Justifying My English Degree: The Razor’s Static, Frozen Edge
One of the lines that I remember most from the movie Jerry Maguire is “the neural pathways are set, which is way it’s so difficult for people to change.” When I’m reading a novel, I often forget to make a note in my mind of who the static characters are, as well as who the dynamic characters are, because it is often the case that the dynamic characters will be much more interesting to read. In the case of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, it wasn’t all that difficult for me to discern who the dynamic character was, because there was essentially there was only one: Larry Darrell.
However, I would have to say that even Larry is not all that dynamic. His life-changing event, namely witnessing the death of a comrade in World War I, happens before the story proper even begins. When the story begins Larry is set on his path to enlightenment with little to stop him. I only learned about his break from stasis through flashbacks related to the author-narrator-character. While I could say that this results in a rather static story, the break from the status quo that Larry exhibits, namely shedding the materialist philosophy in the name of learning and the quest for transcendence, was more than enough to hold my interest in the piece, at least when Larry was involved.
The rest of the story seems to follow rather static characters continuing on their rather static paths. No one truly changes. Elliot, the snobbish expatriate who retains the virtue of charity, never really alters his course of social-climbing and meddling. One of his last regrets is that he won’t be able to make it to a party hosted by a fickle high society that has no more use for him.
There are, however, chances for some of the characters to change their ways, always through some interaction with Larry. Isabel is offered the chance to leave her life behind and join Larry on his quest for enlightenment, but instead chooses to tightly embrace her materialistic lifestyle, and spends the rest of the story trying in various ways to get Larry to give up his quest. Her efforts can be seen in slumming in the bad sections of Paris to try to impress Larry, and even ruining Larry’s engagement by sabotaging his fiancée’s recovery from alcoholism. Larry’s fiancée, Sophie, is also offered the chance to change her ways. When Larry meets her, she is essentially a drunk and promiscuous, but rather than dismiss her as Isabel is quick to do, Larry remembers Sophie as she was when she was young, and her poetry, and takes it upon himself to “save” her. For a while, it seems that Sophie is saved. She quits drinking, smoking, and her promiscuity, all in her preparation for her marriage to Larry. However, when she is sabotaged by Isabel (who leaves out a bottle of liquor while knowing that Sophie is quitting alcohol), Sophie quickly falls back into her old ways, and ends up murdered. I found it difficult to discern whether Sophie’s downfall was purely Isabel’s doing, or whether her “recovery” was not her own effort and desire to clean herself up, but rather the intervention of Larry.
The book’s ending only seems to confirm my feelings that the story is wholly static. The final paragraphs act as an epilogue, showing everyone reaching their logical ends, getting exactly what they were looking for all along, no matter how tragic that might be. While the author mentions that it ends with a “happy ending”, I could feel the irony in the tone of the language. All the static characters get to live with relatively static (boring) lives, while Larry, the sole dynamic character, finds happiness as a cab driver. But still, there are no surprises here. The static nature of the characters force the story to be on rails, with nowhere to go but forward into time.
But, at least because of this book, we ended up with Ghostbusters.
