The Flitcraft parable is the key. Falling beams and all. The
parable
stops all the action in the novel, just as Hamlet's scene
with the
gravedigger stops the action in Hamlet. Both scenes are going
mano y mano
with the Grim Reaper.
Sam Spade is desperately frightened of death; like many in
that position,
he now longer trusts life. He becomes obsessed with the
World, the Flesh
and the Devil; they terrify him.
Women especially terrify him. He sounds like a male
chauvinist pig with
Effie, but he always asks for and takes her advice. Brigit is
a
manifestation of Kali, the goddess of death. Face white as
bone, nails
and lips and hair crimson as blood. (See another
manifestation of her in
the boat with death in Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient
Mariner; same
description, plus she also plays dice with Death.) It was
Chance that
sent Archer up the alley instead of Sam Spade.
By rejecting her, Spade rejects the gamble with Death.
The last lines of the book shows Spade's absolute fear of
Woman Who Equals
death. "He shuddered."
So, everyone on board?
Frederick Zackel
Bowling Green State U.
(P.S. Brennen was born poor, white and Irish in the "Irish
Mission" of San
Francisco.)
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