The archetype of the “victim”: ironic victimization in the texts of Somerset Maugham’s short stories

Abstract

Text linguistics, as a modern discipline, is capable of revealing the archetypal essence of the narrative structures within the author’s text. The short stories of Somerset Maugham, in this regard, serve as an example of the synergy between the author’s plots and the archetypal subtext, shaped by the semantic message of the author as a “metamorphosis” of the narrative. The  article is devoted to the analysis of the features of ironic victimization in the texts of the  stories, as well as the description of the archetypal concept of “victim”, which serves as a key to understanding the deep meanings embedded in the texts of S. Maugham’s stories. The article provides examples from short stories, which allows us to identify universal patterns and specific characteristics of ironic victimization in the context of discourse analysis. The goal is achieved  by solving several tasks, namely: to investigate the features of the use of the archetype “victim” in the texts of short stories by S. Maugham; to analyze the role of irony in the formation  of images of characters and their interactions; to assess the impact of ironic victimization  on the Reader's perception of moral norms and human nature. It has been determined that in Maugham’s stories, two types of character images correlating with the characteristics of the “victim” concept can be identified – “true” and “false” victims. Furthermore, the complexity of Maugham’s narrative is revealed, as the so-called “false victim” gradually “transforms” into a “true victim,” thereby embodying the category of ironic victimization within the plot. In the texts of S. Maugham’s short stories, such a “metamorphosis” of the characters’ images not only highlights the character’s internal conflicts and focuses on the social and cultural circumstances in which they find themselves, but also provides new opportunities for understanding broader  topics related to human existence and moral dilemmas. The article focuses on the texts of the  short stories “The Mother” and “Rain”.