1. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
Fracturing the Foundations
2. Victorian Era
critiquing certain aspects of the Romantic ideology :the search for
transcendence, the Romantic hero, the self-exile of the creator,
the Promethean myth
domestic novels instead underscore middle-class values:
domesticity, duty, responsibility, work, conservative social
reform, empiricism, utilitarianism, and realism
"Angel in the House," the perfect self-sacrificing and
self-disciplining domestic housewife, who is implicitly or
explicitly contrasted to the demonic whore-woman - two
possibilities for female subjectivity
3.
4.
5. Modern Era & Modernism
the period from about 1898 to the second world war
a time of wild experimentation in literature, music, art, and even
politics
still a belief in concepts such as truth and progress; however, the
means taken to achieve utopic goals are often extreme
revolutionary political movements as fascism, nazism, communism,
anarchism
6.
7.
8. Modern Era & Modernism
Various groups establish bold manifestos outlining their visions
for an improved future
Rise of the ism: surrealism, dadaism, cubism, futurism,
expressionism, existentialism, primitivism, minimalism
this radicalism is driven by a sense that Enlightenment values may
be suspect.
9. Modern Era & Modernism
Modernists therefore participate in a general questioning of all
the values held dear by the Victorian period (narrative,
referentiality, religion, progress, bourgeois domesticity,
capitalism, utilitarianism, decorum, empire, industry
Many modernists also tend to take the Romantic exploration of the
irrational, the primitive, and the unconscious to darker
extremes
there is a fear that things have gone off track
10. Modern Era & Modernism
the features of modernist aesthetic work include:
self-reflexivity
an exploration of psychological and subjective states
alternative ways of thinking about representation
radical experimentation in form
fragmentation in form and representation
extreme ambiguity and simultaneity in structure
some experimentation in the breakdown between high and low
forms
the use of parody and ironyin artistic creation
11. Context
While Chandler was penning his novel in the late 1930s, the United
States was attempting to recover from the depression that had
economically devastated the country since 1929.
Unemployment during the 1930s reached a high of 25%.
12.
13. Context
Farmers were especially hard hit during the 1930s, and many from
Midwestern "Dust Bowl" states such as Oklahoma and Missouri (so
named because of the drought and dust storms that hit that area in
the 1930s) moved to California hoping for work and a better life.
On the outskirts of Marlowe's Los Angeles and in the fertile
valleys of the state, migrant workers picked lemons, potatoes,
cotton, peas, and other crops, going wherever there was
work.
14. Context
The literature of the 1930s explored issues of integrity and honour
- featured characters who pitted themselves against larger forces
such as corporations and fascism.
15. Prohibition:
The movement was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, improve
health, solve social problems and reduce the tax burden created by
prisons and poorhouses.
16.
17.
18. According to novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, during
Prohibition, "The parties were biggerthe pace was fasterand the
morals were looser."
19.
20. Context
In the Great Depression the American dream had become a nightmare.
What was once the land of opportunity was now the land of
desperation. What was once the land of hope and optimism had become
the land of despair. The American people were questioning all the
maxims on which they had based their lives - democracy, capitalism,
individualism. The best hope for a better life was
California.
21. Context
Dominated by the Great Depression, the 1930s was a bleak, morally
vengeful time, when things were seen as very black and white. Which
they were. Times were tough, and enemies (Stalin, Hitler, etc.)
were demonic. Little wonder that the period was known for
censorship, drug war hysteria, and hard-core authoritarianism.
"Progress" meant "change." A new, schmaltzy and moralistic
authoritarianism replaced the freewheelingly chaotic, laissez faire
1920s, and this is reflected culturally in films and music of the
period.
22. September 1, 1939 - W.H. Auden
I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and
afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade: Waves of
anger and fear Circulate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the
earth, Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
23. Into this neutral airWhere blind skyscrapers use Their full
height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language
pours its vain Competitive excuse:But who can live for longIn an
euphoric dream;Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's faceAnd
the international wrong.
24. Faces along the barCling to their average day:The lights
must never go out,The music must always play,All the conventions
conspireTo make this fort assumeThe furniture of home;Lest we
should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood,Children afraid of
the nightWho have never been happy or good.
25. From the conservative darkInto the ethical lifeThe dense
commuters come,Repeating their morning vow;'I will be true to the
wife,I'll concentrate more on my work,'And helpless governors
wakeTo resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now,Who
can reach the dead,Who can speak for the dumb?
26. All I have is a voiceTo undo the folded lie,The romantic
lie in the brainOf the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of
AuthorityWhose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as
the State And no one exists alone;Hunger allows no choiceTo the
citizen or the police;We must love one another or die.
27. Defenseless under the nightOur world in stupor lies;Yet,
dotted everywhere,Ironic points of lightFlash out wherever the
JustExchange their messages:May I, composed like themOf Eros and of
dust,Beleaguered by the sameNegation and despair,Show an affirming
flame.
28. Modernism
In the aftermath of WWI, continental Europe was physically
devastated and psychologically disillusioned in an unprecedented
way. A wide variety of new and experimental techniques arose in
art, literature, architecture, dance, music and
sculpture.
29. Modernism
Modernism exploded onto the international scene and artists
attempted to liberate themselves from the constraints and polite
conventions associated with Victorianism. Modernist authors sought
to break away from traditions and conventions through
experimentation with forms, devices and styles.
30. Modernism
The tightening of form: an emphasis on cohesion, interrelatedness
and depth in the structure of the text. They incorporated the new
psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and Gustav Jung. The
(re)presentation of inner (psychological) reality, including the
'flow' of experience, through devices such as stream of
consciousness and symbolism.
31. Modernism
They perceived the world as fragmented and emphasised historical
discontinuity and the alienation of humanity from tradition and
institutions. Such writers viewed art as a potentially integrating,
restorative force, a remedy for the uncertainty of the modern
world.
32. Modernism
To this end, even while depicting disorder in their works,
modernists also injected order by creating patterns of allusion,
symbol and myth. This exalted view of art fostered a certain
elitism among modernists.
33. Function & Characteristics of Crime Fiction
Vehicle for critical commentary on society & concerns.
Response to alienation and isolation.
Response to mass culture.
Attempt to find answers in an irrational world?
Reinforcement of moral law.
Restoration of status quo?
Explore questions of identity.
34.
35. Function & Characteristics of Crime Fiction
Reading Practices meaning often contextual levels of
uncertainty
Vicarious experience of destabilisation
Explores effects of transgression on the individual and the
society
Exploration of the concept of judgement?
Fictions of crime offer myths of the experience of modernity
Affirmation of code of conduct and status quo
Questioning of morality (Ripley Highsmith)
Detective as embodiment of the rational principle
36.
37. The Big Sleep
Crime is epidemic
Cannot restore
Focus on hero within dysfunctional world Professional pride =
chivalric code?
Bildungsroman Marlowe learns about the moral illness of the modern
world & himself
Loaded with paranoia
Gender representations
38. Sleep continued
City milieu as character
Detective is meant to mete out justice - law is too unwieldy or
corrupt to provide
Way of life might look like failure, but is a rejection of ordinary
concepts of success etc
Duplicity is rife seeking out of truth
Police symbolically represent law & orders limitations
Femme fatale challenges to detectives ; physical &
psychological security; fear of feminine aggression
39.
40. READERSHIP
More widely read than any other genre in Western world
Reader is able to identify with the criminal (fantasy gratification
of the Id) safe as story is sufficiently removed from reality AND
super ego knows detection & punishment will follow (pre
1945)
harmless and purging surrogate for the Oedipus myth in every
writers & readers life
Detective story ritual restoration of order
Murderer as societys scapegoat
41. READERSHIP
All feel guilt exorcizing through symbolic sacrifice.
Weakening of detective story = weakening of sense of sin
Joy of puzzle intellectual gratification
Sensationalism
Reading Practices meaning often contextual levels of
uncertainty
Karma?
Passion for and of meaning (Barthes in Introduction to the
Structural Analysis of Narrative)
42. Reading
Retrospection we re read mentally to reconfigure meaning
Reader usually positioned to be involved as problem solver/ to
participate
Willing suspension of disbelief
Intellect dealing with complexities of life in the
metropolis?
43. GENRE
Tradition view = fixed forms.
Contemporary view = dynamic
Factors authorial and technological experimentation, economic and
social changes, readership demands
Not neutral categories relational to cultural and historical
context
44. The Femme Fatale
The femme fatale, defined simply, is an irresistibly attractive
woman, especially one who leads men into danger. In hard-boiled
fiction, she is usually the protagonist's romantic
interest.
45. The Femme Fatale
The protagonist's involvement with her may range from mild
flirtation to passionate sex, but in the denouement he must reject
or leave her, for the revealed plot shows her to be one of the
causes of the crime.
46. The Femme Fatale
An important attribute of the hero became his ability to
distinguish between types of women and to respond accordingly, to
discern "good women" from bad.
47. The Femme Fatale
The femme fatale has been roundly condemned as misogynist by
feminist literary criticism, though in most (and especially
contemporary) hard-boiled narrative the reader is more apt to find
modern female characters with some archetypal traits, and female
characters unrelated to the archetype at all, rather than the pure
archetype.
48. The Femme Fatale
attractive, belongs to a cult, uses drugs, and has small, pointed
ears and teeth.
delirium tremens and exorcise her lust.
Raymond Chandler gave the same physical features to murderous,
sex-obsessed Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep. Had he succumbed to
her, Marlowe would have been shot at the novel's end.
49.
50. She approached me with enough sex appeal to stampede a
business mens lunch and titled her head to finger a stray, but not
a very stray, tendril of softly glowing hair.
Vivians lips parted slowly until her teeth caught the light and
glittered like knives.
51. Vivian is spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless.
Carmen is a child who likes to pull wings off flies. Neither of
them has anymore moral sense than a cat.
She bit her lip and turned her head a little and looked at me along
her eyes. The she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her
cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was
to get to know that trick.
52. Her teeth chattered and the hissing noise was sharp and
animal.
She stood there for a moment and hissed at me, her face liked
scrapped bone, her eyes still empty and yet full of some jungle
emotion.
The imprint of her head was still in the pillow, of her small
corrupt body still on the sheets.
I put my empty glass down and tore the bed to pieces
savagely.
53. Imagery
The contrast between the smooth and the rough is an extension of
the distinction between the hard and the soft, with the added
meaning of "modern" vs. "old-fashioned."
54. During the classic hard-boiled period, the smooth was urged
upon consumers in clothing (ready-made clothes instead of
home-spun) in home appliances (gas and electric ovens, instead of
coal stoves) and transportation (the automobile, instead of the
horse).
55. Protagonists of hard-boiled fiction tend to be
clean-shaven, dress in smooth fabrics, drive cars, live in
apartments (often efficiencies), and to use modern
products.
56. Philip Marlowe's world abounds in comparisons, giving the
detective the complexion of a polymath. Chandler's metaphors are
mostly similes. They most often describe a character memorably on
first appearance, saving the author effort when the character
reappears. Chandler often uses similes in early descriptions of
characters and then invokes them again later.
57. "Artificial" seems to be the concept Chandler had in mind;
he returns to it later in the novel: Carmen acts "as if [she had]
artificial lips and had to be manipulated by springs". A
description such as the later reminds us of Victorian machinery
exposed and clumsy. Even here the author indirectly values the
modern: that which is seamless, functional, and
rhythmic.
58. Thus Carmen Sternwood in the first four pages of The Big
Sleep walks "as if she were floating," has teeth "as shiny as
porcelain," lowers her eyelashes like "a theatre curtain," sucks
her thumb "like a baby with a comforter," and "went up the stairs
like a deer". The reader understands that she is infantile,
transparently cunning, and energetic.
59. Chandler mined a few subjects for his metaphors, all of
which can be seen contributing to his description of General
Sternwood in The Big Sleep. Chandler's primary referents were time,
mass, motion and inertia. The General "nodded, as if his neck were
afraid of the weight of his head" .
60. But Chandler also used California life and the daily
culture of Los Angeles: The General's "few locks of white hair
clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare
rock". Chandler was intensely conscious of death and disease: The
General's orchids are "plants with nasty meaty fingers and stalks
like the newly washed fingers of dead men".
61. Key Quotes
"You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not
bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind
and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the
nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the
nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.
If I sound a little sinister as a parent, Mr Marlow, it is because
my hold on life is too slight to include any Victorian
hypocrisy.
The general half closed his eyes. They are nasty things. Their
flesh is too much like the flesh of men. And their perfume has the
rotten sweetness of a prostitute.
62. Sure, but theres very little to tell. Im thirty-three years
old, went to college once and can still speak English if theres any
demand for it. There isnt much in my trade. I worked for Mr Wilde,
the District Attorney, as an investigator. His chief investigator,
a man named Bernie Ohls, called me and told me you wanted to see
me. Im unmarried because I dont like policemans wives.
I dont mind your showing me your legs. Theyre very swell legs and
its a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I dont mind if you dont
like my manners. Theyre pretty bad. I grieve over them during the
long winter evenings.
63. I re-wrapped the book and locked it behind the seat. A
racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to mean
plenty of protection. I sat there and poisoned myself with
cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about
it.
Ten blocks of that, winding down curved rainswept streets, under
the steady drip of trees, past lighted windows in big houses in
ghostly enormous grounds, vague clusters of eaves and gables and
lighted windows high on the hillside, remote and inaccessible, like
witch house in a forest.
64. He didnt know the right people. Thats all a police record
means in this rotten crime-ridden country
He wrestled it around on the highway and drove back towards town
along a three-land highway washed clean by the rain, past low
rolling hills of yellow-white sand terraced with pink moss.
The black candles guttered in the draught from the open door. Drops
of black wax crawled down their sides. The air of the room was
poisonous and unreal.
The tumbling rain was solid white spray in the headlights.
I was as empty of life as a scarecrows pockets.
65. Im selling what I have to sell to make a living. What
little guts and intelligence the Lord gave me and a willingness to
get pushed around in order to protect a client.
Those girls of his are bound certain to hook up with something that
cant be hushed, especially that little blonde brat. They ought not
to be running around loose. I blame the old man for that. I guess
he doesnt realise what the world is to-day.
I read all three of the morning papers over my eggs and bacon the
next morning. Their accounts of the affair came as close to the
truth as newspaper stories usually come as close as Mars to
Saturn.
66. There was a gusty wind blowing in at the windows and the
soot from the oil burners of the hotel next door was down-draughted
into the room and rolling across the top of the desk like a
tumbleweed drifting across a vacant lot.
I told Eddie Mars and told him I was coming down to Las Olindas
that evening to talk to him. That was how smart I was.
In a shadowy angle against the scribbled wall a pouched ring of
pale rubber had fallen and had not been disturbed. A very nice
building.
68. Essay Writing
Introduction: address essay question, outline thesis three BIG
ideas, briefly describe novel, briefly describe context focus on
values, attitudes and beliefs as well as major events.
69. Essay Writing
Three SOLID paragraphs three pieces of evidence per thesis point.
Each point to be supported by a discussion of context. Point,
context, techniques, example, explain purpose and effect, link
directly to the essay question.
70. SAMPLE ESSAY QUESTIONS
Detective fiction focuses on the solving of a particular mystery,
but it also raises questions about the society it depicts.
Evaluate the way Chandlers novel The Big Sleep reflects and
comments on its society.
71. SAMPLE ESSAY QUESTIONS
The twentieth century suffered a loss of faith in a moral centre
and moral direction. In what ways does Chadlers novel The Big Sleep
show this statement to be true?
The Modern era is characterised by the recognition that the
traditional values of the Victorian Era led to a horrific war,
industrial squalor, the breakdown of traditional rural society,
exploitation of other cultures and races, and a society built on
power and greed. Discuss this statement in relation to Chandlers
novel The Big Sleep.
72. SAMPLE ESSAY QUESTIONS
The modern world saw a shift from the closed, finite, measurable,
cause-and-effect universe of nineteenth century science to an open,
relativistic, changing, strange universe in the twentieth century
led to a shift in power and responsibility from authority to the
individual.
How does Chandlers novel The Big Sleep reflect this shift in power
and responsibility?
73. SAMPLE ESSAY QUESTIONS
Discoveries in the realms of psychology, economics and politics led
to the view that the forces governing behaviour, and particularly
the most powerful and formative ones, are hidden. Discuss this
statement in relation to your study of Chandlers novel The Big
Sleep.
74. SAMPLE ESSAY QUESTIONS
Crime fiction texts always challenge the values in their
contemporary society. How does Chandler use The Big Sleep to
challenge the values of his own society?
Critic Andrew Tudor notes that 'a genre... defines a moral and
social world' Explain the moral and social codes embedded in the
novel The Big Sleep.
