Hammett loved these kinds of asides. Remember the story of
the Donner Party and Alfred Packard Nick Charles tells the
Wynant boy in THE THIN MAN? That's the first time I ever
heard of the Donner Party and I found that creepily
fascinating.
The Flintcraft Parable also works as a major hint to the
reader that Brigid is the perpetrator in this story. What
Spade is suggesting to her is that a person comes to certain
crossroads and decides which way to turn. Even at that point
in the story, he's telling her, it's not too late to be
straight with him. Of course she isn't and that leads to the
fabulous ending. By the end of the book, it is much too late
for Brigid to process the Flintcraft Parable and change the
way her life will proceed.
Patrick King
--- Dick Lochte <
dlochte@gmail.com> wrote:
> I go along with the general theory that the
parable
> is Hammett's way of
> letting readers see a little into Spade's
psyche.
> But I've always thought it
> also was another example of a writer putting
himself
> into his creation.
> Hammett was a guy who, assuming his biographers
are
> accurate, was a working
> detective who adjusted to not being a detective,
who
> married a lovely nurse
> because, well, he was in this hospital,
then
> adjusted to a life of not being
> in a hospital. And to carry it past the time when
he
> wrote The Maltese
> Falcon, he was a writer who adjusted to not being
a
> writer. A little
> simplistic, but what the hell ...
>
>
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