Week 12 Analysis: The Maltese Falcon, Part 1of4

For this week’s analysis I will be focusing on the first part of my reading book, “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett. This week’s focus is literary devices, in which I will focus on the third person narration as well as how it connects to the detective novel genre of reading.

While the first chapter was initially just background information, in the following chapters we begin to get a feel for how this novel grabs its readers. We soon enough learn that the strict third person point of view becomes very unreliable. This is both confusing to the reader, but also enticing, since we too want to solve these detective mysteries. In the first chapter, we are introduced to Sam Spade (our main character), Miles Archer (his partner), Effie Perine (his assistant secretary, and Ms. Wonderly (his newest client), whom of which he sends Archer to help.

We later find, in the next chapter, that Archer was killed. From this we see the true third person narration. We don’t hear the thoughts of any of the characters, and only hear one side of the conversations of phone calls. While this doesn’t seem like a problem initially, after Spade returns home, two other officials come to his home and start investigating him for the murder of Floyd Thursby (the man Archer was investigating before his death). This comes as a shock to the reader as it felt as though e have been only focusing on Sam’s actions, yet the narrator time-jumps, so we miss a lot of details. While Sam claims to have been walking around town during the questioning, we as readers, don’t even know that much. We just know he went home. This makes both the narrator AND Sam Spade seemingly in-trustable but also grasps the attention of the readers.

In the second chapter, the next day, Sam returns to his office. We are then introduced to Archer’s wife, whom Sam calls precious. From their conversation as well as Effie’s remarks, we are left to assume a secret affair between the two. Also, Effie thinks that perhaps she had killed her own husband to get closer to Sam and eventually become official with him. Again, this shows that perhaps if the narrator filled us in on these details, we wouldn’t look so negatively and be judging the main character.

In chapter four, one of the biggest secrets is revealed. The client Ms. Wonderly meets with Sam and admits she isn’t who she said she is and reveals herself as Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Sam says that he already could tell that she was lying but that she had a lot of money, so he went along with it. We as readers didn’t know that Sam was steps ahead of us, but at the same time, the novel wouldn’t be as intriguing without all the shocks.