The movie The Maltese Falcon is about a private investigator who is striving to unravel the mystery surrounding a black enamelled bird known as the Maltese Falcon. Samuel Spade, the protagonist of the story, is what was known as a “hard-boiled” detective. Men such as that rarely show a tender side (if they have one). Likewise, they are physically tough, frequently resorting to guns or fists to get what they want. In addition, they tend to be amoral, yet with an inflexible code of honour of their own.
The first element of the persona of the “hard-boiled” detective is the fact that they rarely show an affectionate side. Throughout the entire movie, Sam Spade acts in a careless and nonchalant manner. Nothing bothers him and he doesn’t seem to care for anyone. He remains cool, collected, and somewhat aloof. He treats Brigit and Miles’ wife roughly and uses them for his own purposes. After Miles’ death he avoids Mrs. Archer, though he made professions of love to her previously. All this to say, he does show some tenderness towards Brigit, but it is overcome by his desire to clear himse...
Cop in the Hood has taught me a lot about how police work in a city really is. The chapter titled “911 is a Joke” intrigued me the most, for mostly two reasons. First the story at the beginning of the chapter really put perspective on how some people really live in the inner cities and how a police officer would have to react to the situation. Secondly, growing up in a middle class suburb I was always taught the 911 was only to be called in a time of emergency. It was a sacred number that I had never had to call. Me and my friends would joke on each other and type “911” on our flip phones and threaten to call, but never will. When Moskos said the 911 was a joke I was taken back by it because it when against everything I was taught.
Erick Larson wrote in Devil in the White City, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing – I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered in the world, and he has been with me since” (Troy, Taylor). This statement was a quoted confession from Dr. H. H. Holmes himself in 1896. Holmes was the first major serial killer in America, even though he came after many others in his time. Thomas Neil Cream, the Austin Axe Murderer, the Bloody Benders, and Jack the Ripper came before him. His name was originally Herman Webster Mudgett. He was born on May 16th, 1860 in Gilman, New Hampshire. He was raised by his mother and father, who was a wealthy and respected citizen for 25 years. As a boy, Mudgett was always in trouble and was well known in his community for his rather sociopathic behavior. He would show cruelty to both animals and other children. The only thing keeping hope to society was the fact that he was an excellent student. He later changed his last name to Holmes in order to pursue both his medical and criminal careers. He had many other aliases in which he would hide under and try to derail the cops from finding him (Juan, Blanco). Holmes was medically trained to be a doctor and received his degree from the University of Michigan. He was not just into insurance fraud scams. His evil doings included forgery, claiming to find the cure for alcoholism, real estate scams, and pretending to have a machine that turned natural gas into water. He was quite the ladies man, had many wives, whom often had become his victims. Many of his medical partners became subject to him, also. He once even had three wiv...
The Police were a three part band composed of Andy Summers the guitarist, Steward Copeland the drummer and Gordon Mathew Sumner the bass guitarist and singer. Before the band was formed Steward Copeland was part of the band Curved Air. In 1976 the band disbanded leaving Copeland without a job, or passion. Copeland yearned to join another band and reunite music with his life; coincidently he and Gordon met up at a local jazz club and appreciated each other enough to start a band. Soon after the two of them released their first song “Fall Out”, the two of them invited a Henry Padovani to join the band, who gladly accepted [why?]. In 1977 the three of them quietly toured with Mike Howlett as a project band for a Gong reunion – who Mike Howlett was formerly a part of. Copeland was almost excluded from this tour due to Mike choosing a different drummer. Luckily that drummer was busy and the band kept together. The four of them came under the name Strontium 90. A little while after that gig Andy Summers proposed to join the band on the condition that Padovani would be kicked out. Both Copeland and Gordon resisted after the idea at first due to the loyalty to Padovani, but after a few more concerts Summers was in and Padovani was informed that he was out of the band due to his limited abilities as a guitarist. Coming to distress in early 1978 the band accepted a shallow deal for money as a band in a gum commercial. The commercials director had only one condition, that they dye their hair blond for the shoot. The band was blessed to get this opportunity as later known because the blond hair became a trade mark of the band. The band’s first album was a hardship for them; they had a small studio and low budget, provided by Copeland’s older ...
The Pacific coast port city of San Francisco, California provides a distinctively mysterious backdrop in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Unlike many other detective stories that are anchored in well-known metropolises such as Los Angeles or New York City, Hammett opted to place the events of his text in the lesser-known, yet similarly exotic cultural confines of San Francisco. Hammett used his own intricate knowledge of the San Francisco Bay Area - coupled with details collected during a stint as a detective for the now defunct Pinkerton Agency - to craft a distinctive brand of detective fiction that thrived on such an original setting (Paul 93). By examining the setting of 1920’s San Francisco in The Maltese Falcon, it becomes apparent that one of Hammett’s literary strengths was his exceptional ability to intertwine non-fictional places with a fictional plot and characters in order to produce a logical and exceedingly believable detective mystery.
The idea of a detective catching an elusive convict or solving an improbable crime has been prevalent in all corners of the world, spread throughout many cultures and societies. The detective genre is held as the idea that an individual has to solve a crime. This detective usually has nothing to gain from solving the crime, but they see it more as an obstacle. The detective doesn’t always take every case, as human beings, we are too often curious of the impossible; our natural instinct is to question why and how things work in this world. People crave mystery, to taste a bit of improbable, to see what the detectives see, to see what is overlooked by many. The idea of an intelligent witty, sharp “sleuth” with an obedient sidekick has been prevalent
The Maltese Falcon, written by Dashiell Hammett, is a crime novel based in the 1940’s in San Francisco. It mainly revolves around Sam Spade, a private detective, who is hired by Miss Wonderly, also known as Bridget, to find a mysterious statue of a falcon, which is priceless. Throughout the novel, Spade does some very questionable motives, in order to find out the truth about the falcon, and his recently murdered partner. While some people may argue that Spade is hero, and was really doing everything in the name of justice, he is really an Anti-Hero. An Anti-Hero is a hero who “may try to do what is right by using questionable means,” as defined by Professor Leonard. They still do what is considered the right thing to do, but use unconventional
The birth of classic detective fiction was originated just in the mid nineteenth century, and was producing its own genre. Classical detective fiction follows a set of rules called the ‘Ten commandments of detective fiction’. The genre is so popular it can bee seen by the number of sales in any good book stores. Many of these books have been created a long time ago and there is still a demand for these types of books. The popularity is still ongoing because it provides constant entertainment, and also the reader can also have a role of detective trying to solve the crime/case committed. Classical detective fiction has a formula, the detective story starts with a seemingly irresolvable mystery, typically a murder, features the astute, often unconventional detective, a wrongly accused suspect to whom the circumstantial evidence points, and concludes with a startling or unexpected solution to the mystery, during which the detective explains how he or she solved the mystery. Formula that includes certain elements such as, a closed location to keep the number of suspects down, red hearings spread around the stories to keep the reader entertained yet interacted.
The first character that we read or see is Sam Spade. In the book he is written as being tall and lanky with blond hair, and a recurring v-motif that makes him out to be what Hammett describes as a ?blond Satan.? With these descriptions, we can easily make out a powerful image of what Sam Spade must look like in our heads. When we have an image of what something is going to be like and it turns out to not at all be what we expected, we are often let down, disappointed.This is due to the casting of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. His hair is brown, and his, round, soft face is the farthest a face can come from having a satanic v-motif. Although Humphrey Bogart?s acting was very good, it was intruded by my perception of what Sam Spade was supposed to look like.
As if molded directly from the depths of nightmares, both fascinating and terrifying. Serial killers hide behind bland and normal existences. They are often able to escape being caught for years, decades and sometimes an eternity. These are America’s Serial Killers (America’s Serial Killers). “Even when some of them do get caught, we may not recognize what they are because they don’t [sic] match the distorted image we have of serial killers” (Brown). What is that distorted image? That killers live among everyday life, they are the ones who creep into someone’s life unknowingly to torture and kill them. The serial killers that are in the movies, Norman Bates, Michael Myers, and the evil master mind of SAW, these characters are just that characters. They have been made up as exaggerated fictional characters from the Hollywood imagination.
With producing reality shows comes producing inaccuracies in portrayals in order to reach as many viewers and gain as high ratings as possible every week with each new episode. Every day life is boring, yet people tend to be attracted to the relatable shows that portray real life in eccentric ways – ways that they believe could be imitated by the average person. In many cases, these shows could remain harmless, as it is entertainment. No matter how crude or erroneous, it is just television. However, what happens when these sources of amusement actually start being damaging? Research has shown that crime shows like the ever popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation have started becoming significantly detrimental to criminal cases, influencing a juror's perception of what should realistically be going on with acquittal rates and wrongful convictions, but researchers have also started to find a rising fault in the prosecution, using this false perception to their advantage.
I don’t recall if Gutman said it in the movie about the Falcon being coated by lacquer to obfuscate that it’s really made of gold and jewels. I think it was implied that nothing is what they really seem to be. This is what I believe Dashiell Hammett was trying to communicate through his novel, ‘The Maltese Falcon.’ In this paper I will write about why I believe what is Hammett trying to convey through his cast of characters. These characters are unlike the image and stereotype cast upon their roles.
House shares multiple themes and parallels with different detective fiction stories. Some of the most familiar parallels are those between house and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes. Along with their names, the two characters have many other things in common, such as an addiction to some type of drug; House is addicted to Vicodin and Homes is addicted to cocaine. They also both have trusty sidekicks of Dr. Watson and Dr. Wilson, and the inept police force of Holmes’ stories are portrayed, as a team of specialists in House’s world. However, these similarities created by the writers are not why House has in a way become its own version of detective fiction. The television show may never be grouped with the detective genre, but the similarities of themes do attach it to the old forms of Edgar Allan Poe and many others. The setting of House M.D. introduces the mood and tone for the work of fiction, but it also depicts the social structure and separation of the different levels of workers in the hospital. Many detective fiction authors focused on the social prejudices and division of the society they were writing for, and the competition that it produced amongst the members of society. In spite of the United States citizens being equal, the actual equality of the different classes is debatable, and the difference is demonstrated in House M.D. depicting the social climate of separation and competition in the modern day that is similar to the separation 150 years ago.
The protagonist in Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman has spent the past several days following the bizarre characters Policeman MacCruiskeen and Sergeant Pluck in an even more bizarre world of his own creation. The narrator, who is bent on receiving his treasure, which is tucked securely inside a black box, follows these characters patiently waiting to receive his fate neatly packed away in a box. The narrator finds himself in the midst of a world in which it takes every stretch of the imagination of the reader and the narrator to understand. O’Brien asks the reader to suspend disbelief and follow along for the ride. O’Brien pushes the boundaries of postmodernism novel and the limits of the conscious mind while dabbling with impossibilities and possibilities of the existentialist mind. Flann O’Brien weaves together elements of existentialism, Freud’s psychological theory of consciousness, and postmodernism in literature in a satirical way to demonstrate how little humans actually know; especially during a time when new theories were forming and being experimented with on the path to enlightenment. O’Brien’s narrative brings the experience of all these elements to the reader; through the narrator, all theories collide in O'Brien's The Third Policeman. In the critical essay “Calmly making ribbons of eternity: the futility of the modern project in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman " author Lanta Davis says “The Third Policeman is one of the first postmodern texts, examines O'Brien's doubts concerning the modern quest for knowledge. O'Brien demonstrates an extreme skepticism of human epistemological investigation, and even depicts the Cartesian cogito as the self-referential, ...
Now, let us look at “The Speckled Band” there is no doubt that it is a
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is one of those well-written fictions which can drive the readers right into the plot and can make you dissolve into the whole plot. It becomes really difficult to stop going through the whole plot once you have started reading it. It is that strength of words which has been efficiently utilized by the author making this whole book a real adventure for the readers. Once the readers have started the book, it is their utmost desire to finish each and every adventure in the very first go. The way the author has crafted the whole fiction is marvelous and being on top of his trait, one can give a firm assurance about the fact that there would not be anyone out there who reads this fiction and don’t like it.