There is a great number of hard-boiled detective fiction exists in American literature, but there is a novel that is being beyond that of many others. It is Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, whose outstanding style of writing was described as “the simple art of murder” in Raymond Chandler’s critique essay. It is really considered now as one of the masterpieces of crime fiction literature (Wagner, 3).
Red Harvest was the first detective story written by Hammett and the first crime fiction that created a new sub-genre in a crime fiction literature. Now many critics call it a literary landmark. The way Dashiell wrote his crime novel was absolutely different from the way other writers did:
Hammet was one of the most influential writers of hard-boiled crime fiction. This particular sub-genre is seen as an American counterpart of the British crime fiction that rather concerned itself with upper-class murders in a somehow artificial world. Here we have descriptions of a rough American urban setting, with characters talking like they would talk in reality (Wagner, 4).
Hammett’s contribution to the formation of crime fiction is invaluable. He was the creator of his own hard-boiled style in the world of detective stories. There are many reasons why his style appeared; social and historical issues are some of them.
First of all, there were many social problems in the USA when Hammett wrote his Red Harvest. Many other writers also tried to reflect those social problems in their novels. However, Hammett’s style appeared to be different from others: “it has been noticed by critics that crime fiction can be used not only to depict social circumstances but also to criticize them” (Wagner, 4). The main difference in Dashiell’s style was that he did not only describe different events, but also evaluated them and was not afraid to express his point of view. He used sharp words and real slang, making his stories understandable and unique for reader.
Another bright difference that brought Red Harvest to a classical crime fiction is the way Hammett described events in the world of main heroes. Everything in his story was in disorder, there were no coincidences, and even when a case was cleared and the murderer was found, there always was another surprise for reader, it was never clear whether the ending is good or not. By bringing this kind of story narration, Hammett separated English and American hard-boiled fictions, which were considered as one whole before.
The way Dashiell plays with some keywords in his detective has a very important meaning too. He reflects some political issues by different literary methods:
The transformation of “Personville” into “Poisonville” in the opening paragraph of the novel establishes the devolutionary movement of the national allegory and foreshadows the poisoning of democratic ideals by corporate and criminal interests that the Op will find in Personville. Significantly, this passage locates the sign for this transformation in the popular speech and slang that constitute a defining feature of hard-boiled prose (Breu, 63).
Not only a social criticism but also corruption appeared to be one of the main points in Hammett’s detective story. By showing how government can cooperate with police, private sector can influence the public sector and vice versa, Dashiell persuades the reader that corruption is destructive for any economic system. “The novel collapses distinctions between legal and illegal, wealthy and criminal, suggesting that such distinctions are meaningless in an environment ruled by force and economic exploitation” (Breu, 62). Almost everyone in his story is dishonest and corrupted: there are gangster bands that control the city, political conspiracy in every sphere of a social life, liars and killers who need to be punished.
Hammett concentrates his attention on the main hero, nameless detective “Continental Op” and his actions, and compares those actions with capitalism exploitation. As Red Harvest was built from different parts written by the author earlier, and there were several detached stories before Hammett gathered them together in one detective fiction, the main character Op transformed and changed a lot since the first episode. If in Black Mask, which became the first part of the Red Harvest, Op just successfully arrested Albury and there were no murders and blood, in the rest of the detective story he appears as a violent and severe person, who can easily kill anyone if there is a necessity. Consequently, by the end of the whole story, he killed nineteen people and the author makes stresses Op’s wrong behavior, emphasizes his overreactions and cruel actions.
In my opinion, the fact that detective kills so many people also makes Hammett’s story different from others: if in majority of crime fiction detective appears as a fair, reasonable, and clever character, Hammett does not show Op as a perfect person. He describes his own main character as a person who is infected and poisoned with violence (Pepper, 13). Moreover, he demonstrates that his main character can make mistakes, be violent and unfair in his cruel actions:
The most dramatic representation of the amoral instrumentality of the Op’s tactics is the “peace conference” he calls between the various warring factions in Personville. After the violence has escalated to the point that even hardened veterans of Personville, such as the police chief Noonan, declare that they are “sick of this butchering,” the Op calls a meeting of the various warring factions with the stated goal of returning things to business as usual, with a casual violence that this state on affairs implies (Breu, 65).
It is obvious that Hammett puts the problem of morality in the first place and the problem of Donald Wilson’s death becomes secondary here. Differently from classic detective stories, where authors portrait their societies as healthy and proper, where people have moral values and follow them, in Hammett’s story everything is far from ideal world: “it is a type of detective fiction that contrasts sharply with the classic deductive tradition most centrally identified with Sherlock Holmes” (Howard, 127).
The way he describes situations and people’s actions are realistic and full of not pleasant, sometimes even disgusting truths.
This manner of information delivery and techniques, used by Dashiell, makes this novel more than just hard-boiled. He shows that even in a modern world people are ready to kill their close relatives just to get money and power. It happened to Donald Wilson, who was killed by his father. Although this fact contradicts any logical conclusions and moral values, Hammett surprises readers and shows that everything is possible in our cruel world.
Many critics analyzed Red Harvest and its innovations and differences from other detective stories. Howard’s point of view about Hammett’s unique writing style was not an exception:
Perhaps its most obvious innovation was the abandonment of the intellectual – puzzle formula as the basis of narrative construction. Although Red Harvest is not without puzzles, its main interest lies elsewhere, and one can adequately summarize the text without even mentioning a “problem” of Sherlockian type (127).
According to Howard’s point of view, Red Harvest is absolutely a new type of fiction. On the one hand it is still crime fiction with all detective characteristics, but it is not a detective story with a habitual deductive method and predictable solutions. There are absolutely new problems that occur in this kind of literature genre: problems of morality, honesty and social criticism in general.
Red Harvest raises problems that are urgent nowadays as well. These are problems with corruption and gangsters, constant deception and cheating. Hammett developed very complicated irony in his work that distinguishes it from other detective stories written at that time. All his characters are weak and dishonest; they hesitate all the time and never can make a right decision. That is the reason why everything described by Hammett is in constant disorder. He never tells the reader only a good side of his characters, but finds some weaknesses in their actions. This honesty with reader makes his Red Harvest attractive and interesting to follow. This is a rare Hammett’s characteristic of, because there are not many authors who have this ability to tell the “ugly truth” to readers (Nyman, 12).
In my opinion, Red Harvest revolutionized the world of fiction and brought absolutely new and different kinds of literary genres on the reader’s bookshelves all over the world. The way Hammett brings social, historical and personal problems differs from even similar hard-boiled fictions. His detective story became one that is really beyond that of regular crime fiction novels. There are obvious reasons for this: usage of sharp words and real slang that is being used by people makes reading exciting. All heroes seem real to the reader because their weaknesses are presented. And, of course, there is not only a puzzle type of problems that appear as it was in Sherlockian fiction type but some real-life problems with unpredictable solutions.
Works Cited
Breu, Christopher. Hard- boiled masculinities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Print.
Howard, Carl Freedman. The incomplete projects: Marxism, modernity, and the politics of culture. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Print.
Malmgren, Carl Darryl. Anatomy of murder: mystery, detective, and crime fiction. Wisconsin: Popular Press, 2001. Print.
Nyman, Jopy. Hard-boiled fiction and dark romanticism. Michigan: Peter Lang, 1998. Print.
Pepper, Andrew. The contemporary American crime novel: race, ethnicity, gender, class. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. Print.
Wagner, Ole. Social Criticism in Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest” and “The Maltese Falcon”. München: GRIN Verlag, 2008. Print.