
The Six Week Old Newspapers
Warburton has another habit that becomes a ritual. Reading the newspaper that take six weeks to arrive from England, thus losing all semblance of the technical definition of “news” serves the same purpose, however. As the narrator asserts, reading the outdated newspapers is “Like his habit of dressing for dinner.” The narrator refers to both rituals as “a tie to civilization” but the details reveal they are more. His compulsion is not limited to merely catching up with news from “civilization” but requires that each paper be wrapped as it had newly arrived in the precise order of date and that each one be read as we sips tea in a dedicated metaphorical simulacrum of what was almost certainly his morning habit back when he was respectable. It is not really civilization he wants to remain tied to, but his lost part within that civilization.
The Battle Enjoined
Maugham uses some pretty lofty and symbolic language in the story’s central simile. The comparison here makes clear the stakes of the battle of wills taking place between Warburton and Cooper: “They were like men dwelling in regions of eternal night, and their souls were oppressed with the knowledge that never would the day dawn for them.”
Warburton the God
Subtly spread thread throughout the narrative are hints that Warburton has come to view himself as a metaphor for God in his little domain. In his arbor in the garden, he sits perched above the river below like God enjoying a time-out in the Garden of Eden. From the darkness below only voices reaching out to him like prayers from his supplicants. He is presented as all-knowing and all-seeing, both benevolent, but superior and of course, his very Britishness situates him as something utterly singular and unique. He is even gifted with the power of foreknowledge when he returns to the arbor and senses doom. And, of course, the story ends with Warburton dispensing justice as he sees fit rather than any official judicial system.
