Research Background William Somerset Maugham(1874~1965)was a 20th century British fictionist and dramatist. He created a lot of works in his lifetime. His fictions, plays, literary reviews, essays, travel notes are all welcomed, especially his fiction. So that he was called the writer who ”owns the most readers in the English world after Dickens”. He was considered to be one of the best writers of short stories in the English language. During the war, Maugham's best-known novel, Of Human Bondage (1915) was published. This was followed by another successful book, The Moon and Sixpence (1919). Maugham also developed a reputation as a fine short-story writer. The short story, Rain, which appeared in The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), was also turned into a successful feature film. Popular plays written by Maugham include The Circle (1921), East of Suez (1922), The Constant Wife (1926) and the anti-war play, For Services Rendered (1932).In his later years Maugham wrote his autobiography including Summing Up (1938) and works of fiction such as The Razor's Edge (1945), Catalina (1948) and Quartet (1949). Maugham#8217;s fiction is famous for suspense and insight into human#8217;s nature. Even today, Maugham#8217;s fictions are still reprinted in the world, and enjoyed great popularity. Many of Maugham#8217;s stories are about human weaknesses, which could be found in his short stories such as Rain, The luncheon and A friend in Need. This paper is to analyze characterization and artistic features basing on these three short stories. The author created different figures to explore people#8217;s inner world and reveal human weaknesses. Literature Review In short story rain, Maugham created the Davidsons, who were missionaries, were extremely pious to their religious beliefs and tried their best to make people behave. Because of an epidemic of measles, a serious and often fatal disease among the Kanakas, they were delayed on the land and came across Miss Thompson, who was a whore. Mr. Davidson wanted to purify her soul and sent her to the prison. It seemed to succeed. However, he lost himself and committed suicide. In the luncheon, he had lunch with a hypocritical and greedy woman, who ate a lot of but often said ”I never eat anything for luncheon”. In a friend in need, Edward, who was described as one of the best, hatched a plot to make Turner dead deliberately. All these men had distinct personalities. To make them more vivid, Maugham used a lot of narrative skills. Maugham was a realistic writer who impacted on other writers deeply from the late 19th century to the middle 20th century. His works, which had a worldly influence, are widely known. By the old and traditional form of ”tale telling”, Maugham revealed the darkness and unfairness of English society, explored the complexity and secrets of humanity, which aimed to rebuild and perfect spirit. Li Bo demonstrates human nature in Maugham#8217;s stories and analyzes spiritual pursuit such as exploring the meaning of life, persistence of dreams and understanding of self-value by pointing that Maugham inspired the development of realistic novels. (Li Bo, 2005) He is a unique writer of modern Britain, who stood in the crossroad of the tradition and modernity. His fiction shows the features of both realism and modernism. That is, his short stories and novels obviously have characteristics of realism, while his late novels show more modern flavor in the narrative techniques and topics of the novels. (Zhu Huifang, 2004) The previous comments on Maugham#8217;s works always concentrate on the themes and image of figure, however, the discussion of artistic form is relatively less. A lot of people generally acknowledged that Maugham paid more attention to stories themselves than the artistic form of novels so that the language used in his novels is much too plain and straightforward, which led most people to rank him as a ”second#8212;rate writer”. But after reading William Somerset Maugham#8217;s works, we may see the unique way of telling stories, the narrative kills, contributed to the glamour of his stories. And Maugham was used to creating an open ending to give more places for readers to image. (Liang Xianfeng, 2007) Human nature, from ancient Greece to modern society, has always been the most confusing issue towards many a scholar and philosopher. The Renaissance shifted man#8217;s interest from Christianity to humanity. In literary works then, it was fairly common to evaluate the positive values of human nature on the position of ethics or practice. From the middle period of the 19th century, the second awakening of human nature witnessed that man#8217;s individuality gradually took the place of sociality to be the focus of thought. The literary trend negated the normality and reasonableness of man in that kind of social surroundings, and stressed the alienation of human nature in essence. Maugham#8217;s aesthetic ideas are, in certain respects, the expression of this new awakening. Even though Of Human Bondage and The Edge#8217;s Razor might be considered as his most famous and important works, it is only his widely known short stories that have won him a seat in literary history. Objective and incisive dissections of human weakness are the marks of his short stories. (Wang Xin, 2004) Liang and Zhu both refer to the visual angles of Maugham#8217;s novels. Liang divided perspectives of his novels into two kinds. One is the third person omniscient perspective. This kind of perspective mostly appeared in Maugham#8217;s creation early novels. The second is the character#8217;s narrative perspective. This kind of perspective is similar to first person narrative perspective. However, Zhu paid attention to the discussion of narration. Liang and Pan thought that Maugham#8217;s works always adopted the major technique of anti-climax. (2007, 2013) The structure of novels usually contains four parts: exposition, elaboration, climax and denouement. But Maugham preferred to carry out cold treatment for circumstances, causing the plot twists and turns. Differently, Liang also points out that Maugham has utilized the technique of echoing in novel writing, making novels become strict logical and artistic integrity through echoing each other in front and behind. Liang also pointed out that Maugham often creates non-closure endings to give broad image to readers, which makes his short stories more attractive.