[SNIP]
>If so, it seems to go along with a mockery or disdain
of others' emotion,
>and getting them to play their emotional hand. He
laughs at Brigid's
>tears. Streak of sadism? (Bogart certainly
communicated that attitude.)
I think Spade is thoroughly sadistic.
As Bill Hagen points out, he laughs at Brigid O'Shaugnessey;
he also
takes obvious delight in humiliating both Wilmer and Cairo.
He grins as
he thumps Cairo in an early part of the novel; he
deliberately
humiliates Wilmer by disarming him in the symbolic double
castration.
Spade deepens the this further by referring to the
humiliation in the
presence of other (for example, referring to his disarming of
Wilmer; to
his searching of Cairo).
Spade has no affection for Iva---perhaps his sleeping with
her is a way
of 'humiliating' Archer?
There are probably more examples---I'm doing this from memory
(I *will*
try to re-read the novel before this thread is done!)
ED
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