Dashiell Hammett renovates the mystery genre by popularizing the never before seen hard-boiled crime fiction. By serializing his works through literary magazines of the 1920s like The Black Mask, Hammett shares his unsentimental tales of mystery, violence, and promiscuity. What was first a surveillance assignment carried out the protagonist Sam Spade and partner Miles Archer turns into a murder investigation, as Archer is found dead that evening. Spade is a suspect, as Archer’s wife Iva and Spade are having an affair. The reader learns that the woman who requested the surveillance in the first place, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, lied to the partners. The relationship Brigid builds with Spade builds when Brigid introduces a plan to sell a gold, jewel-encrusted falcon to her former partners Joel Cairo, Wilmer Cook, and Casper Gutman. The meeting with Cairo turns for the worst when these men seeking information about the falcon nearly kill Spade. The Los Angeles police lead further investigation into Archer’s death and Spade’s affair with his wife. In Cairo’s hotel, Spade realizes that the falcon is likely onboard the ship La Paloma. Later, the ship’s captain Jacobi staggers into Spade’s office and dies holding a parcel containing the falcon. Meanwhile, Spade receives a false call from Brigid that she is in trouble. Spade secures the falcon, and heads for Gutman’s suite. There, Spade receives partial payment, and later gives Gutman the falcon. Gutman removes the protective enamel coating only to find that the falcon is made of lead rather than gold. Spade finally contacts the authorities about the falcon and the murders. He also reveals to Brigid that he knows that she killed his partner, Archer, and turns her in to the police. The novel c...
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...Falcon. New York: Random House, 1957. Print.
Kelly, David. “Critical Essay on The Maltese Falcon .” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne and Timothy Sisler. Vol. 21. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 198-201. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 14 Oct. 2011.
Marling, William. “Critical Essay on The Maltese Falcon .” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne and Timothy Sisler. Vol. 21. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 201-209. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 14 Oct. 2011.
Symons, Julian. Dashiell Hammett. N.p.: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1985. 66-72. Rpt. in Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne and Timothy Sisler. Vol. 21. Detriot: Gale, 2006. 209-212. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 14 Oct. 2011.
“ The Maltese Falcon .” Novels for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne and Timothy Sisler. Vol. 21. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 187-192. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 14 Oct. 2011.
"At the very end of the novel- what is represented as being important? Find two quotes to illustrate this".
Academic colleagues like, David Greenburg, would have been exasperated, part from envy of McCullough’s ability in not only story telling but to sell and he would object to the approach of this book. The colleagues would tear at the lack of compelling rationale for an overused topic, as well as the scene setting, and meager analysis.
Harmon, William, William Flint Thrall, Addison Hibbard, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009. Print.
The student may find it useful to begin the paper with the following quote from the novel:
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.
...in one of the US’s largest professional detective agency, he is able to bring an aura of realism with a bit of pessimism into his stories. For The Maltese Falcon, such realism is achieved using language from that social group in a style which brings an almost real feeling of action to the reader; symbolism of characters to actual events; and characterizing characters with real life human qualities. As a result, some say, “Dashiell Hammett is the person who rescued the [mystery] genre by bringing it back to the real world” (Malmgren, 371)
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Element of Literature, Sixth Course. Austin: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1997. 161-172. Print.
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Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.
Kiely, Robert. Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fiction of Adventure. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.
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Irwin, John. “Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them: Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon” Literary Imagination: The Review of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics: 341-374. Google Scholar. 08 March 2008 .
Sewall, Richard B. "The Scarlet Letter: Criticism." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 319-27.
The historical context, psychological exploration of the characters, and realistic dialogue make this fictional novel more realistic. The symbolic representation of the scarlet letter, Pearl, and the settings along with the morals taught by the stories of the characters make the novel more insightful, symbolic, and allegorical. These aspects of The Scarlet Letter make the novel a brilliant combination of the literary devices of Realism, symbolism, and allegory, and fill the novel with profundity, suspense, romance, and tragedy.