The Girl with The Silver Eyes Essay -- Literary Analysis, Dashiell Ham

Hard-boiled scout fiction sets the scene for a frozen and harsh reality. Dashiell Hammetts, The Girl with The Silver Eyes is no exception to this rule. In this short story Hammett paints a picture of a brutally pragmatic urban center filled with characters that not many mountain would compliments to call friends. The realistic qualities of Hammetts story are drawn from his knowledge lifes experience working as a Pinkerton detective. The detective in The Girl With The Silver Eyes works for the Continental researcher Agency and is, therefore, known simply as the Continental Op. In the graduation exercise of the story the Op professes, a detective, if he is wise, takes pains to pull back and keep as many friends as possible among transfer company, express company and force employees (27). This paper will examine this philosophy of the Continental Op, how he employs this come up to detective work and uncover if this approach is beneficial or disadvantageous. The Continental Op is an unsympathetic character with a stickler attitude to his work. The Op believes that the slip-up he is well-nigh to take is legitimate but states that, I am only a hired man and form to go by the rules (23). At the heart and soul of this statement is a man that is unwilling to bend the rules outlined by his company. People who always follow the rules are often seen as imprecate worthy and at the same time difficult to get on with. When you know a person is always going to go by the book, like the Op, it makes their actions predictably frustrating. Things could go a lot faster if a person were to cut a corner or two and suspensor out. By doing this the detective might have made himself more likeable to his new client. The Op shows no desire to perform this way to have friends on his side. T... ... even if this means that he has to pay a few quite a little to be his friends. Without the help of the girl at the Marquis Hotel the Op would not have been given that lead. If it were not for the help of Porky Grout over the past tercet years that the detective had employed him, who knows how many cases would have gone unsolved. horizontal though in the end things do not workout mingled with Porky and the Continental Op and Porky meets his fate. It is clear that the Ops philosophy about what it means to make and keep friends is different then what other people would describe. It is the strong moralistic code that the P.I. is constantly reinforcing that allows the case to come to a resolution. People whitethorn not like the Op and fortunately for the general public most people to not have the personality of the Continental Op. Fact is the detective solves the case and gets his women in the end.