言歸正傳。

 

《人生的枷鎖》是一部看似傳記體的小說，據說帶有很強的作者自傳色彩，尤其是小說的上半部。小說寫主人公Philip，一個內向，靦腆，敏感和個性自卑之人三十年的成長經曆，寫他的不幸--天生坡腳，父母在他九歲那年雙亡; 寫他的缺愛，收養他的叔父冷漠，十歲就被送到教會學校寄宿讀書，受盡同伴的嘲笑。寫他一路成長過程中的心酸，遭遇愛情時的糾結、沉湎和掙紮。小說花了大量的筆墨描寫他的感情生活，寫他如何愛上一個自私、刻薄、虛榮的餐館招待女，如何受盡她的羞辱和折磨，寫他一邊恨得咬牙切齒，一邊愛得不可自拔。寫他像一條狗在搖尾乞憐，為她做盡一切，花盡無數錢財，卻依舊得不到人家的一絲愛意。如此愛得沒有尊嚴，讓讀者我恨其不爭，哀其不幸，替他不值，恨不能跳進去搖醒這樣癡情、帶有點自虐的男人。

 

中間這個愛情故事太長，撇去了。

 

讀完小說一直在想一個問題，人生的枷鎖是什麽？毛姆又想說什麽?

 

小說中，主人公Philip十歲進了教會學校，原本可以拿到牛津獎學金學神學，日後步其叔父後塵做牧師神父的，可他卻懷疑神，離經叛道，擯棄宗教的條條框框，選擇了自己的一條道路--到異鄉德國讀書，後又去法國巴黎學習繪畫, 最後又回到英國學醫。應該說，他衝破了宗教信仰這樣強大的枷鎖，不走叔叔為他安排的既定人生路，勇敢追求自我，追求自由。

 

人是一種社會動物，活在其中，總是受社會存在的各種法律、道德，社會習俗的約束。但是除此之外，人們更多時候還要被錢財所捆綁，為生存所左右。當菲利普股票投資血本無歸，窮困潦倒，露宿街頭時，他隻好中斷學業，為生存，去了一家服裝公司，幹底層跑腿的工作，拿著微薄的薪水，看人家臉色，苟且生活著。這何嚐不是人生的又另一枷鎖呢？可一旦當Philip從叔叔那裏得到一筆足以完成他學業的遺產時，他可以毅然決然地告別兩年的卑微職業生涯，重新回到學校完成學業。畢業後，一個偶然的機會，他去了一個偏僻島嶼，當一位老醫生的助理。老醫生喜歡上Philip，要求他留下來一起行醫。麵對遠離塵囂的環境，麵對優厚合夥人的條件，Philip還是選擇了離開。因為他心中有個夢想，那就是，回到倫敦，短暫行醫，然後準備去西班牙，那是他一生的夢想。應該說，在Philip身上，工作、名利這個枷鎖沒有阻擋Philip實現他夢想的腳步。

 

而人生卻有另一個枷鎖是Philip無法掙脫的，那就是愛的枷鎖。當Philip步入青年，情竇初開，他不知不覺中被愛的枷鎖所束。他為情困，'不能自拔，為愛迷茫彷徨，痛不欲生。當他最後終於醒悟，走出情感困境之後，他的人生又迎來另一位姑娘，她純樸善良，身上母性般的光芒再一次吸引了他。為了她，他最終放棄了原本打算朝聖西班牙的夢想，為了眼前的愛情和家庭，他放棄了遠方和詩，接受平凡的人生。在他看來，降伏於幸福雖然是一種失敗的，但是這種失敗遠遠勝於無數次的成功。

 

小說最後一段寫到，Philip拉著心愛姑娘Sally的手，走在大街上，他們俯瞰著廣場下忙碌的人流川流不息，繁忙的車輛來來往往，陽光照耀著。或許，作者想利用這樣的結尾來表達一個觀點: Philip終究是個凡夫俗子，不能擺脫愛和婚姻的枷鎖，他即將融入社會洪流中，成了芸芸眾生中的一員......

 

quotes:

" He smiled and took her hand and pressed it. They got up and walked out of the gallery. They stood for a moment at the balustrade andlooked at Trafalgar Squre. Cabs and ominbuses hurried to and fro, and crowds passed, hastening in every direction, and the sun was shining."  

"Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for ME, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me, and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one's like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is there."

Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for hurryings sake.

“He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.”

“I have nothing but contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer.” 

“This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom.

Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.” 

“There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.

'Oh, life,' he cried in his heart, 'Oh life, where is thy sting?” 

“You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.” 

“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.” 

“It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary.” 

“He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague . . . He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightening on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.” 

“They're a funny lot, suicides. I remember one man who couldn't get any work to do and his wife died, so he pawned his clothes and bought a revolver; but he made a mess of it, he only shot out an eye and he got alright. And then, if you please, with an eye gone and a piece of his face blown away, he came to the conclusion that the world wasn't such a bad place after all, and he lived happily ever afterwards. Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any money. I wonder why that is."
 "I suppose money's more important than love," suggest Philip.”
 
 “The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.” 

“But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.”  

 ““Then he saw that the normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick house and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body, warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or craving for liquor. 

 “He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing is that each one who has gone through that bitter disillusionment adds to it in his turn, unconsciously, by the power within him which is stronger than himself.”   

“The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died. There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.” 

“He might have known that she would do this; she had never cared for him, she had made a fool of him from the beginning; she had no pity, she had no kindness, she had no charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The pain he was suffering was horrible, he would sooner be dead than endure it; and the thought came to him that it would be better to finish with the whole thing: he might throw himself in the river or put his neck on a railway line; but he had no sooner set the thought into words than he rebelled against it. His reason told him that he would get over his unhappiness in time; if he tried with all his might he could forget her; and it would be grotesque to kill himself on account of a vulgar slut.” 

The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The bright hopes of youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment. Pain and disease and unhappiness weighed down the scale so heavily. What did it all mean? He thought of his own life, the high hopes with which he had entered upon it, the limitations which his body forced upon him, his friendlessness, and the lack of affection which had surrounded his youth. He did not know that he had ever done anything but what seemed best to do, and what a cropper he had come! Other men, with no more advantages than he, succeeded, and others again, with many more, failed. It seemed pure chance. The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.” 

“What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion. You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice; I do not know justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches.” 

“He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, he had never known before.” 

“Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died.” 

“The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.” 

“His life had seemed horrible when it was measured by its happiness, but now he seemed to gather strength as he realised that it might be measured by something else. Happiness mattered as little as pain. They came in, both of them, as all the other details of his life came in, to the elaboration of the design. He seemed for an instant to stand above the accidents of his existence, and he felt that they could not affect him again as they had done before. Whatever happened to him now would be one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.
Philip was happy.”