Tim Wohlforth wrote:
>I would suggest that hardboiled shares with noir an
existential base.
> This is perhaps more true of Hammett than Chandler.
Why does Sam Spade
> do what he does in the Maltese Falcon?
Because he thinks it's the right thing to do.
> To save the world?
Because he think it's the right thing to do.
> To do what is "right" or "moral"?
In a word, yes.
> Simply put he does what he does because he is
what
> he is.
Yes. And what he is, is moral. One is either moral or amoral,
there is no grey area. Someone who is selectively moral is
moral, as opposed to someone who is not moral, and likely a
sociopath. Moral conventions are fluid. No one is in tune
with "public morals" on every question. The fact that Spade
observes the conventions in this case and ignores them in so
many others, makes him "moral" on this question and "immoral"
on others. It does not make him "amoral."
> Someone kills your partner and you are supposed to
do something
> about it. Why? Because of the way he is, his
existential nature defined
> by his own actions, not for any external
goals.
Otherwise known as "personal morality." Spade has his own
code (as did Hammett, who went to jail rather than talk about
American Communists to Tailgunner Joe McCarthy), but it was a
"moral code."
Hammett develops the
> same view in a lengthy rant on why he is about to
shoot a beautiful
> woman in The Gutting of Couffignal.
Don't forget that he did the same thing in "The Girl With The
Silver Eyes," a sort of sequel to "The House on Turk Street."
When Chandler is faced with a similar dilemma in "The Little
Sister," he has Marlowe punt.
> And, in The Maltese Falcon, there
> is that pure existential story within a story about
the beam that almost
> hits a very ordinary man causing him to chose an
indeterminant life and
> run away from his family.
The Flitcraft story, yes. And Spade recounts it to Brigid
while he's trying to convince her that he can be had, that he
can be turned, just like Thursby and all the others before
him could.
Spade nailed the woman who killed his partner because it was
the right thing to do.
Brian Thornton
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