Summary
Narrated by an unnamed third-person limited omniscient narrator, “Rain” is set on a steamer ship headed for Apia, the capital of American Samoa in the Pacific Ocean. The story is told from the point of view of Dr. Macphail, a forty-year-old Scottish doctor and WWI veteran who looks forward to staying in Apia for twelve months. He and his wife have made friends with a Christian missionary named Davidson, and his wife. They bond over their disapproval of the passengers who gamble and binge drink on the ship. Mrs. Macphail is flattered to know they are the only people the missionary couple have any desire to associate with. She couldn’t imagine them engaging with rough people on board. Dr. Macphail teases her, and jokes that Jesus Christ wasn’t exclusive in the way the Davidsons are.
The ship stops at the harbor of Pago Pago. Dr. Macphail stands at the ship rail with Mrs. Davidson, who stares ruthlessly at the silver shore. She says she is grateful she and her husband are not stationed at Pago Pago, where the natives don’t behave like they do in the Davidsons’ district of widely separated Northern Samoan islands. With discomfort, Dr. Macphail recalls how Mrs. Davidson earlier expressed her horror at the local marriage customs. In her district, she put an end to the traditional dancing the Samoans enjoyed because she believed it led to immorality.
The ship docks in the harbor, which is bustling with American sailors and Samoan locals there to sell goods. The passengers’ luggage is moved to the schooner that will take them on to Apia. Mrs. Davidson comments to Dr. Macphail and his wife about the immodesty of the lavalava (fabric skirt-like garments worn around the waist) the local women and men wear. Dr. Macphail says it suits the hot climate. With pride, Mrs. Davidson says the lavalava is eradicated in her district; the locals won’t be thoroughly Christianized until every boy is made to wear trousers.
The couples seek shelter in a large corrugated iron shed when heavy rains begin to fall. Davidson brings the news that a case of measles was discovered among the schooner crew. Because the disease can be fatal for the Kanakas, the schooner crew has to quarantine for ten days before moving to Apia, meaning the Macphails and Davidsons have to stay on Pago Pago. The couples rent rooms from a half-white, half-Samoan trader named Mr. Horn in a modest house near the wharf. Mrs. Davidson advises the Macphails to repair the torn mosquito net over their old bed, and says the rains never stop because of the microclimate created by the mountains.
While checking on his luggage, Dr. Macphail meets the ship quartermaster at the door of Mr. Horn’s house. The quartermaster introduces Miss Thompson, a plump twenty-seven-year-old woman in a white dress and white hat. She had been on the same ship as a second-class passenger. Dr. Macphail admires Miss Thompson’s boldness as she haggles down the price of the room to a dollar a day. She invites him to have a shot of liquor with her and the quartermaster, but Dr. Macphail declines, going to check on the luggage.
Dr. Macphail returns at lunchtime. Dr. Macphail discusses Miss Thompson with his wife and Mrs. Davidson. They learn she is taking her meals in her room. Davidson returns from arguing with the governor and says they may be stuck there for two weeks. Davidson speaks of his worry that he has been away from his district for a year, having left it in the hands of a native missionary, who will inevitably have “let abuses creep in.” With flashing eyes, Davidson says he will have a lot of work to do to set things right, and that “if the tree is rotten it shall be cut down and cast into the flames.”
Later, during the last meal of the day, the missionary says more about his work in the islands. He says the natives had no sense of sin, so he had to instill it in them. Dr. Macphail finds that Davidson’s unflinching courage stands out in his stories: Davidson often has had to journey by canoe in dangerous waters to give medical assistance to people on remote islands. Davidson asks aloud how he could ask the natives to trust the Lord if he is afraid to do so himself. Dr. Macphail remembers the fear he felt in the trenches, and says he wishes he could say he’s never been afraid. Davidson says he wishes Dr. Macphail could say he believed in God.
Davidson recalls the endless work of the early days in the district, eight years earlier. His wife would read the Bible to him at night to soothe him. Almost everything they did bore no results. But eventually he made the natives understand their natural actions as sins. It became sinful to commit adultery, to lie, to steal, to expose their bodies, to dance, to not attend church. Davidson achieved this by imposing fines, paid for in money or work. Davidson had the power to exclude them from the church, ostracizing them from the community.
Mrs. Davidson encourages her husband to tell the story of Fred Ohlson, a Danish trader who’d been living on the islands before the missionaries came. Davidson says the man had things his way, paying the natives for their coconuts in goods and whiskey. Ohlson was a drunkard and was unfaithful to his native wife. After the man refused to mend his ways, Davidson saw that he became ruined. In two years, the man’s wealth was gone, he was skinny when he’d been fat, and he came to beg Davidson to pay for passage back to Sydney.
The couples hear gramophone music, men’s voices, and corks popping in Miss Thompson’s room. Dr. Macphail suggests the woman is giving a farewell party to her friends on the steamer ship, which sets sail the next day at noon. The Davidsons make no remark and then go to bed early, prepared to read the Bible and discuss it. Alone, Dr. Macphail gets some cards so he and his wife can play. His wife expresses concern that the Davidsons might come back and see them with the cards. Dr. Macphail lays out the cards anyway. She watches with a vague sense of guilt. The sounds of revelry from Miss Thompson’s room continue.
Analysis
In the opening paragraphs of “Rain,” W. Somerset Maugham establishes the characters that comprise the two couples around which the narrative revolves. Alec Macphail, the point-of-view character, is headed to Apia, capital of American Samoa, to work for twelve months as a doctor. On his way there, the doctor and his wife become acquainted with a Christian missionary couple.
Although the Macphails are not Christian themselves, they feel flattered that people with such high moral standards as the Davidsons have chosen to associate with them. At the same time, Dr. Macphail jokes to his wife that the missionaries’ judgmental attitude would not have been shared by Jesus Christ, who preached a message of love and compassion. With this joke, Maugham introduces the major themes of righteousness and hypocrisy.
The theme of condescension arises next as Mrs. Davidson speaks disparagingly of the Samoan natives in the “district” of islands she and her husband oversee. As missionaries, the Davidsons imported their culture and beliefs to the remote community, quickly banning indigenous traditions and inducing the locals to dress in their stifling, full-coverage Victorian clothing rather than the breezy lavalava skirts worn by men and women alike. Dr. Macphail irritation with the missionaries’ moral superiority and lack of self-awareness is clear in the narrator’s unfavorable descriptions of Mrs. Davidson, whose voice is compared to a pneumatic drill.
Conflict enters the story when the couples learn they are waylaid in Pago Pago because of an outbreak of measles among a member of the schooner crew meant to take them to Apia. With no better option, they rent modest rooms from a local trader and prepare to hunker down in the rainy harbor for up to two weeks. Miss Thompson, a woman with a brash but friendly demeanor and flashy all-white clothing, also rents a room at the inn. In contrast to the Davidsons, she conducts herself with a streetwise confidence that Macphail seems to admire.
Over dinner, the Davidsons boast of their successes. Having arrived in a place with no concept of Christian sin, the Davidsons assumed authority over the natives’ souls. To get them to behave with shame and to inculcate a fear of God, the missionaries imposed fines for anyone who behaved immodestly. According to the missionaries, immodesty includes not covering one’s body in clothing, dancing, and having sex outside of marriage. While listening to Davidson describe his obsessive need to control people’s private lives, Macphail notices that Davidson’s dark eyes betray the sick delight he receives from his work.
The first section of the story ends on an ominous note. While chatting together in the parlor, the couples hear loud gramophone music and popping wine corks coming from Miss Thompson’s room below the floor. The disruption provokes curiosity and concern from Davidson, his wife, and Mrs. Macphail. Wishing to let the woman have her privacy, Dr. Macphail dismisses the noise as Miss Thompson throwing a party for her friends from the steamer. The Davidsons don’t entertain the idea but simply leave to read the Bible, suggesting they believe something is amiss with Miss Thompson.
