Question

Character sketch of Salvatore in the story "Salvatore" by Somerset Maugham

Answer 1

The author describes Salvatore first as a boy of fifteen with a pleasant face, laughing mouth, and carefree eyes. He was a skilled fisherman and a swimmer too. He falls madly in love with a pretty girl. He can't marry her until he has served in military service. He leaves to join as a sailor in the navy of King Victor Emmanuel. He went to many places, to Spezia, to Venice, to Ban and finally to China. Unfortunately, he falls ill and has to be admitted in a hospital for months. He suffers from a kind of rheumatism which renders him incapable of serving in the Navy. When he comes to know that he would be sent back to his island, he is exalted. To his surprise, when he goes there he finds out that the girl has refused to marry him as he won't be able to work and do well in his later life. He, then, marries a girl Assunta who is 'as ugly as the devil. After going through worst in life he still has a laugh like the laughter of an angel and eyes as candid as his child's. Thus he makes the most out of his wedding, his job, and his children. The quality that makes him face all odds calmly is goodness, which the author concludes is a rare quality.

Answer 2

Answer:

Salvatore is a fifteen-year-old boy, brown-coloured in complexion, endowed with sturdy built-up, graceful manner and nonchalant eyes. He has possessed an effortless ease in the art of swimming. Quite suitably the writer has depicted him as a frolicsome boy belonging to a fishing community.

… he would throw himself into the deep water with a cry of delight.

He is full of affection for his two brothers taking care of them as a caring nursemaid. The boy is, thus, grown up in the lap of nature along with others in the neighbourhood; a fine democratic upbringing he has got with a free-born spirit and jovial temper

Explanation: