The Big Sleep Essay

Rasna Atwal

Writing 39B

Kirsty Singer

The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep is a novel set in 1920s in which Marlowe, the main character was originally hired to deal with a blackmailing issue with General Sternwood’s daughter but this private investigation then turns into a bigger search as Marlowe founds out more and more. The novel emphasizes the society and the type of people that made up the world during this time period and how they interacted with each other and those around them. Detectives were common during this time due to the lack of trust in the people set to run the society (police, etc). We, the readers, follow Marlowe from a first person to truly understand what a detective goes through and what are the key aspects needed in a detective for a novel to be hardboiled-detective fiction. Chandler attempts to show the reader that there was a great amount of corruption in society within this time highlighting the time period of the depression and the imbalance of wealth amongst the people.

The corruption within this novel is evidently seen when Vivian tells Marlowe she is being blackmailed for $5,000. She tells him that he had received a letter with a picture of he naked sister with which a woman later called and demanded money for the rest of the pictures and negatives. This woman knew that the Sternwoods were extremely wealthy so she took advantage of this for her own benefits. However the Sternwoods are no innocent people. They got rich off of oil fields which are described within the novel as dirty, Chandler describes them in such a way and states things like they could have looked at what they made them wealthy but they chose not to. They had been contributing to the imbalance of wealth amongst people and peo...

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...d you live in.”

“She's a grifter, shamus. I'm a grifter. We're all grifters. So we sell each other out for a nickel...” This quote highlights the aspect that each man is out for themselves and themselves only, which only adds to this dysfunctional society. For society to work, each person must be willing to give something up for the benefit of all. I came to this conclusion based upon the overall environment created by Chandler. He wanted to show the readers that the world that we live in is corrupt and we have to deal with it. Stumbling upon this, the novel makes you frustrated because you are being told that all of society is this way and we just have to deal with it. Chandler does this to motivate readers that there is create corruption present all around us and we the people he is frustrating need to do something about it or nothing will ever change.