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Ratiocination, Romanticism and Realism in the Detective Story: a Study of Poe, Doyle and Hammett

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Ratiocination, Romanticism and Realism in the Detective Story: a Study of Poe, Doyle and Hammett RATIOCINATION, ROMANTICISM AND REALISM IN THE DETECTIVE STORY: A STUDY OF POE, DOYLE AND HAMMETT A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the School of Humanities ·Morehead State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Timothy Jay Roberts December 3, 1984 Accepted by the faculty of the School of Humani ties , Morehead State University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree . l1as te r ' s Cammi t tee : Chairman RATIOCINATION , ROMANTICISM AND REALISM IN THE DETECTIVE STORY : A STUDY OF POE , DOYLE AND HAMMETT Timothy Jay "'Roberts . ,. M. A. Morehead Sta/pmversity, 19) Director of Thesis : /.~l/lt)\. ('- ~ '1~ This thesis is an influence study of three of the most prominent authors of the detective story : Ed gar Allan Poe , Sir Arthur Co nan Doyle and Samuel Dashiell Hamrrett . These authors best represent the three periods of development of the detective g~ nre because of their expansions and innovations of it; I have classified these periods as ratiocinaton, romanticism and realism. In this study, I show , through plot , characters, characters ' philosophies, and settings, how Poe ' s detective tales influenced Doyle ' s works and how they both indriectly influenced Hammett, and how each author brought the genre out of its status as sub- literature to make it an art form. In order to demonstrate these influences , I close ly studied short stories and novels by the three authors, paying particular att ention to similarities in the way the de tect :ives thought and in their philosophies and criticisms of certain institutions of society. I also wanted to find similar passages that would indetify iii the detecti ve as a hero , a man with a personal code of honor and commi t men t t o do what i s right for his cl ient and himsel f . From this study , I have discovered that while the three authors sued and modified the elements of good detective fiction , their only difference , asi de from a stylistic one , was the presen­ tation of who and what were good and evil. With Poe and Doyle, the reader knew who the villain was ; but with Hammett those boundaries between good and evil were lost . This study has been assisted by a few critical works from the scant field of detect ive story criticism. This study has not only enlightened my know l edge of the genre , but has revealed to me t he extent that popular literature has in the period in which it was written . Accepted by: INTRODUCTION: SOCIETY'S BLUNT INSTRUMENTS Crime has always been civilization's open wound; it burns and aches when irritated, and if it ever heals, the scar is deep, unerase- able. The basic reason for crime is that major human frailty, -....want. Marxists say, "if you eliminate want, you eliminate crime.'' But no matter how perfect a society is, that simple feeling of want is instilled. in human nature. To combat crime we have policemen and detectives who try tq enforce and uphold the law that protects human beings from those who want. The process of justice is slow; sometimes it can have the effect upon a criminal of a slap on the.hands. Because of justice's snail- ' pace, courts are bogged down with backlogs of cases, many of which : could have been tried quickly if, for one thing, evidence had.been obtained easily and quickly and if loopholes had been shut tightly., There is always one man or woman whose job it is to cut through the fog of paperwork, who does not like to see innocents abused by those who want. This person, referred to in this study as the detective, does not like to see laws bent by political manipulators, dope dealers, mobsters and. petty criminals. The d·etective i.n litei;ature can be an amateur sleuth. like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, a private investigator like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, a public servant like Inspector Maigret or Steve Carella of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct 2 novels. These people are society's blunt instruments. Robin Winks, in the introduction of Detective Fiction, believes the genre has become ••• a mirror to society. Through it we see society's fears become explicit; for some, those fears are exorcised by the fiction , ••There must be someone who is not bound by the entrammeling bureaucracy of a society too complex to do simple •• ,justice (7). The key element in detective fiction is a detective with a' mystery to solve; the detective is concerned with explaining what has happened, why, how, with what, by whom, and when. He does this by' reason, believed by Poe to be man's finest quality. In its official form--that is, with a detective and a case to solve--detective fiction began with Poe over one hundred and forty, ' ' years ago. It has been through radical changes, even being adapted to other genres such as science fiction (with novels like Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel, featuring detective Elijah Baley, and Randall Garrett's Lord. Darcy stories). This study centers on the three periods of the genre and. the author that represents that' period best. First, Poe, in his tales of ratiocination, gave the detective tale a definitive purpose as well as a firm, uniform structure, Next, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the romantic 3 superhero detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson in pieces that pitted rightous Victorian Law against scurvy evil. Finally, Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton agent, drew on his former profession to create realistic characters, situations and settings' while maintaining the basic story pattern set down by the other two authors. The major thrust of this study is to show the direct influence of Poe on Doyle and the indirect influence they both had on Hammet~, focusing on characters' philosophies, situations, displaying the modifications the author made on the genre. Furthermore, this study will portray the detective as a hero, a man with a code of honor, a man who ~nows what is right for him and his clients. He is a man faced with the problem of cutting through the muck that a criminal:has put in front of him. He is a man who thinks one step ahead of the other law-enforcers and who refuses to stop in the face of bureaucracy. He is a man who simply wants to help people and to do his job. Detective fiction has its roots in the Gothic novel with its closed rooms, shadowy settings, its exposure of human nature's black­ ened soul. But the genre had to bloom much later, for early in the nineteenth century there were .no organized detective forces in any large metropolitan area, There were, however, commissioned groups of vigilantes who pursued. criminals with the single intent of beating justice into the wrongdoer's head--literally. Sometimes the polic7men were reformed. criminals using the tricks of their former profession to ' 4 hunt down lawbreakers. As long as "justice was done," it did not matter who was punished for what. In France the former criminal Francois Vidocq published. his fictionalized Memoirs de Vidocq, which were accounts of his adventures in chasing down crooks in. the streets of Paris. Poe's C, Auguste Dupin was the first detective· to solve, crimes rationally and objectively, both without resorting to violence and only by gathering evidence and solving the mystery from that evi­ dence. Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle extended Poe's creation by making· a detective for the people. His style was more accessible to the middle class readers of Victorian England. Doyle defended his society, its law and order, its vindication of right. This brand of amateur detective ushered in the genre's "Golden Age," where the setting cii:anged from London's dim streets to country manors. Social Changes after World War I--working class against ruling class, for example--brought detective fiction from its "Golden Age'~ to its "Iron Age" (MacDonald iii); settings went back tq dirty streets, and detectives became hard; cynical men with jobs to perform. Dashiell Hammett led the school of hard-boiled writers such as Raymond Chandler and Ellery Queen, They wrote stories of the underworld, the other 'side of high society--d.rug abuse, sexual infidelity• jealousy. Their style was snappy, simple, colloquial. The simple fact that each of us belongs in a society that 5 needs its own trouble shooters is the reason for a study of detective fiction. Through it we know that our protectors can be. eccentric introverts, conceited, pipe-smoking Londoners, or hard-hitting, tough­ talking private dicks. The passages quoted in the study are from these collections: Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 1930. Hammett, Dashiell. The Novels of Dashiell Hammett. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1965. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Works of Edgar Allan ~. III. Chicago: Stone and Kimball. 1894. NOilVNI~OilVll !HOd I There are two worlds explored in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe : the first, and the one for which he is most famous, is the morbid world where a massive mansion crumbles into dust , where a drunken man , dressed in a jester's bell-cap, is sealed in a wi ne cellar ; it is a world where a man carries his dead wife ' s coffin across the sea in a ship' s cabin, where a lonely man constantly journeys to the tomb of his dead lover . It is this side of Poe that created the tragic "Israfel" and the somber black bird perched above the bust of Pallas, uttering the ominous "Nevermore .
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