48 pages • 1 hour read
Red Harvest
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Symbols & Motifs
Poisonville
With his opening words, the Op tells the audience that the true name for Personville is “Poisonville.” At first, he believed the name to be an absurd overstatement of local corruption. However, after spending time in the city, he realizes that the nickname is very appropriate. Poisonville as a name symbolizes The Poisonous Nature of Corruption, while the widespread use of the name and the failure to correct anyone who uses it demonstrates the apathy that affects the town. The city of Poisonville embodies the nature of human corruption, allowing every institution to be corrupted by immoral desires. The moniker removes the human “person” and replaces it with “poison,” a symbolic indication of how the town poisons everyone who visits. The Op recognizes this corrupting ambiance in the city and expands upon the metaphor, fearing that he is being poisoned by the city itself.
After Elihu hires him, the Op succeeds in eliminating many of the most poisonous and corrupt figures in the city. Whisper, Reno, Pete the Finn, and Noonan are among the many who end up killed. The symbolic irony of the Op’s work is that the antidote looks a lot like the poison itself: These men may be criminals, but the war that has brought temporary peace to the city has also caused a great deal of pain and suffering. The cure resembles the sickness, prompting the Op to wonder whether he has truly cleansed Personville of the poison or whether he has weakened the society enough that it will soon fall victim to another gang of criminals.
Guns and Bullets
The Op has barely spent a day in Personville before his client is shot and killed. Donald Willsson is gunned down on the street, yet few people are shocked. Guns and bullets are everywhere in Personville, becoming a central motif of The Impacts of Male Violence.
Almost everyone that the Op meets is armed, while he is always armed himself. This is a dangerous world and people seek to protect themselves, only to escalate the violence in the city by ensuring that everyone has easy access to a weapon at any given moment. The characters are not just armed with guns; they are armed with knowledge about guns. When the Op is investigating Donald’s murder, Dinah urges him to think about the caliber of the weapon involved. A .32 caliber pistol points more to a security guard than a professional assassin, she suggests, which indicates that she has a detailed understanding of how guns proliferate in society.
Gunfights and shootouts are a regular occurrence in a city in which the police force is a criminal gang in their own right. The Op himself is deliberately placed in danger by the chief of police, who tells him to go inside a building which is shot to pieces just a few minutes later. The residents never remark on the commonality of these gun battles. To them, gun violence is just part of life in Personville, which reflects how normalized it has become.
The result of so many gun battles is that bullet holes pockmark nearly every surface. Wherever there is a shootout, the Op can read the bullet holes in the wall like a record of recent activity. The bullet holes are symbols of the violence in the city. In effect, the city has physical scars that point to the trauma that is yet to heal.
Hotels
When the Op comes to Personville, he takes a room in a hotel. This is the first of many hotels and motels that he visits, with these temporary residences becoming a symbol of his impermanent relationship with the city.
The Op is an outsider; he is unfamiliar with his environment. This puts him at a natural disadvantage to people like Elihu or Whisper, who are permanent fixtures in the local community. Even Dinah has a fixed address, a place that she owns and controls. The Op, by contrast, is forced to inhabit temporary spaces. He does not expect privacy and, as a result, lacks the protection that comes from having his own place. Instead, the temporariness of the hotels symbolizes the disadvantage at which the Op finds himself and the obstacles that he must overcome.
At the same time, the numerous hotels do offer the anonymous detective a slight advantage. Since every hotel is home to impermanent fixtures of the local community, the Op can lean into the anonymity offered by the hotel to keep his identity a secret. He checks into several hotels and, when he wants to hide from people who might want to hurt him, he checks in under a different name. Only his trusted colleagues are given the false name he uses to check in. In this way, the Op turns the impermanence of the hotels into an advantage. The weaponized anonymity of the hotels represents the battle-hardened intelligence of the Op.
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By Dashiell Hammett
