The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe both approach the theme of justice and present it in dissimilar ways. The Big Sleep presents justice as something which you can achieve through beliefs and morals, without the use of money and crime. The Black Cat presents justice as something which is absolute and something which you cannot escape psychologically, a force which is inevitable.
In The Big Sleep, a conversation between Philip Marlowe and Vivien Sternwood is proceeding, in which Marlowe is offered $15,000 to be silenced over the disappearance of Rusty Regan, and within the conversation the reader is given an insight into the motivations and morals of Marlowe, and his own personal view of the topic in question, justice.
In the selected extract from The Black Cat, the unnamed narrator, who previously killed his wife and gouged out his “beloved” pet cat Pluto’s eye, begins to ponder on his previous actions, which lead him to delve into the ideology of justice, and how his “acts of perverseness” will be punished, showing the clear psychological effects that justice has.
Raymond Chandler was widely credited as being the creator of the “hard-boiled” detective (with the creation of Philip Marlowe), usually linked within the corrupt nature of a society. As the selected extract is written as a dialogue between the narrator Marlowe and Vivien, it allows the narrator to explain his moral stance, and his views on the criminal justice system and the criminal world itself. His moral determinism is perceived well, as he believes incidents have to be dealt with, without the involvement of money. Marlowe is shown in this extract as the opposite to the society he is living in, as his moral determinism contrasts...
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...ices. The use of these linguistic features shows the Justice Morality of Philip Marlowe, his belief that justice needs to be served by individuals, not with a stable Criminal Justice System, but by own personal choice. Chandler creates Marlowe as a character who is facing the struggles of the world by himself, a world which is suffering from corruption and no longer stable and complex, reflected in the use of short sentences and paragraphs.
In conclusion, Philip Marlowe’s way of seeking justice is through his own beliefs and morals, through his personal ideology of Criminal Justice and Moral Justice, both calm ways of eradicating problems. The unnamed narrator, on the receiving end of Justice, is condemned to the hangman, a form of harsh Criminal Justice and will most likely be condemned to Hell, presenting Justice as a brutal force of nature you cannot escape.
“The Black Cat” is a short story about a man is dealing with alcohol problems, which cause him to lose his temper more frequently. One of the first cases of the man’s lashing out happens towards the beginning of the story. The man returns home, very intoxicated, and proceeds to cut one of the cat’s eyeballs out. Poe states “I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!” The use of deep description by Poe in this instance allows the reader to fully imagine the actions done by the man to the cat. He gives many small details like “grasped the poor beast by the throat,” to really readers to see what he wants them to. Additionally, as the story moves forward, the man is not done with the cat. He then proceeds to murder the cat he has already cut an eye out of. Poe explains “One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree.” Poe paints a striking picture for the reader to see, and to feel the full impact of the action taken in the story.
The Black Cat is a short story written in the first person. The narrator, a man, who never gives his name is already in prison and awaiting death from the onset of the story. He tells us the story of how he went from being a gentlemen and a loving husband to a murderer. First, he tells us about his cat, Pluto, and how he gauged one of its eyes out in an alcohol fueled rage He eventually kills his cat simply because it had loved him. In a weird twist, the narrator finds another cat that looks very much like Pluto. At first he was smitten with the cat, but slowly began to feel an immense hatred for the creature. In a fit of rage he tries killing the cat with an axe. His wife intervenes, and in turn, she is the one who receives the death blow to the head. He tries hiding his deed, but the cat ends up giving him away when the police come calling.
The rolling hills and untouched prairies of the Old West were, by and large, replaced with modern infrastructures and communities by the time Raymond Chandler and Thomas Pynchon got around to writing The Big Sleep and Crying of Lot 49. As the “New West” became the “Noir West” liberality transformed into something more along the lines of uniformity. The now more urban landscapes of the Noir West began to call for a different kind of toughness, one based on mental rather than physical strength. It wasn’t enough to be strong and free spirited anymore; being a “Cowboy of Noir” required more mental acuteness than anything else, as both authors (Chandler and Pynchon) demonstrate with Philip Marlowe and Oedipa Maas.
The Big Sleep Movie and Novel & nbsp; On first inspection of Raymond Chandler's novel, The Big Sleep, the reader discovers that the story unravels quickly through the narrative voice of Philip Marlowe, the detective hired by the Sternwood family of Los Angeles to solve a mystery for them. The mystery concerns the General Sternwood's young daughter, and one Mr. A. G. Geiger. Upon digging for the answer to this puzzle placed before Marlowe for a mere $25 dollars a day plus expenses, Marlowe soon finds layers upon layers of mystifying events tangled in the already mysterious web of lies and deception concerning the Sternwood family, especially the two young daughters. & nbsp; When reading the novel, it is hard to imagine the story without a narrator at all. It certainly seems essential for the story's make-up to have this witty, sarcastic voice present to describe the sequence of events. Yet, there is a version of Chandler's novel that does not have an audible storyteller, and that version is the 1946 movie directed by Howard Hawks. & nbsp; Hawks' version of The Big Sleep is known to be one of the best examples of the film genre-film noir. "
Another extraordinary tale by Edgar Allen Poe is, “The Black Cat”. “The Black Cat” recounts the story of an unnamed narrator with a selfless character. Loving animals, he and his wife have several pets, one of which being a black cat. The narrator and the cat grow very close and life for the narrator seems complete, until he beings drinking. Intoxicated by alcohol, the narrator becomes irritable and abusive. One day, that narrator, infur...
Furthermore, is a summarization of the main points in “The Black Cat.” “The Black Cat” is about a man who always loved animals since he was little, but as he aged he started drinking. He then tortured his favorite pet cat, Pluto after he was getting annoyed with his presence. He goes as far as gouging out its eye before he hangs it in an old tree. Later on, his house burnt down and the outline of the cat was left on the only standing wall left by the fire. After he and his wife get a new home, they soon found a new cat that looked just like the old one except it had white around its neck. The narrator starts to believe that the cat is mocking him, so one day he tries to kill the cat but his wife interferes, and he ki...
Overwhelmingly, truth was lost within this unreliable narrator’s world. It is a repeated theme throughout many of Poe’s works that a guilty conscious is one of the most detrimental things a person can possess. Often times, within his stories, the main character dies due to his or her guilty conscious and “The Black Cat” is no different. The narrator’s warped sense of reality was ultimately the reason for his demise. Poe seems to be warning readers, through his numerous works, that it may or may not be a good thing to have a guilt conscious.
The short story the “Black Cat” begins with the narrator of the story telling his side of events that have occurred throughout his life. When first being introduced to the narrator you can tell something is off with him. The narrator is originally a well-put together man he has a wife and many of different animals but has a much greater love for one of his animals named Pluto a black cat. As the life of the narrator goes on he falls into a drinking problem he cant stop drinking and when he does drink he gets violent. One night when
Anthony Trollope’s “The Warden” is a classic piece of literature which depicts a very popular and interesting theme: “justice” and “injustice” aren’t always necessarily separate things. The preconceived notions of these two ideas that we have as individuals, do not present a clear and transparent definition of “justice” and “injustice”, as our own subjective beliefs have the potential to influence our opinion more than the truth itself. On top of this, actions taken in the name of justice don’t always result in the same. These ideas are very evident in Anthony Trollope’s “The Warden”, a story about a reverend who is accused of one of the most atrocious injustices; one he does not even consciously realize he is committing.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote that the single effect was the most important aspect of a short story, which everything must contribute to this effect. Poe’s gothic tale “The Black Cat” was written trying to achieve an effect of shocking insanity. In this first person narrative the narrator tells of his decline from sanity to madness, all because of an obsession with two (or possibly one) black cats. These ebony creatures finally drive him to take the life his wife, whose death he unsuccessfully tries to conceal.
Gargano, James W. “’The Black Cat’: Perverseness Reconsidered.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe’s Tales. Ed. William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 87-94. Print.
"The Black Cat" compares to all of these using the ongoing "black, darkness" theme. In this story the gothic there death is mainly seen a lot. The man in the story one night came home intoxicated and decided to cut his cat, Pluto's, eyeballs out. This man had some serious psychological issues, another gothic element, throughout the entire book. Lastly, another element seen in this writing was murder or death when he kills his wife and Pluto suddenly goes missing. Then soon after his wife was killed the police had shown up to the home to investigate, and when they reached the basement of the home they heard Pluto inside of the wall, where his wife had been put to
The Black Cat, by Edgar Allen Poe, is a story about a man whose love for animals is overcome by an extreme hatred toward the creatures. What goes around comes around is a saying that would most effectively convey the message of this story because Poe implies that people will inevitably suffer the consequences of their actions. Through the careful construction of plot, the ongoing use of irony, and the rapid development of character, Poe captures the reader’s undivided attention and evokes a wide variety of emotions through this short story
...at the hands of his master. The mutilation of its eye, hanging it to death from a tree and killing his wife, which had shown the cat love. There are two interpretations you can take away from this story, the logic of guilt or supernatural fantasy. Which conclusion will you take?
As The High Window enters a period of rising action, Raymond Chandler uses this stage as a time to display Marlowe’s obscure feelings. Despite coming off as a tough, quick-witted detective, Marlowe begins to unveil strange reactions and moods. Although showing no significant sign of unusual behavior while talking to Mrs. Murdock, his behavior changes over only after learning that the coin was occupying two spaces simultaneously. However, the reader can only assume that Marlowe is feeling odd until Chandler’s word choice ultimately describes an unnatural Marlowe; “I pushed out of the booth and lit a cigarette with thick awkward fingers” (Chandler 103). With Marlowe forcefully exiting from the booth you can only suspect peculiar behavior, which even the awkwardness of smoking his cigarette could cover. However, his awkwardness didn’t stop there.