My critical analysis on The Maltese Falcon

For my choice novel I chose The Maltese Falcon, it was recommended to me by numerous people who said it was a fantastic book, to my surprise they were right. In this book you follow Sam Spade, a detective who recently has been given a case that ends up being much more complicated than he ever could imagine. The author, Dashiell Hammett, creates such a vivid scene of what is happening throughout this book that I could really visualize what was happening. What I wanted to focus my critical analysis on was Hammett’s way of expressing his main women characters through writing. In The Maltese Falcon there are only three women characters who all have very different personalities, all of which are very stereotypical of how men see certain women.
The three characters are Effie Pernie, Spades assistant. Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the very sexual client and possible suspect, and Iva Archer, Spades partner’s wife and also his lover. Each woman has a very different personality than the other and as I was reading I realized that each personality is it’s on stereotype. Effie is referred to by Sam as “boyish” and is often described as having a male voice and besides being referred to as a she once every few sentences it’s very hard to remember she actual is a women. Brigid is the object of Spade’s attention in the entire book, and although he knows that she is a possible suspect Brigid continues to get Sam’s help because of her sexuality. Iva is mentioned very few times however she is the “all accepting” woman who believes every word Sam says.
I connected this to Toni Morrison in not of how she talks about race but how race can be related to sexuality and sexisms in great American Literature. Morrison says, “American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views , genius , and power are without relationship to and removed from overwhelming presence of black people in the United States.” With each of these characters Sam has power over all of these women, it’s subtle for some but it does exists in The Maltese Falcon. In the end of the book (sorry to ruin it) Spade ends up sending Brigid to jail because of her involvement in the crime. So even though he’s in love with her he says “I hope to Christ they don’t hang you, precious by that sweet neck” Even just how Sam talks to Brigid you can tell he’s talking down to her, as if she weren’t to the level as he were. One of Morrison’s last thoughts of Romancing the Shadow is “Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable, pointless, frozen, veile, curtained, dreaded, senseless, implacable. Or so our writers seem to say.” In the end, without any of his women, Sam is left alone as a white man. A white man who is supposed to be all powerful, but in reality he has nothing without his other characters, as Toni Morrison says.

Metanarratives

I think one of the biggest ideas that could cover every aspect of America would be the idea of a dream. Everyone has heard of America as having the American Dream. When that phrase was fist coined it meant leaving your home country and coming to America to get a job, start a family, and have enough money from that job to support your family. The American dream is what made people want to travel to America in the first place. However over the years that idea about an American dream has changed significantly. Now it no longer means having enough money to support anyone, it means never stop getting money. Even people who are American citizens now dream about having more and more money flow into their bank account.

The economy now has dramatically changed how people across the world see the American dream. They see people like Mark Zuckerburg who have a tremendous amount of wealth but agree to give a good portion of it to other people. They see people like the man with the “golden Voice” who is on the streets with next to nothing, and they see people like Justin Beiber who became famous off a voice. Even though the American dream is very loosely define in the present, I think that the idea of even having a dream is what makes America America.

Criticism by Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra starts off his article saying he doesn’t believe he is a critic but instead says he understands the world on a larger level. Overall in his take on criticism, Mishra stresses the points that literature was and is being taken for granted. What he was saying, to my best understanding, is that many people like the politicians and the wealthy just expect good literature to be there for them, however that’s not always the case. Mishra quotes Kazin many times and backs up similar beliefs in today’s criticism,

What Mishra focuses on for the majority of his article is literature from around the world and not just from America and Europe, he says, “There is no reason to assume that writing from Europe and America is all the matters or should matter to a critic today.” I completely agree with what he is saying here. Mishra gives the example of a well known Chinese critic named Lu Xunn, and I had absolutely no idea who this was. I think that many people in the world, myself included, get too caught up in America and Europe literature because they see that as the most important.

I agree with almost everything Mishra says about literature today, it’s becoming less and less recognized as something the world needs. Mishra says there is “little point in blaming New Criticism” and goes on with it’s not all their fault that that’s what most people are used to reading now. It’s hard to make a change back to what we used to consider good literature. What Mishra is really trying to get out there is that we need to start looking in other places for literature; places around the world have more than we would expect.

The Great Gatsby

So far in The Great Gatsby I’ve grown attached to Daisy. She is probably one of my favorite characters, I loved her in the begging because her dialog was always the best and Fitzgerald didn’t write about her a lot so it was always kind of a surprise to hear that her character was in the scene. In the first part of the book she is a very strong character and strong minded and that’s what I liked about her. At one part in the book (page 17) she is talking to Nick and she says “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” The day we picked out quotes that stood out to us this was mine, I picked it because I love the way she states and recognizes it, but at the same time wants to change it.
In this recent reading, I became less of a Daisy fan, and I think it was because of Gatsby. In chapter 7 when Gatsby first starts to take control of the situation with him and Daisy he comes on really strong, which is ok in the begging but I think his attitude starts to change Daisy’s character. On page 130 Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby are arguing about the love triangle that’s happening, Gatsby is about to say something and Daisy comes in with “Please don’t!...please lets all go home. Why don’t we all go home?” Though these later chapters it seems to me that Daisy is becoming less of the sarcastic, attitude character she was in the begging to more of a scared, timid character who won’t say her thoughts anymore.