#131 Mr. Know-All- W. Somerset Maugham

#131 Mr. Know-All- W. Somerset Maugham

 The narrator, a proper Englishman is aboard an ocean liner. He is worried about the man assigned to share his cabin for the next few weeks, Max Kelada. He doesn’t like him at all, even before they have met. And once met, he absolutely hates him and calls him Mr. Know-All because of his gregarious and over-bearing demeanor.

 “He was hearty, jovial, loquacious, and argumentative. He knew everything better than anyone else, and it was an affront to his over-weening vanity that you should disagree with him. He would not drop a subject, however unimportant, til he had brought you round to his way of thinking.. The possibility that he could be mistaken never occurred to him.”

It s unclear whether the rest of this ship feels as strongly as the narrator, but we can assume some of it is true. In the end, despite his reputation, Mr. Kelada turns out to be a gentlemen.

It’s sometimes hard to read these older stories with modern ears. I can’t tell if the author is purposely using racial and cultural buzz words to show that the narrator is a bigot, or if he was just using the sensibilities of the time. Either case, the narrator was a bigot judging Mr. Kelada by his skin color, name, and shape of his nose to pre-judge him harshly. And while mis-judging a person based on false evidence seems to be a theme, it was never resolved that those things were what was mis-judged. It was just his over-exuberance that was mistaken for something else.

Rating: 7-5-6-3 Total= 21