Dashiell Hammett

robbery and other social vices. Dashiell Hammett moral message about the relentless pursuit of wealth is that the relentless pursuit of wealth…

The Gutting of Couffignal written by Dashiell Hammett is a crime fiction short story. It follows a nameless Private Investigator, the continental Op, as he experiences and solves a robbery in the small island of Couffignal. Throughout the story the Op’s mannerisms show he is a sensitive person not only a hardened investigator. The Op is cynical because being a detective has forced him to see the bad in the world. This has caused him to mistrust peOple on first contact and also a defense…

Stereotyping is something that was well alive back then and still alive and well today. Although stereotyping does not have an exact date on which it started, it all comes from people not being willing or taking the time to actually complete the “total picture.” So, we take what we see and hear, such as language, gestures, and appearance to fill in the missing parts. There are two main instances which occur in the Maltese Falcon which are, sexism, and homosexuality, two of the many stereotypes…

The sub-genre of crime noir, hardboiled fiction, was invented by Edgar Allan Poe. His publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 marked the creation of the hardboiled genre of crime fiction, which further took off fifty years later with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels. The mystique surrounding these genre’s is what attracts audiences, a tradition that has continued in the production of films. The Maltese Falcon is one of the most popular examples of…

When asked of what a man is supposed to be, most people would reply strong, tough, blunt, and essentially a badass. In literature, we would define these type of people as “hard boiled”, meaning that they are tough both on the outside and on the inside. In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade, a rugged San Francisco detective shows many resembling traits of a hard boiled detective, but also has the ability to show some compassion when necessary. Part of what defines a detective as, “hard boiled”, is…

Television dramas will often interweave stereotypes into the series as audiences will already have an idea of what to expect. This is done so that audiences will be able to quickly understand characters or ideas without the writers having explain. Nic Pizzolatto’s 2014 southern gothic crime drama, True Detective, is about two detectives, Rustin ‘Rust’ Cohle and Martin ‘Marty’ Hart, who are being questioned in 2012 about a bizarre murder case in 1995. These characters are constructed to challenge…

An easily noticeable example of the hardboiled detective can be seen in Sam Spade, main character in The Maltese Falcon (1941). Sam Spade is seen as this archetype due to his attributes, many of which are consistent with the Noir genre of the time. One such attribute of Spade’s is his ability to reason and think things through. He justifies the means for his actions, which seems meticulously thought out and premeditated. When he meets Mr. Gutman in the room, Sam Spade attempts to take back…

The hard-boiled detective, in noir tradition, is typically depicted as a lone wolf figure, one that upholds morality while balancing the corruption inherent in his line of work. He could be defined by his sexual potency, just as much as by his denial of pleasure. Raymond Chandler, in his 1950 essay, The Simple Art of Murder, outlines this archetype, with an authority appropriate to his foundational authorship. Chandler writes, “He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a…

In the Maltese Falcon, Hammett builds a detective through the genre of hardboiled fiction and his writing style. Like a boiled egg that has lost all softness. “The writing style is gritty and tough.”(the big read). In the writing a hard boiled detective is a “man at odds with society, whose motivation stems not from monetary reward but from a personal code and the search for truth.”Throughout the novel, Spade’s definition of a detective comes to be a hardboiled hero that isn’t afraid to use…

The settings portrayed in City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, a novel by Elmore Leonard, and The Maltese Falcon, a detective novel by Dashiell Hammet were closely related while occurring in two cities on complete opposite sides of the country. Both Raymond Cruz and Sam Spade are sharp, old fashioned, and gritty characters. When it comes to the descriptions of these characters and the correlation between them and their respective cities in which they reside, the authors are able to produce…