Symbolism And Imagery In Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep

Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the topic of white America often throughout his book, Between the World and Me, as well as the struggles he has as a black American. The dream he portrays in his book consists of maintaining a well-paying job and eventually striving to become a wealthy, upper class citizen. Little do people know that the dream is not obtainable by everyone, Coates asserts that the American dream revolves around being white. Often times, blacks will begin to “act white” in order to achieve this American dream or achieve happiness in White America. Black people leave their natural physical appearance and language form in order to achieve this idea of “being white”. Personally, I find this to be bothersome. Still to this day we are

The death march described in Chapter six in Night by Elie Wiesel is a striking and memorable moment. Throughout the march, the people are pushed to their limits and many do not make it. In order to create such a memorable scene, Elie Wiesel uses imagery to construct often inhuman descriptions of the people’s bodies and the surrounding events to create an intense and striking scene.

In the books The Big Sleep and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, both authors, Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) and Simon Armitage (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), create the protagonist of each story into archetypal knights. The protagonist of The Big Sleep is named Phillip Marlowe and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the protagonist is named Sir Gawain. The 3 knightly qualities that we will be focusing on in this essay are self-sacrifice, loyalty and courage. These qualities are displayed throughout each story in different and similar ways throughout each book.

One night, as the narrator is lying in his room, he finds himself incapable of falling asleep. Edgar Allan Poe writes, pertaining to the narrator, “I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me.” As the narrator lay there, he found that he felt he should try to sleep no more. A moment later Roderick Usher

The detective genre is recognizable by the mystery that it represents or establishes. Every word of a fiction novel is chosen with a purpose, and that purpose on a detective novel is to create suspense. The excerpts from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, Murder Is My Business by Lynette Prucha, and Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley, create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery. Even though they all fit into this category, there are some differences that make each novel unique. The imagery that the authors offer in the excerpts helps the reader to distinguish the similarities and the differences.

Imagery is a portrait that is painted in your mind, a portrait that makes you feel you are there. The Holocaust is full of disturbing and horrible images of death. Pictures of inhumanity that just make you sick looking at them. In many images you see the pale, unemotional faces whose lives were changed for eternity, and yet with these images some believe that the Holocaust did not happen. In the Holocaust there was mass genocide of over six million Jews. Also many ethnic Poles, gypsies, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, disabled people, homosexual men, and political and religious opponents were targeted by the Nazis to be exterminated. Hitler’s ultimate goal during the Holocaust was to

Sleep—it's what divides the day and the night; the conscious and the subconscious; the aware and the unaware. It's image, then, is a powerful tool for polarizing such extremes. In his trilogy, The Oresteia, Aeschylus utilizes sleep imagery to divide between those who are aware and those who aren't. Though sleep's meaning changes throughout the plays, Clytaemestra is always able to use it to her aid. Her story accompanies a shift in a justice system that defines right and wrong. Throughout the trilogy, the meaning of sleep evolves from a clear division into a more indefinite one as the definition of right and wrong becomes increasingly ambiguous.

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most celebrated literary authors of all time, known for writing very suspenseful, dramatic short stories and a poet; is considered as being a part of the American Romantic Movement, and a lesser known opinion is he is regarded as the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. Most recognized for his mystery and macabre, a journey into the dark, ghastly stories of death, deception and revenge is what makes up his reputation. The short story under analysis is a part of his latter works; “The Cask of Amontillado”, a story of revenge takes readers into the mind of the murderer.

No other film was as controlled in its production as The Big Sleep. Every aspect of the film is so precise, that the filmmakers left nothing to chance. Every set was built inside, with the exception of a few exterior shots. The Big Sleep is a very visually interesting film that uses quick and precise cutting, harsh lighting, and wonderfully framed shots.

    Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.

Edgar Allan Poe practices literature within use of the intrinsic qualities that possess the many definitions assigned to the word ‘literature’. Poe is an artist of words. He uses aesthetic, creative works of fiction to tell stories of drama and often horror. Poe’s’ literary genius is translated most commonly through his ingenious poetry and short stories. Consequently, it is his tendency to lace parts of his own personal life and views into his story-telling that causes critics to downplay the true art of the work by Poe. In this essay, the short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” will be analysed to make the argument that Poe is a serious writer through his use of proper literary aspects.

In Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep, a private detective is trying to unravel a blackmailing case for a dying millionaire, General Sternwood. Philip Marlowe, the detective, finds that the case not only involves blackmail, but also homicide. Set and written in 1930’s America, the economic devastation of the Great Depression has a significant influence on the book’s plot, and showcases character’s struggle to retain honor and virtue in a world that revolves around profit-seeking delinquency and organized corruption. Marlowe’s work as a private detective brings him face to face with criminals of every variety, and each corresponds to a piece on the chessboard that appears repeatedly in the story. Marlowe’s symbolic identity is the well-intentioned knight, who represents the shred of chivalry that remains in a society of pawns and crooked kings, and the chess game is his combat against crime in a period of national despondency.

The novel “The Big Sleep” by Raymond Chandler was published in 1939 during the heart of the Great Depression. The novel is written in a very sinister, dark and kind of a gangster tone and carries much of the cynicism of 1930s America. The Big Sleep is a story of intrigue, corruption, delinquency and obliquity with a rather complex plot which can be very confusing. The main character in “the Big Sleep” is the private detective Philip Marlow who is very masculine man with values and a good moral. His strong moral is often evidenced throughout the novel. Marlowe is the only one in this complex world who cannot be corrupted because the other characters are all described as sleazy,

While American and British authors developed the two distinct schools of detective fiction, known as “hard-boiled and “golden age,” simultaneously, the British works served to continue traditions established by earlier authors while American works formed their own distinct identity. Though a niche category, detective works reflect the morality and culture of the societies their authors lived in. Written in the time period after World War I, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and “The Gutting of Couffignal”, and Raymond Chandler’s “Trouble Is My Business” adapt their detectives to a new harsh reality of urban life. In “hard-boiled” works, the detective is more realistic than the detective in “golden age” works according to the

It is mandatory to examine the hero and essence of masculinity, which is portrayed by Phillip Marlowe in both the novel and film versions of The Big Sleep in order to analyze changes in the perception of female femininity. Throughout Henry Hawk’s 1946 film version of The Big Sleep, Marlowe’s characterization as the hero of the film demonstrates standard masculine qualities of a man: