The story “ Salvatore” was written by William Somerset Maugham. He was one of the most popular storytellers. Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. His parents died when he was still a boy. While a student in St. Thomas? s Hospital in London, he got to know the life of the poor people of London. His longest novel was “ Of Human Bondage”. The book tells the story of the first 30 years of Maugham? s life. William Somerset Maugham died in the South of France where he had lived since 1930.
The genre of the story “ Salvatore” is a novel, it describes a love story of a couple never going to be together. As we can see at the beginning of the story Maugham describes the main character as a boy of fifteen with a laughing mouth and care-free eyes. And his childhood, where Salvatore liked to spend his time lying at the beach or helping his father in the little vineyard. When he madly fell in love with a pretty girl he had to leave his village for the military service.
Doing his military service Salvatore was dreadfully homesick. But the hardest was to be apart from the girl he loved so much. When he fell ill and learnt that it was a form of rheumatism that made him unfit for further service his heart exulted, for he could go home. The author pays special attention to the fact how strong was a wish to come back home for Salvatore and see the girl he loved. But later Salvatore founds out that his girl refused from love and the main reason was his illness.
At the end of the story Salvatore meets a woman Assunta, who is willing to marry him. After their marriage the author describes us Salvatore as a great, big husky fellow but with kindly eyes that he had as a boy. Salvatore had a portrait of a man, just an ordinary fisherman who possessed nothing in the world except a quality, which calls goodness. Despite that fact that Salvatore started a new life without his girl, the loss hurt him and stayed in his heart forever.