Week 7:

Writing Essays, Sleeping Big, and

Eyeing Blues
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Questions from lecture?

Passive Voice
Essay Writing Questions?
The Big Sleep Responses
The Bluest Eye

In critical readings of The Big Sleep, Phillip Marlowe can be seen as a

hardboiled figure, because of how he is disconnected from his very male
emotions , and is responding by hiding this emotions. He is distanced from the
emotional impact of the very shocking events that are occurring in the novel and is
displayed as having disproportionately unemotional reactions to the majorly
emotional events that occur in the novel. As Marlowe is operating as the
hardboiled masculine figure, then he is paired with Carmen, who is a typical female
character. While Marlowe is typically masculine, Carmine is depicted as typically
feminine. She is provided with an excess of emotions. Yet it is not that Carmen is a
hysteric while Marlowe is a figure for reason. Rather, it is that Marlowe is
projecting his emotions on to the landscape, onto the environment, onto the
atmosphere, and also on to other characters. In this way, Marlowe and Carmen
are compliments of one another. We are given the narrative through
Marlowes eyes, it is not that Carmen is less emotional than Marlowe but that she
is being depicted that way The novel shows that male emotions and thoughts are
externalized and that they are shifted onto the environment and objects, rather
than occuring within the interior of the selfbelonging to men, women are seen as
having irrational feelings and acting on them, and the novel condemns them for
that.. I am arguing that The Big Sleep is systematically categorizing
womens decisions as demonic because they are based on emotions and feelings,
while it is authorizing male decisions that are based on the same things. In this
way, a asymmetry between the condemnation of feelins is being set up, along the
lines of gender. Thus, women are systematically prohibited from being allowed to
author their actions based on a form of reason that men are praised for.

Close reading: Moving from

observation Interpretation Claim
But was it really like that? As painful as I remember? Only
mildly. Or rather, it was a productive and fructifying pain.
Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that
cracked window. I could smell ittaste itsweet, musty,
with an edge of wintergreen in its baseeverywhere in
that house. It stuck, along with my tongue, to the frosted
windowpanes. It coated by chest, along with the salve, and
when the flannel came undone in my sleep, the clear, sharp
curves of air outlined its presence on my throat. And in the
night, when my coughing was dry and tough, feet padded
into the room, hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the
quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead. So when I
think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does
not want me to die (12).

Responses:

Ellie: Sternwood sexuality

Sara L: Victorian hypocrisy
Maria: Biology as character
Francesca: Weather and Marlowes moods
Rachel: Ropes and damsels in distress
Ryan: Sternwood family bonding
Michael B: Marlowe, intelligence, alcohol and
prohibition
Daisy: Marlowes coolness as his affect
Jocelyn: *Sternwoods] thoughts were as grey as
ashes