Second Big SleepPost

It is strange to me that Chandler is so preoccupied with “realistic” detective novels. The Big Sleep doesn’t seem overly realistic to me. It certainty has a grittiness to it that might be perceived as realistic, but how many people, even private detectives, see three dead bodies in less than five days? The Big Sleep seems to me to have a kind of superficial reality to it. It is gritty and “hardboiled” and the characters are earthy and dangerous. However, the characters lack a certain amount of depth and are very shallow. Perhaps Chandler has created his own version of reality. It seems like he wishes that real life was as exciting as Marlowe’s day-to-day existence.

On a completely different topic, I found one scene of our second reading particularly interesting; the scene where Marlowe returns to his apartment and finds a naked Carmen Sternwood in his bed. In this scene we see a little deeper into Marlowe’s private life. He is vastly upset that Carmen is in his apartment. He feels that it is very invasive for her to be there. He reveals to the reader that he has few possessions and none of any real value. However, he views his apartment and the items within it as the only thing he has to himself. He even goes so far to say that his room and possessions are all that he has for a family. He also mentions some of the items holding memories for him. So we discover that Marlowe does in fact have a past, one he wants to keep memories from. So far that is the only scene in the book that points to Marlowe being more than just a private detective all the time.

-Samantha Pepper