Of Human Bondage - in Other Literature

In Other Literature

• In Philip K. Dick's science fiction novel Dr. Bloodmoney, the character Walt Dangerfield reads Of Human Bondage to humanity from his spaceship orbiting the Earth.
• In Gloria Sawai's short story "The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sundeck and a Wind Came up and Blew my Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts", Of Human Bondage is the example the narrator gives of "a great book" that "unsettles you and startles you into thought", immediately before beginning the narrative of her encounter with Jesus.
• In J. M. Coetzee's novel Youth, one of the narrator's landlords makes an oblique reference to Of Human Bondage, prompting a connection between the two texts.
• A similarly subtle connection to Of Human Bondage is made in V. S. Naipaul's novel Half a Life, when the narrator's father encounters Maugham at a temple in India.
• Of Human Bondage is mentioned in the film Seven. The character William Somerset, played by Morgan Freeman, is named after W. Somerset Maugham as he was screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker's favourite author.
• In "The Outcast" by Sadie Jones, the character Kit spends the first two weeks of the summer holidays reading "Of Human Bondage" while her older sister spends all her time arranging her hair and talking about frocks with her mother.
• Of Human Bondage was mentioned as the book that brought Lieutenant Blandford and Hollis Meynell together in S. I. Kishor's Appointment with Love.
• Of Human Bondage was mentioned as the book that Boyd Crowder was reading in the TV series Justified (season 2, episode 4 "For Blood or Money).
• Of Human Bondage was mentioned in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Freshman". A new friend mentions the title to Buffy, who, unfamiliar with the book, believes he is referring to pornography.
• "Of Human Bondage" was mentioned in J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye". The character Holden Caulfield states that he read "Of Human Bondage" last summer.