WORLD LITERATURE ( THE MONSTER AND THE DETECTIVE )

THE MONSTER AND THE DETECTIVE
SECOND PAPER GUIDELINES

At the end of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade says to Brigid:
“You’ll never understand me, but I’ll try once more and then we’ll give it up. Listen. When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner, and you’re supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we’re in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. It’s bad all around–bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I’m a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, sometimes it’s done, but it’s not the natural thing.”

Sam Spade has a particular idea here about what constitutes “the detective business.” But other detectives have very different ideas.

What does a detective do? What does it mean to be a detective? What is the detective’s code of conduct? What dilemmas might the detective face in adhering to the code? What is the relationship of his “business” to the detective’s friends? lovers? broader social context? ethical and moral behavior in other areas of life? truth in general? the world in which the detective works?

You need not (and should not) try to address all these questions. They are merely a guide to help you think about the paper and what you decide to write about.

In a carefully written 5-7 page paper, develop a thesis-driven argument in which you analyze “the detective business” in one or more of the detective texts we’ve read or seen this semester.

As your primary focus, you may choose from either the film or novel version of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, the films Kiss Me Deadly, Murder, My Sweet, The Big Heat, and Chinatown, or the novels I, the Jury, The Chill, and Blood Shot.

**REMEMBER: If you wrote about a film in your first paper, you must write about a novel this time, and vice versa. Check with your section leader if you’re unsure.

Keep in mind that some of these texts will not be discussed in class until very shortly before your papers are due.

In your paper, you may refer to other texts, if including some reference to them is necessary to your argument. Just be sure that most of your analysis and interpretation is devoted to one text in the above list, and that you use details and examples from it to support your argument.