The Literature Book

237

See also: Bleak House 14 6 – 49 ■ The Moonstone 198–99 ■ The Hound of the Baskervilles 208 ■

The New York Trilogy 336

BREAKING WITH TRADITION

chessboard and sees that he has

made a mistake with a knight

move. “Knights,” he says, “have no

meaning in this game.” But they

do: Marlowe, for all his faults, is a

modern knight, among the kings

and queens of crime and their

pawns. He is loyal to clients, hates

liars, cheats, and thugs, and fights

back with wit and courage.

New uses for pulp

Part of Chandler’s achievement

was to apply literary sophistication

to pulp-fiction subjects. The Big

Sleep is told by Marlowe in the first

person, and the language is sharply

idiomatic—colloquial not only in

the dialogue but also the narration.

But the prose has a jewel-like

precision, with terse, beautifully

crafted sentences. There are witty

or amusingly exaggerated similes,

such as doors “which would have

let in a troop of Indian elephants,”

but they are not overdone.

The story has a tight plot, with

one situation flowing naturally into

the next. Two-thirds of the way in,

Marlowe has solved the mystery for

his client; however, he spends the

rest of the book tying up a loose

end, and putting himself in more

danger to discover how deep into

evil an arch-villain has fallen.

Throughout, Marlowe remains

one step ahead of everybody else,

and able, like the chess knight, to

outwit his enemies by unexpected

moves. The big sleep of the title

is death, and is the subject of a

poignant coda in which Marlowe,

showing self-understanding far

beyond Sherlock Holmes, implicates

himself as “part of the nastiness.” ■

Arthur Geiger

Carol Lundgren

Carmen

Sternwood

General

Sternwood

Agnes Lozelle

Harry Jones

Owen Taylor

Lash Canino

Both plots Blackmail plot Disappearance plot

Joe Brody

Eddie Mars

Vivian Sternwood

Regan

“Rusty” Regan

Mona Mars

Philip Marlowe

Employed by

Employed by

Partners with

Lover of Partners with

Blackmails

Employed by

Father of Father of

Employed by

In love with Blackmails

Tries to seduce Tries to seduce

Married to

Runs away with?

Married to

Tries to

seduce

Two intertwined plots linked by

sexual attraction provide The Big Sleep

with its story line, revolving around an

elderly ex-general’s two wayward

daughters, missing persons, blackmail,

murder, and double crosses. The result

is a complex but well-controlled tale.

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