The most mature fiction about the South Pacific is symbolic in nature. Works of Melville, Conrad, and Maugham … move beyond the superficial and the ephemeral into the realm of mythology. However, what these writers have in common is that they all make strong instinctive responses to the South Seas. (pp. 165-66)

[Those works of] Maugham which are related to the South Seas follow the design of the adventure of the mythological hero described by Joseph Campbell: 'A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into the region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow men.' This archetypal quest is the organising principle, and archetypes are the primary images which form the narrative of … The Moon and Sixpence. [Strickland divorces himself] from...