Somerset Maugham's private
jokes in "Mr. Know-All"
As a private tutor, one of the short stories I teach high schoolers
for the English Bagrut exam is "Mr. Know-All", written by the British
author, Somerset Maugham.
The crux of the story is a pearl necklace worn by Mrs. Ramsay. She implicitly
claims that the necklace is an imitation, but it turns out that the necklace is
made of genuine pearls.
The story brings to mind "The Necklace"("La
Parure"): a short story by the French writer Guy de Maupassant. In that
story the state of affairs is quite the opposite: A necklace which had been
thought to be authentic was eventually a fake one.
Maupassant's (1850-1893) story might have inspired Maugham's
(1874-1965).
Somerset Maugham was not only a writer. He was, among other things,
also a member of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service and many of his
stories are of espionage. As an MI6 spy he visited many locations worldwide,
and was probably fluent in….Arabic.
Otherwise, how can the following two pieces of information be
explained?
1.
The protagonist of
the story is Mr. Max Kelada, whose nickname is Mr. Know-All. Mr. Kelada holds a
British passport, but the narrator suspects that he is a Levantine. And lo and
behold: Kelada is indeed a word in Arabic: Kelada ( قلادة ) means
a necklace !!!!
2.
Mrs. Ramsay, the
owner of the necklace, keeps a secret. A secret she wouldn't want her husband
to know. And we, the readers, are intrigued by the riddle: is the necklace real
or counterfeit?
The hint that there's a riddle to be solved is conveyed through Mrs. Ramsay's
name. The word RAMZ (رمز) in Arabic means: a
riddle [close in meaning to the Hebrew רֶמֶז], and Ramsay (رمزي) means: quizzical or: my riddle….
Well,
I consider these as the author's private jokes.
What
do you think?
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