I'm having trouble thinking of a noir protagonist who is
doomed by a good deed. Heart of Darkness starts that way;
Kurtz goes up the river to do good, but that brought out his
tragic flaw and he ceased being a do-gooder. And isn't the
New Testament the story of a man who was cucified for his
selfless acts. It's certainly noir if you leave it where Mel
Gibson did, but three days later the noirness of the story
changes quite a bit, at least by Kerry's transcendant
test.
I like the idea of a person's reaching out to help the wrong
person getting the do-gooder pulled in after the one needing
help; while one person is pulling up, the other is pulling
down -- who is stronger? Yet he closest I can think of is the
"wrong man" story. For instance, in Caught Stealing, Hank
Thompson's life veers deeply into noir due to the
happenstance of who lived next door. However, how he adapted
to noir told a lot about who he was and revealed aspects of
him about which no one, including himself, had been aware,
far from all of them good. So while he didn't seek out the
noir world, his inner noirness came out once he was dropped
into it.
Mark
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