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.The novelopens with Samuel Spade being hired by the seductive Brigid O Shaughnessy toshadow a man who she says has abducted her sister.Although Spade and his part-ner, Miles Archer, are suspicious of her story it turns out that O Shaughnessyhas lied about her name and her intent Archer volunteers to follow the man andis murdered that night.Spade is then visited by Joel Cairo, an effeminate Greekwho hires him to find a black falcon statuette, and it becomes clear to Spadethat Brigid is trying to use him in her own quest for the falcon.Finally, Spadecomes in contact with Caspar Gutman, the man who knows the true story of thefalcon and who has at various times enlisted O Shaughnessy and Cairo to helphim secure it.Gutman thinks O Shaughnessy has stolen the falcon and enlistedSpade to protect her until she can capitalize on her coup.In the climactic scenethe falcon O Shaughnessy has stolen is shown to be a fake.Spade identifies heras the murderer of his partner and turns her over to the police, despite her pleasthat she loves him.The Maltese Falcon transcends genre fiction in its treatment of serious themes,including one s responsibility to his job and the society in which he lives, the defi-nition of moral behavior, the ambiguity of deception, and greed.TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH1.What did Hammett mean by writing to Blanche Knopf that he wanted tomake literature of a detective novel? How does literature differ from what-ever one might call Hammett s first two novels, for example, or from otherdetective writing of the time? For evidence of Hammett s ideas about litera-ture, read his book reviews published in the Saturday Review of Literature.Aselection is provided in Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade.2.The story of The Maltese Falcon is told in third-person limited narration, aform that has a long history but that was notably refined by Henry James,whose work Hammett had studied carefully.In this narrative form, the nar-rator reports only the perceptions of a single character, and thus the reader isprivy to precisely the same information available to that character.Studentsmight consider why Hammett chose this particular narrative form and whatadvantages it offers the author over first-person narration, which Hammetthad relied on almost exclusively before.Students interested in this line ofinquiry might begin by reading James s easily available essay  The Art ofFiction. Peter J.Rabinowitz s essay   How Did You Know He Licked HisLips? : Second Person Knowledge and First Person Power in The MalteseFalcon discusses narrative strategy at length.Dashiell Hammett 1553.In chapter VII of the novel, just after he has learned that Brigid O Shaughnessyhas lied about the other two names she gave him, Sam Spade tells her theseemingly enigmatic story about being hired to find a missing husband.Theman, named Flitcraft, had left his wife and two children in Tacoma withoutwarning one day when, walking down the street, he was nearly killed by afalling beam.He determined that he was  out of step with life and decidedthe only solution was random behavior.After a couple of unpredictable yearshe settled in Seattle into a life much like the one he had left in Tacoma andtook the name Charles Peirce.These facts are useful in interpreting the story:actuarial tables used by life-insurance salesmen to determine life expectancyof customers were published by a company called Flitcraft.More important,Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 1914) was known as the founder of the Ameri-can philosophy called Pragmatism, and Peirce had a particular interest in thenature of random occurrence.He famously determined that all of the laws ofscience and nature are derived from the observation of habit.Write an inter-pretation of the Flitcraft parable.How does it relate to the novel? Why doesSpade tell Brigid about Flitcraft? What significance does the anecdote have forSpade? Useful starting points for consideration of these questions is Robert I.Edenbaum s  The Poetics of the Private Eye: The Novels of Dashiell Hammett and John T.Irwin s   Unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them : Hammett sThe Maltese Falcon. Read Peirce if you wish to form an independent opinion;be forewarned that Peirce is difficult reading but essential to the interpreta-tion of Flitcraft.Charles S.Peirce: The Essential Writings, edited by Edward C.Moore (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1998) is the recommended text.Begin with chapter VI,  Pragmatism and Pragmaticism, pp.260-299.4.Hammett ends the novel with a one-page coda set in his office on Mondaymorning, the day after he has turned Brigid over to the police.Explain whyEffie reacts as she does, telling Spade not to touch her.Has Effie developed asa character during the course of the novel? That scene ends with Spade goinginto his inner office where Iva Archer is waiting for him.Why end there? Howdo you explain Spade s relationship with Iva, whose risky behavior has put himin awkward positions throughout the novel.Why doesn t he rid himself of her?What does this last scene mean?5.Critics have argued for some forty years over the question of Sam Spade smorality.Is he a hero or a villain? Why is he described as looking like a blondsatan in the first paragraph of the novel? The answer to this question is com-plicated.It begins with a determination of the values in the novel.What doesmorality mean to Spade? Is his definition defensible? Do you as a reader shareit? George Thompson addresses the question of Spade s values in Hammett sMoral Vision.That is a place to start your inquiry.See also Sinda Gregory, Pri-vate Investigations: The Novels of Dashiell Hammett.Keep in mind Hammett sinterest in philosophy, particularly Immanuel Kant, the American Pragmatists,and the so-called pre-existentialist philosophers.6.For as long as they have argued over Spade s morality, critics have guessedabout when he first knew Brigid was guilty of Archer s murder.Edenbaumclaims Spade knew as soon as he saw Archer s body.Others have argued that156 American Modernism, 1914 1945Spade had doubts about Brigid s guilt until the end of the novel.What doyou think and why? Remember that behavioral clues are central to Hammett smethod.A related question is whether Spade loved or might have lovedBrigid.Make a case.7.Novelist Joe Gores, who wrote the fictional biography Hammett (New York:Putnam, 1975) and Spade and Archer (New York: Knopf, 2009), a prequel toThe Maltese Falcon, says that The Maltese Falcon is really about who killedMiles Archer.Discuss Gores s statement.What is he suggesting about Spade sprofessionalism?8.When Hammett submitted his novel to Knopf, he suggested that Mrs.Knopfexplore adapting the novel for the stage.What does this suggestion imply aboutthe structure of the novel? Various studies of the transformation of the novel intothe 1941 movie version might be useful in answering this question.Useful essaysrelated to this topic are included in The Maltese Falcon: John Huston, Director.RESOURCESBiographyDiane Johnson, Dashiell Hammett: A Life (New York: Random House, 1983) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]