Raymond Cattell

The femme fatale became a very popular character in crime fiction in the United States during the mid-twentieth century (Jaber, 1). This character is a woman who is portrayed to be hyper-sexual and is manipulative towards men. The femme fatale appears in hard-boiled crime fiction and film noir. She also was featured on many pulp covers making seductive poses because of the rise of sex in books (Horsley). Throughout the mid-twentieth century, the femme fatale character changed. Throughout this…

The Cathedral of St. Raymond Nonnatus Almost every Sunday during my youth was spent at church with the family. On many occasions, we were simply up the road at the local Catholic Church but the most memorable moments that I can recall are the ones spent with family at the Cathedral of St. Raymond Nonnatus. I had always wondered why it looked the way it did until my continuing education later in life. This a very structurally beautiful building and it acts the part of worship and school all…

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 lively sense of the…

Ever heard of a Japanese samurai who lost their lord or master and wondered around without a home, called a Ronin? John Frankenheimer assembled an international team of freelancing former Cold War intelligence warriors for a final mission in his movie thriller Ronin. The mission: to recover a briefcase with mysterious contents for an unknown customer. The movie takes place in Paris and southern France where alliances are made and transform along with the team members loyalties. The fierce…

Ignorance is the worst form of blindness. In the short story, “Cathedral,” Raymond Carver creates a dynamic character who is judgmental and lacks insight, but ironically, a blind man soon helps him see. This character, never actually given a name, is also the narrator. Carver’s decision to withhold his name is intriguing since he gives the blind man a name, Robert. The narrator in “Cathedral” himself produces an antisocial, prejudiced personality for others to interact with, but shows the…

The protagonist in Carver’s “Cathedral” also serves as the narrator. The man although nameless reveals to us (the readers) who he is throughout the story. We see many ranges in this character, he shows us that he is jealous, narrow-minded, self-centered, and even prejudice. Also even though he is not described as being blind himself, he does seem to be blinded to his wife’s thoughts and feelings, as well as to things he does not understand. The main character lacks intimacy, and seems to be…

Raymond Carver wrote “Cathedral,” the cathedral represents true sight, the ability to see beyond the surface to the true meaning that lies within. In “Cathedral” we encounter the narrator who thinks of his wife’s friend as nothing but a blind man. For he is a petty, jealous man… he does not care to meet any man whom his wife has connected with in the past. Although he is staying with him and his wife, he will speak to him anyhow. Robert will change the narrator’s way of thinking and seeing…

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…

incredibly, Raymond Chandler perpetuated his passion of writing, which led him to future success. In the Windy City, Chicago, Illinois, on July 23, 1888, Raymond Chandler was born into the Thornton-Chandler family. Subsequently, Raymond Chandler followed a path and became the first hard -boiled mystery writer, a quite popular style of the modern day suspenseful stories genre. Unfortunately, when he was young, Raymond Chandler’s parents separated. Thus, an adverse atmosphere surrounded Raymond…

He’s not dead, he’s sleeping forever: Characterization in “A Small, Good Thing” In “A Small, Good Thing”, Raymond Carver describes the events of a small boy, Scotty, getting injured and being hospitalized. His parents, Ann and Howard, then need to internalize the situation each in their own way until they finally accept Scotty’s death after meeting with a baker that has been giving the parents foreboding calls. Carver uses characterization in “A Small, Good Thing” to convey the idea of how Ann…