Exploring Narrator-Reader Relationships with Jim Thompson's

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Exploring Narrator-Reader Relationships with Jim Thompson’s Victims of Circumstance:

Lou Ford, Dolly Dillon, William “Kid” Collins, and Charles Bigger

Nicolena Marie Crescenzo

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of English

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, FL

December 2018

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to express sincere gratitude to her committee members for all of their support, and special thanks to my advisor for his patience and encouragement during the typing of this manuscript. The author is grateful to her family for always supporting her efforts to be successful. Last but not least, the author wishes to thank her mentors during her undergraduate studies for their recommendations academically and professionally that have helped her reach this point.

iv Abstract

Author: Nicolena Marie Crescenzo

Title: Exploring Narrator-Reader Relationships with Jim Thompson’s Victims of Circumstance: Lou Ford, Dolly Dillon, William “Kid” Collins, and Charles Bigger

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Robert Don Adams

Degree: Master of English

Year: 2018

By examining Jim Thompson’s novels, published between 1952-1955–The Killer

Inside Me, A Hell of a Woman, After Dark, My Sweet, and Savage Night–this essay interrogates the relationship created between the narrator and the reader, how the narrator–and Thompson in turn–highlights certain societal flaws, emphasizing how ethical consequence is born out of the attempt to attain freedom from one’s cultural circumstance–both in terms of economic restraint and mental health status. Through this,

Thompson implies that the reader is trapped in similar economic and ethical pre- dispositions. The reader is often left questioning what they might have done, or been able to do, in similar circumstances. This creates a larger frame by which Thompson implies that the reader is trapped in similar economic and ethical pre-dispositions as his narrators.

He highlights societal flaws, demonstrating how the pursuit of freedom of one’s cultural circumstance bears ethical consequence.

Exploring Narrator-Reader Relationships with Jim Thompson’s Victims of Circumstance:

Lou Ford, Dolly Dillon, William “Kid” Collins, and Charles Bigger

Introduction ...... 1

Jim Thompson ...... 4

Lou Ford...... 7

Dolly Dillon ...... 20

William “Kid” Collins ...... 35

Charles Bigger ...... 47

Conclusion ...... 60

vi Introduction

Jim Thompson’s work utilizes the conventions of noir and crime drama in order to present his readers with narrators of questionable moral character. In his novels, published between 1952-1955, Thompson highlights four first-person narrations that present themselves as victims of cultural circumstance, modeling real ethical dilemmas.

By developing a relationship through direct appeals, his narrators suggest to the reader that their wrongdoings are justified, often leaving the reader questioning what they may have done in similar circumstances. Through their criminal behaviors, the narrators appear to break free of their circumstance only to face moral consequence in death.

Through this, Thompson implies that the reader is trapped in similar economic and ethical pre-dispositions. I will examine the relationship the narrator creates with the reader, how the narrator–and Thompson in turn–highlights certain societal flaws, and how the pursuit of freedom of one’s cultural circumstance bears ethical consequence.

Of the four novels I’ll be discussing, I will start with The Killer Inside Me, originally published in 1952. Popular American horror fiction writer, Stephen King, wrote a Forward for this novel in 1988 and titled it “WARNING! WARNING!

HITCHHIKERS MAY BE ESCAPED LUNATICS,” a hint at things to come in the novel. The Killer Inside Me is arguably Jim Thompson’s most graphic novel with a narrator who Stephen King refers to as the Great American Sociopath. Lou Ford, the narrator, kills and kills and kills again, while attempting to persuade the reader that he has no choice. Not only does he argue that they’ve provoked his sickness, he also attempts to

show the reader how each person he has murdered just isn’t worth life. Ford shows the reader how some people deserve to die and he’s done a favor to society by ending their lives. I’ll follow up the discussion of Lou Ford with that of Dolly Dillon, the narrator of

Jim Thompson’s 1954 novel, A Hell of a Woman. Dolly Dillon is a door-to-door salesman and past due account collector for an establishment called Pay-E-Zee stores. He has a hell of a time with women and does his best to find a way to build a better life for himself, attempting to rise above his circumstance. Dillon also murders a few people, but, as he claims, none of them undeserved; he is a self-proclaimed reasonable guy after all. A slave to both his job and mental illness, Dolly Dillon in the pursuit of happiness tries to find ways to convince the reader what he’s doing is right.

In Jim Thompson’s 1955 novel, After Dark, My Sweet, which I’ll discuss following Dolly Dillon, William “Kid” Collins narrates his way through a kidnapping and aims for redemption. Collins presents his audience with a long and winding personal history; Collins tells the reader he is an ex-professional fighter and ex-military man, as well as an ex-mental institution resident who has good intentions. Plagued by his reputation as a knock out fighter, Collins wants nothing more than to escape the

“concrete pasture” he finds himself stuck in (29). He wants something more out of life and even though he gets himself roped into a kidnapping, he tries to convince the reader that he had little choice in the matter and is making the most of it. After wrapping up my section on Collins, I’ll finish with Thompson’s 1953 novel Savage Night. I saved this one for last because of the bizarre nature in which the narrator, Carl Bigelow, suffers his ultimate consequence; however, despite the way his consequence is delivered to the reader, similar themes persist in this text. Bigelow, who’s real name is Little Bigger, or

Charles Bigger, is the only killer of the four that commits his crime because he has to. A hired hit man, slave to The Man with a Lou Ford-like sociopathic quality, Bigelow makes it clear that he, too, has no choice but to follow through with the kill. Each narrator finds a way to convince the reader that their crime is necessary, each claiming that the reasoning behind their actions is completely justified. Though their actions seem justified to the reader, each narrator seems to drown in their circumstance, which leads them to an eventual death.

3 Jim Thompson

Before digging into these narratives, I find it important to talk about the author of the narratives I will be discussing, Jim Thompson. In my section on Thompson I discuss he and his father’s circumstance that placed them as a prime subject of a narrative of the sort we read by him. Biographer Robert Polito wrote of Jim Thompson’s novels,

“Reading a Thompson novel is like being trapped in a bomb shelter with a chatty maniac who also happens to be the air-raid warden” (5). Thompson’s novels, especially the four I will be discussing, take the reader on a journey with a sociopathic criminal and the reader is trapped within the narrative right along with him. Thompson’s influence for his novels came from his personal experience and that of his family, specifically that of his father.

Polito suggests Thompson’s novels are self-reflective, stating that they gave “Thompson a scaffolding to stage his…inward dramas, and to transform his chills and fevers into vivid literature;” this self-reflection works on both a level for Thompson and the reader

(12). Interestingly, Jim Thompson speaks to the reader through Polito’s biography of

Thompson posthumously, as do his relatives who were interviewed during the process of

Polito writing the biography. Thompson and his relatives’ stories, just like those of

Thompson’s narrators I’ll discuss here, are told as death crept in on them; many of the people interviewed died prior to the book being published (15).

With Jim Thompson’s father being a sheriff, a notoriously adventurous one at that, Thompson was able to draw influence into his writings. Polito cites, “The territorial tales his father handed down to him shadowed the background of Thompson’s fiction,

and they even shaped the bedtime stories he would share with his own children” (28).

Thompson loved to tell the stories of his father and his father’s life shaped who he would become. From his father’s position in law enforcement influencing the creation of the narrator Lou Ford, to his family troubles with money creating a tension that inspired the struggles Dolly Dillon, William “Kid” Collins, and Charles Bigger go through, it’s clear that these parts of his life haunted him. Thompson understood the value of being economically stable; he “rhapsodized about his family’s lost wealth” after the loss of their oil business (Polito 71). Three of the narrators I will discuss are victims of this same circumstance of being troubled by lack of money and motivated to commit crimes in order to secure a large sum of money.

Although Polito doesn’t label Jim Thompson a sociopath, Polito describes

Thompson as having some of the same qualities as one. He enjoyed the desolate nature of one of his homes as a child and appreciated being alone. Polito writes, “He thrived on the bareness, the forsaken isolation and monkish solitude, the outstretched void that if you lived with long enough surrendered its lean sympathies and spare consolations in a subtle economy of scarcity” (78). Thompson’s surroundings satisfied areas of his life that were lacking and he found peace in the barren nature of life as a young man. Polito cites, on page 78, something Thompson wrote about being alone, Thompson says, “There was a peace in the loneliness, calm and reassurance…troubles seems to shrink and hope loomed large.” Thompson found solace away from the concrete pasture and he strove to escape it; similar to the narrator of After Dark, My Sweet, William “Kid” Collins, Thompson knew the value of finding calmness in spite of personal circumstance.

One big influence in Jim Thompson’s adult life was the writings of Karl Marx.

Marx’s writings resonated with Thompson and Thompson was given a way to frame his own life (128). Karl Marx’s The Manifesto of the Communist Party and Capital discuss everything that’s wrong with the capitalist system in which we live and in the 1960s Jim

Thompson, according to a friend Polito interviewed, “correlated his fiction to his early study of Marx” (128). It’s no surprise that the narratives I discuss deal with victims of society and the economic system in which we live. Influences of Marx can especially be seen in the last narrative I will discuss here, Savage Night. In this novel, Thompson’s narrator, Charles Bigger, is a slave to his employer, non-coincidentally named The Man.

Like his narrators, Jim Thompson knows the struggle of living in a capitalistic society and values solace; having lived under both good and poor circumstance, Thompson understood what it means to be human.

6 Lou Ford

Lou Ford, Thompson’s arguably most notable and violent character, is victim of mental illness. In the forward of The Killer Inside Me, Stephen King, famed American horror fiction novelist, ends with, “So it’s time to let go of my hand and enter Central

City, Jim Thompson’s vision of hell. Time to meet Lou Ford, the nothing man with the strangled conscience and the strangely divided heart. Time to meet all of them: Our kind.

Us people. All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad. All of us folks….All of us. All of us.

Amen, Jim. A-fucking-men” (xvii). King celebrates Thompson’s “vision of hell” which involves a mentally deranged deputy sheriff. King claims Lou Ford’s conscience is strangled and unable to function properly and says that Ford’s heart is divided; Lou Ford is clearly aware of the line which separates morally good and bad while blurring that line with appeals to the reader. Lou Ford, from the start of the novel, plants a seed in the reader as he responds to a waitress while drinking coffee saying, “People are people, even when they’re a little misguided. You don’t hurt them, they won’t hurt you. They’ll listen to reason” (3). While reading the novel, it’s clear that this is where Lou is making his first appeal to the reader and empowering his audience with the faculty of reason.

Through this he is also speaking of himself, as he, as we’ll understand, seems a little misguided but unprovoked wouldn’t hurt someone. Lou wants the reader to believe, even from this moment, that when situations arise, and they will, in the story that he has to make a decision on whether to harm someone or not, that the people he hurts were the

ones being unreasonable, not him. He wants the reader to believe that he wouldn’t hurt someone, unless that individual hurt him. Even though the reader may take Ford at face value initially, assuming that Ford is being truthful when he suggests he wouldn’t hurt someone unless he was provoked, the reader can easily surmise that this is a stock explanation that individuals use to excuse their wrongdoings.

Soon after, Lou Ford identifies to the reader that he does have some sort of illness. Calling it “the sickness,” he speaks of it as something that is provoked within him, similar to his idea that a misguided person wouldn’t hurt someone if that person didn’t try to first hurt them (3). He says, “I knew what was going to happen if I didn’t get out, and I knew I couldn’t let it happen, I might kill her. It might bring the sickness back. And even if I didn’t and it didn’t, I’d be washed up…people would start…wondering about that time fifteen years ago” (10). Lou Ford claims that his illness isn’t something on the surface of his consciousness, but something beneath the surface waiting to come up. He also gives the sickness power, and blame, to force him to do something, such as kill someone, even if it wasn’t what he consciously wanted to do. Giving mental illness that power, and using it as a scapegoat, relinquishes moral responsibility and his idea of reason goes out the window. He seems to be saying that if his sickness is initiated that he will lose control and his conscience will be, as Stephen King put it in the Forward, strangled. Ford’s sickness is the circumstance he is victim of.

Lou Ford’s conscience, as he narrates the story to the reader, seems to plea with both Ford and the reader throughout the novel. We see this occur when he is speaking with Joyce Lakeland, the prostitute he has sex with at the start of the novel. Lying in her bed, his conscience speaks to him saying, “…forget it, Lou, it’s not too late if you stop

now” (14). His conscience tries to reason with him but he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t forget the thoughts that are provoking his sickness. Soon after, the tone his conscience becomes more agitated and aggressive, embodying more of a sick tone, saying, “Joyce…[is] going to die. Joyce had asked for it... I wasn’t any more cold-blooded than the dame who’d have me in hell to get her own way.” (41). Ford, or his conscience, is announcing intent to murder Joyce and giving some justification to it by telling the reader that she had “asked for it” and that he wasn’t any more cold-blooded than she. Ford and his conscience are asking the reader to reason with themselves and recognize that Ford’s actions are warranted and we can’t possibly consider him to be worse than those who have provoked this behavior. Just as he’s about to kill Joyce, Lou Ford’s conscience speaks out one last time saying, “I’m going to miss you, baby, I thought. You’ve got to go, but I’m sure going to miss you” (44). His conscience is letting the reader, and himself, know that he does have feelings for this woman he’s about to kill; the reader should understand that he isn’t heartless but that he is doing what needs to be done.

Ford’s narration and his conscience are sometimes one in the same, explaining similar points and not necessarily having different intents. As he moves on to the next chapter, Ford, rather than his conscience, explains, “Things shouldn’t have turned out this way. It was just plum unreasonable. It wasn’t right. I’d done everything I could to get rid of a couple of undesirable citizens in a neat no-kickbacks way. And here one of ‘em was still alive” (51). Lou Ford is explaining how he intended to fully kill Joyce in the previous chapter but she doesn’t actually die. Joyce somehow survives the brutal beating and is in recovery in the hospital where doctors and authorities are hoping that she heals enough to recall and report events of her attack. Ford is upset because he was trying to do

a favor to society by getting rid of some undesirable people in an easy way. Ford is explaining that it is unreasonable that Joyce lived, implying that killing her was the reasonable thing to do; he “meant so good, but did so bad” and the reader is left questioning Lou Ford’s concept of meaning well and whether it is unreasonable that

Joyce lived. With the beating that Ford gave her, it does seem unreasonable for her to still be alive but, if the reader’s moral compass is working in a traditional sense, the act of killing her is immoral. Ford has created a rapport with the reader at this point to where we do understand why Joyce needed to die, from Ford’s point-of-view, and that she provoked the sickness.

Lou Ford is also a victim of sexual abuse, which he experienced as a young child.

His circumstance positioned him in a home with a housekeeper, Helene, who molested him as a move of revenge against Ford’s father. Midway through the novel, shuffling through a Bible, Ford finds a photo of his childhood housekeeper and it triggers the memory that he shares with the reader. He recalls, “She came back to me… “But you’ll like it, darling. All the big boys do it…” I lived back through it all, and then I came to the end of it. That last terrible day, with me crouched at the foot of the stairs, sick with fear and shame, terrified…” (99). Helene had sadistically molested Lou Ford when he was young and, by him sharing this with the reader, there is a better understanding of his motives behind hurting, and killing, other women. The reader is left sympathizing with this terrified and ashamed child and nearly forgets that this child grows up to be the deputy sheriff with the sickness who’s going around town enacting his own version of justice. When analyzing this recall by Ford, the reader questions Ford’s intentionality and whether Ford brought this up for sympathy, similar to his appeal to reason in prior

passages, or if this is a moment where Ford is genuinely brought back to a place of pain.

With an unreliable narrator like Ford, it’s hard to judge if a moment of vulnerability has truly occurred.

After the account of his childhood sexual abuse, Lou Ford shrugs it off and claims to forget it had ever happened, again. He narrates, “That was all. I’d forgotten about it, and now I forgot it again. There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living. And somehow I did want to; I wanted to more than ever. If the good Lord made a mistake in us people it was in making us want to live when we’ve got the least excuse for it” (101). With a tormenting experience just being briefly rehashed, it’s strange that he can so easily claim to forget. Again, though, it seems as though Ford is finding some common ground with the reader in implying that the reader may understand the pain in past experiences and that it is necessary to move on in order to live a happy life. Ford also uses the idea of a higher being, “the good Lord,” to find a common ground with the reader who may be religious. If the moral reader looks at these lines, they see that Ford is recognizing that there is a god and that this God makes him want to live, even though

Ford has “the least excuse” for a life. It’s curious that Ford would acknowledge that his life might not be one worth living, yet he wants to live it anyway. This is another point that it seems as though the narrator is manipulating the reader.

Manipulation occurs on a character level as well, with Lou Ford manipulating

Johnnie. Johnnie Pappas is a local teen whose father knows Ford; Ford has a special interest in him and he expresses toward the beginning of the narrative that he finds himself concerned for him and worried about his problems (53). Ford pays for car services rendered by Johnnie with a marked bill, unintentionally, and Johnnie ends up in

custody on charges of crimes Ford committed. Ford gets called down to help question

Johnnie and, in a private interrogation session with him, Ford begins to tell Johnnie that he wants him to take the fall for the murders he’s committed, the ones Johnnie is being accused of. Johnnie considers Ford to be “a square joe,” but Ford questions his judgment saying, “How do you know I am, Johnnie? How can a man every really know anything?

We’re living in a funny world, kid…The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty…it’s a screwed up, bitched up world, and I’m afraid it’s going to stay that way... Because no one, almost no one, sees anything wrong with it” (110-111).

Ford shocks Johnnie with the way he’s speaking to him but he continues. It’s clear that their relationship up to this point was very friendly and Johnnie’s impression of Ford was far off the reality, similar to the idea Ford wants the reader to believe about him, but

Johnnie doesn’t have insight into Ford’s conscience like the reader does. Even though

Ford is going off the typical cliché-ridden flowery speech he uses with others, we do still get the feel that he is finding common ground with the reader. All too often, people watch the media and complain about how messed up the world is and how cops, or government, are corrupt. Ford’s mention of this gets the reader fired up and angry at these same societal issues, bringing the reader to his side even in a moment where he is about to show how little boundaries he has.

Just as Ford is about to tell Johnnie that he in fact killed two people, he admits that he has both good and bad residing within him. He acknowledges his inner struggle to make the right decision and cites that eventually he will just be split in two, showing how divided he really is. He says to Johnnie, “You ask me why I stick around…I guess I kind of got a foot on both fences…I planted ‘em there early and now they’ve taken root,...all I

can do it wait until I split. Right down the middle” (111). The sickness that Lou Ford is victim of is the blame, splitting him down the middle and creating the struggle to choose between right and wrong. In this moment, though, Ford is admitting that he isn’t the great guy that Johnnie thinks he is and says that he did commit two murders. Even still,

Johnnie has faith in Ford, saying, “I’ll bet you had a good reason, Lou. I bet they had it coming” (111). Ford admits that he did have a reason but that no one has it coming, showing that he recognizes it shouldn’t be happening but because he has reason it makes it ok, and this is where he uses his reason for needing someone to take the fall for him as the justification for him killing Johnnie.

Before he kills Johnnie, making it look like a suicide, he tells Johnnie that he does want him to take the fall for the murders he has committed. To the reader, Ford narrates what he hears in the distance and warns that all of this is happening, “Just as if nothing was happening. Just as if a kid wasn’t dying and a man, part of a man, dying with him”

(112). Part of Ford dies with the murder of Johnnie because the reasoning for this one seems more selfish than the others and Johnnie really was mostly a good kid. Part of Ford dies when he kills Johnnie, but not enough of him to initiate any change in his behavior.

The part of Ford that died must have been the part within the split referenced earlier, likely the “good” part; if you have the capacity to kill someone innocent for admittedly selfish reasons, the good definitely dies. From here, Lou Ford spirals downward with the murder of Amy Stanton, Ford’s girlfriend/fiancé, and the attempt of finishing the job on

Joyce. Amy Stanton and Ford grew up together and eventually paired off; most of their neighbors were aware that they were together and would get married when they were ready (28). Jim Thompson’s biographer, Robert Polito, comments on Lou Ford’s

straddling the line of good and bad, saying, “As he juggles his double life, putting on himself and his reader…you never entirely disbelieve him—although it’s certain that he is giving himself away, and likely that he is a callous killer posing as a helpless psychopath” (6). Polito brings out that the reader struggles with whether to believe Ford is a victim of mental illness; he cites that it’s just as likely that Ford is a callous killer.

When the reader learns that Ford is going to kill his fiancé, it makes it clearer that Ford is the callous killer Polito suggests he is.

With a little less than one quarter of the novel left, Chapter 18 begins with a line that Lou Ford will repeat several times before the end of the novel: “I killed Amy Stanton on Saturday night on the fifth of April, 1952, at a few minutes before nine o’clock” (159).

He describes the day and his intentions for that day for about one and one half pages before breaking the narrative to say, “I guess I’m not ready to tell about it yet. It’s too soon, and it’s not necessary yet. Because, hell, we had a whole two weeks before then, before Saturday, April 5th, 1952, at a few minutes before nine p.m.” (160). Ford is very clearly trying to prolong this part of his narrative because what happens after is not in his favor. The two weeks that he references here are ones that he calls “pretty good” because he felt that in those moments he was able to feel free. Unfortunately, as Ford warns, “The end was coming up, it was rushing toward [him], and everything would be over soon”

(160). Not long after Saturday, April 5th, 1952, Lou Ford dies. Ford recognizes, though, that he can only stall so long, saying, “I can stall you that long; and I don’t have to watch myself anymore” (160). He stalls still and the repetition of the date makes this even more apparent, and it even seems, in his telling of the next two weeks, that he was also stalling the murder. He treats Amy like someone you know is going to die, allowing them to do

whatever they want to in the final days of their life because you know they won’t have more left to live beyond the ones designated to be left. He describes it very simply, saying, “I was with her every night. I took her everywhere she wanted to go, and did everything she wanted to do. And it wasn’t any trouble, because she didn’t want to go much or do much” (160 – 161). Life was easy for Ford because he didn’t have to think or plan; he knew that in two weeks it would all be over. Life was easy for Amy during this time, too, because she finally got what she wanted from Ford, who she long imagined having this type of relationship with, only suspecting something was strange about him but never really knowing for sure.

Ford speeds through the description of the two weeks, because it seems nothing really happened, and seems to be ready to talk about the killing. He begins, “So the two weeks passed, and the night of April fifth came; and she hustled her folks off to a show…And at eight-thirty she came over to my place and I was waiting for her. And

I…,” and leaves it off there, not finishing what happened (162). He says, “But I guess I’m getting ahead of myself again. There’s some other things to tell first,” delaying the part where he kills Amy yet again. The other things he tells about are monotonous day-to-day activities that can very well be left out but he chooses to include them so that he delays his ending. Six pages of random details from the two weeks that could very well have been left out and Ford is finally ready to expose the moment the reader has been waiting for. Ford says, “So, on Saturday night, April 5th, 1952, at a few minutes before nine o’clock, I… But I guess there’s another thing of two to tell you first, and – but I will tell you about it. I wanted to tell you, and I will, exactly how it happened. I wont leave you to figure things out for yourself” (168). Another start and a stop, which is comical at this

point because now the reader is near expecting for it not to happen. The reader is left to believe that it’s possible there were complications with the murder and that’s why he’s delaying the inevitable. It’s clear these events have already happened, and cannot be undone, so delaying explaining them is only delaying his exposure to the potential of dying.

Ford’s next sentiments not only draw attention to the fact that he is a narrator telling a story to an actual person, but he seems to identify himself as the writer or as the person performing the function of the writer, blatantly breaking down reality for the sake of characterizing the narrator/himself.

In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a

high point. He’ll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and

babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can’t

figure out whether the hero’s laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of

crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff—a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I

notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And

I’m not lazy, whatever else I am. I’ll tell you everything.

But I want everything in the right order.

I want you to understand how it was. (168-169)

Reasoning with the reader, Ford justifies why he is stalling to tell what happens on that

Saturday night in April when he kills Amy Stanton by saying that he is just trying to make sure the reader understands the scope of what happened, and that everything needs to be in the right order. He brings up that other writers stall for seemingly pointless reasons because they are lazy, claiming that he isn’t lazy, though he admits he is

“whatever else”. Lou Ford continues to attempt to manage the perception of the reader and is fully aware that his stalling will raise questions with the reader. It isn’t until the end of the chapter that the reader gets the last stall by Ford with his mention of the date and time the murder takes place, only this time he follows it up with, “Or maybe you could call it suicide” (170). Ford doesn’t want the reader to think of him as a murderer, especially not in the final chapters leading up to his own death, and planting the idea that

Amy’s death is a suicide changes the perception of her death. Ford’s responsibility for

Amy’s death is relinquished if she died of suicide; suicide is a self-inflicted mode of death, therefore Amy is responsible for her own death if it is indeed a suicide.

After killing Amy and landing himself in custody on suspicion of murder, Lou

Ford seems to go mad; though the reader can infer he’s been crazy most of the narrative, since Ford admittedly has a sickness, but it’s while he is in confinement that his insanity starts to really show. While in custody, being held in a solitary confinement type room,

Ford draws the reader in, addressing his mental illness and those who share a similar irregularity of the mind, “We might have the disease, the condition; or we might just be cold-blooded and smart as hell; or we might be innocent of what we’re supposed to have done. We might be any one of those things, because the symptoms we show would fit any one of the three” (209). Ford puts the reader in a position of which they have the power to judge, or at least speculate, whether he does have a sickness or if he’s just full of malice.

The reader is made aware that the symptoms Ford has are defined in such a way that it may not be clear if it’s even a legitimate illness; Ford even suggests he may be innocent of what he’s been accused. Dorothy Clark brings out, in her article that discusses the evil in The Killer Inside Me, that Lou Ford also “engages our deep cultural understanding of

the powerful role of revenge in human life as he argues that he is not a cold-blooded, calculating murderer, but instead a victim of an elemental human passion” (Clark 8). The reader can see, or at least question, that Ford’s murders are an act of passion. His final conversation with his attorney during the drive from his confinement to his home reveals how he truly feels about life.

Earlier in the narrative, Ford claims that even though he feels there is no excuse to want to, he does want to continue to live; he cites this as the reason you need to forget certain things, to be able to go on living. Here, after everything he has done – committing multiple murders, some with valid reason of getting scum off the streets and others with selfish reasons – he admits that life is confinement in itself, saying, “I’ll never be free as long as I live….” (223). This cues the reader in to the fact that Ford really cannot be free;

Lou Ford is either going to be prosecuted for committing those murders or he is going to die. This also cues the reader in to the idea that, as a victim of circumstance, living can seem more like imprisonment than an enjoyable experience. This reminds the reader that they, too, have circumstance they are slave to. In the final chapter, his sickness takes over and he is thrust into death.

Lou Ford’s sickness is provoked one last time when he sees Joyce Lakeland still alive with the cops waiting outside of his house. “I could feel my face twisting, my lips pulling back from my teeth,” is how he describes the change from his normal state to his final moment of darkness. Ford becomes somewhat monstrous, showing the reader that it isn’t him performing the next actions, and that the mental illness is taking over and acting out against him, against Joyce. Clark writes that “this apparently clear evil performance is itself unreliable …[and he] subvert[s] our ability to know the truth about Lou” (Clark 11).

Ford sprang toward Joyce, stabs her between the ribs, and his house explodes with him

(229). In his final narration, the reader is left as a “we” again, bucketed in as the same type of person as Ford. He says, “Yeah, I reckon that’s all unless our kind gets another chance in the Next Place. Our Kind. Us People. All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad. All us folks…All of us. All of us” (229). The “vision of hell” that Stephen King references in the Forward involves the reader; Ford likens himself to Joyce Lakeland and to Amy

Stanton in these lines, but he also calls in the reader, as he has so many times throughout the novel, as an individual like himself. Clark argues that Lou Ford, in these last moments, is using “rhetorical manipulation” as he paints a picture of “flawed humanity tainted by original sin” (Clark 12). Ford, as he has throughout the narrative, situates himself as similar to the reader and suggests that he, a murderer, has something in common with the reader, original sin. Although Ford regularly manipulates the reader throughout his narrative, the reader would not feel connected enough to Ford through the commonality of original sin. Ford has proven he is a callous killer and fails to convince the reader that this inherited trait, original sin, would excuse Ford of his wrongdoings.

19 Dolly Dillon

In his 1954 novel, A Hell of a Woman, Jim Thompson gives us Dolly Dillon, a down-on-his-luck man who’s a slave to his career. At the beginning of the narrative,

Dolly Dillon makes attempts to sell his story to the reader, similar to his door-to-door sales and collection position he holds. During his first encounter with a customer, he is offered sex as payment and describes the situation, saying, “It seems funny as hell, now that I look back on it. Strange, I mean. Me—a guy like me—in a bedroom with an armful of naked woman, and not even thinking about her being naked. Just thinking about her without thinking about her nakedness. That’s the way it was, though. Exactly the way it was. I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles” (10). The second time in 7 pages he would “swear it on a stack of Bibles,” Dillon is confirming to the reader, who presumably would be more inclined to believe someone who had sworn on a stack of Bibles, that his story, everything he has said and will say, happened exactly how he describes it. Dillon wants the reader to know that even though he is a salesmen, which is typically seen as a career that involves deception to get the sale, to get what the salesperson wants, that he wouldn’t even want to take advantage of a woman if she was naked and threw herself at him. This attempt at forming creditability seems to be very desperate, and the relationship he wants with the reader is one involving much trust and respect – most would easier respect a man who doesn’t take advantage of a woman than one who does.

Further attempting to build his creditability with the reader, Dolly Dillon blames his circumstance, or his slime ball career as a salesman, as the reason people might look

down on him. He even tells the reader, similar to what Lou Ford said at the beginning of

The Killer Inside Me, that he would “…never hurt anyone if [he] could get out of it” (23).

Dillon says, “I’d given plenty of people breaks when I didn’t have to. Like today for example; just take today, now. Pretty good, huh? You’re damn well right it was! How many other guys would have passed up Mona, and given a hand to a guy who’d tried to murder ‘em?” (23). Dillon wants to be celebrated for making the decision of not sleeping with Mona, the woman who was naked in his arm. The attention he is drawing to his good decision making can only lead the reader to question what poor decision making skills he will exhibit later in the narrative. Dolly Dillon “giving people breaks” is just another way of saying that he is able to use good judgment, and the faculty of reason, before deciding to harm someone.

Building more rapport with the reader, Dolly Dillon explains how one goes about judging someone because of the job they have, how “You kind of grin and look down your nose…” at someone who has a job as a dog groomer or street-side cleaner; he explains that judging them helps you to evaluate yourself and how good you may have it, healthy and young, more ambitious than those types of people. Ford is talking about the self-evaluation process, causing the reader to self-evaluate as well and likely nod in agreement; the reader is on the same mental page as Dillon. He then goes on to say that maybe “you” had too much ambition, still talking about himself but throughout addressing it as a reader’s experience, and after going from job to job, aging and busting your butt, “you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it” (25). But this situation doesn’t work out for him, for the reader, and Dillon is expressing how he, and

the reader, is a victim of circumstance; the circumstance of being slave to a job that he, and the reader, hates, a life that he, and the reader, hates. He ends the chapter saying, “All you can do is go on like those other guys go on…hating it. Hating yourself. And hoping”

(25). If the reader hasn’t found sympathy for the cultural, economic, circumstance that

Dolly Dillon has before now, this moment is likely a tipping point. Dillon makes this appeal with the reader through narrating the self-loathing as a reader’s experience and is successful in drawing the reader in to support him.

Although Dillon draws the reader in to feel sympathy for his circumstance, Dillon puts that sympathy at risk in the next chapter. In Chapter 4, Dolly Dillon beats his wife,

Joyce, after she gives him some attitude and doesn’t swiftly move into the kitchen to make him dinner. He warns her, threatens, and then gives her “the sweetest left hook you ever saw in your life” (29). Dillon is proud of the way he was able to throw the punch and wants the reader to feel excited about it as well. He is so concerned with the reader’s perception of him that he tries to highlight that he didn’t really hit her that hard, he says,

“I hadn’t really hit her, you know. Why hell, if I’d wanted to give her a full hook I’d taken her head off” (30). He is hoping that the shock of the punch has worn off the reader and the act is minimized because he hadn’t put his full force into it. After the fight he tries to gain sympathy from the reader while explaining his actions and how Joyce threw things at him, yelled and called him dirty names, and even ruined his belongings after she left him. The reader is even left to feel bad for him because Joyce has damaged his suit, which is likely expensive to replace. A job he hates, a wife who hates him, and clothes that are now ruined; Dolly Dillon seems to have it hard.

Dolly Dillon ends this chapter explaining how he met Joyce but then loses creditability when describing their meeting and how she practically threw herself at him.

Dillon did the good guy deed of taking her home from work a few times, never going inside her apartment, until she insisted and proceeded to make sexual advances; he tries to leave, she cries, it seems he stays but then he interjects his storytelling to take a few steps back. He says, “No, now wait a minute! I think I’m getting this thing all fouled up…it must have been Doris—or was it Ellen? Well, it doesn’t make much difference; they were all alike. They all turned out the same way” (33). The problem with Dillon’s step back here is that the reader only knows what he tells them and if he isn’t certain what he is saying is fact, how can the reader be certain or feel confident that what he says is true? Dillon also brings up an important piece of information: this relationship dynamic that he has with Joyce has happened with at least two other women before. His pattern can either be viewed as a fault of his own or as a circumstance he keeps encountering.

With such bad luck in romantic relationships, Dillon is more relatable to the reader; although, if the end of these relationships were Dillon’s fault, it would point toward mental and emotional instability on his part. This either indicates he is the victim who cannot find love or he is the victim of mental illness; either way, Dillon wants to present himself as a victim.

As Dillon attempts to continue to present himself to the reader as a victim of circumstance, the reader is reminded that Dillon is a door-to-door salesman, which doesn’t yield the highest wage, and Dillon has been living a life scraping from the bottom of the barrel; this is a circumstance many readers can relate to. When Mona told Dillon that this woman had $100,000 up for grabs, he considered killing the woman to take the

money. Dillon and Mona would have $100,000 and be able to run away together; all

Dillon had to do was commit murder. Mona was excited about it and Dillon would be doing a good deed by liberating her from the older woman, but he expresses to the reader that it wasn’t necessarily sitting well with him. He says, “But I just couldn’t see myself doing what I’d have to do. “Why, you’re crazy, man!” I thought. ‘YOU’RE going to kill someone? YOU’RE going to kill a couple of people? Not you, fella. It just ain’t in you.’”

(59). Not only does he fully narrate that he doesn’t see himself doing it, he sidebars to himself, letting the reader in on his intimate thoughts, and says, to himself, that it would be crazy for him to kill someone, let alone multiple people. He says to himself that it just isn’t in him, implying that he doesn’t have a mean enough bone in his body to commit murder. This interjection of a conversation with himself in his head, rather than a conversation directly with the reader, happens more often as the narrative progresses.

This can be seen as a breaking down of the narrator, Dolly Dillon, as he slips into a state that allows him to actually commit a crime. As Dillon addresses himself, rather than the reader, it takes the reader out of the first-person experience and leaves the reader witnessing a gradual mental breakdown of the narrator.

As the conversations Dolly Dillon has with himself increase, the reader sees

Dillon become a victim of the same circumstance as Lou Ford, of The Killer Inside Me, was victim of: mental illness. While talking with Pete Hendrickson, the person he planned to pin the murder on and murdering, Dillon again begins drifting into this same psychotic mental state. Pete use to do yard work for Mona’s household and previously received payment through sex with Mona (4). Dillon used his knowledge of this to manipulate Pete into thinking that he may be charged with rape for having sex with her

and that the older woman Mona lives with will need to be dealt with (78). During a conversation between Dillon and Pete, where Dillon is sorting out their plan to go over to

Mona’s house and speak with the older woman, Pete starts to get on Dillon’s nerves; Pete provokes Dillon’s mental instability with his repetition of questions. Dillon says,

The words began to dance through my mind. Vy, vot, vy-vot—faster and faster and

yet somehow slow—vy-vot, VY-VOT. VYVOTVY VYVOT…Why, what, why-what,

whywhat. Why? WHY? WHY?...

All of a sudden something seemed to snap inside of my head. It was just

like I wasn’t any more, like I’d just shriveled up and disappeared. And in my

place there was nothing but a deep hole, a deep black hole, with a light shining

down from the top.

The light began to move downward. It rushed downward with a swishing,

screaming sound. It reached the bottom of the pit, and shot back upward again.

And then I came back from wherever I had been; and Pete and I were standing in

the front room. And I was talking to him. (86-87)

Dillon’s descent into this psychotic state allows the reader to visualize it, as if it were happening to the reader, because he is narrating it to the reader rather than speaking to himself. Pete, the person he’s having a conversation with, has an accent and much of his speech is written phonetically, the vy and vot being the way Pete says why and what. The pressure of trying to plan the murder of the older woman and Pete was affecting Dillon and he was very frustrated with the number of questions Pete asked about getting the older woman to sign a document stating Mona is over 21 years old; having the woman sign would excuse Pete from the accusation of raping a minor, Mona (82-83). Dillon’s

entry into this psychotic state gives him an excuse; if Dillon commits a crime against Pete it will be due to this craze he has entered, the frustration with him, and the pressure of finding a way to get on top financially. Without, at the very least, robbing the older woman Mona lives with, Dillon won’t have the opportunity to start over and be in a better spot financially; without killing the older woman, Dillon won’t have the opportunity to save Mona who is somewhat of a slave to her, as the older woman pays for goods with sexual favors from Mona. At the end of this chapter, Dillon steals the money and kills both the older woman and Pete in a fairly aggressive manner. Christopher

Metress writes, in his article discussing A Hell of a Woman, “By the end of Chapter

Eleven, Frank is closer then he will ever be to getting what he wants and reversing his life of frustration. He has the girl, the money, and a shot at freedom. But…things are about to go dreadfully wrong…” (Metress 4). Metress refers to the change in narrative structure that will be discussed here and it is during this temporary change that Dillon puts forth extra effort toward managing the perception of the reader.

The next chapter, Chapter 12, along with 18 and 22, are side conversations with the reader and are used as a technique to stall the narrative, similar to Lou Ford’s stalling by recalling the two weeks leading up to killing Amy Stanton, which leads to his own eventual death. Dolly Dillon’s stall is used to put off his death and allow more time for him to get the reader to sympathize with him. These chapters are also told from a different narrative voice than the mainstream chapters of the narrative. Chapter 12, unlike the chapters preceding it, is in the narrative voice of Knarf Nollid, his given name, Frank

Dillon, spelled backwards, rather than Dolly Dillon, the name that people call him. He indicates to the reader, as the chapter title, the topic of this chapter, “THROUGH THICK

AND THIN: THE TRUE STORY OF A MAN’S FIGHT AGAINST HIGH ODDS AND

LOW WOMEN…by Knarf Nollid” (100). Twelve starts by Nollid recalling instances where others were out to get him, purposefully giving him a hard time, and with his first anecdote he ends by saying, “But I realize that this incident is of no importance, so I will get on with my tale. I simply wished to demonstrate how right from the beginning people were giving me a bad time” (101). Nollid finds it necessary to clue the reader in on how hard of a life he’s had, and not just as Dolly Dilly but also as Frank Dillon, or Knarf

Nollid; this implies that he’s struggled his entire life. Nollid fishes for sympathy and compassion and there is a burning necessity for him to rebuild sympathy from the reader, as just pages before this he had committed two murders and stolen a large sum of money.

Knarf Nollid continues on in Chapter 12 to recall some of the events he has already described to the reader, which he narrated previously as Dolly Dillon, but here he describes them much differently. Earlier in the narrative Dillon gets in a fight with his wife, Joyce, because she wouldn’t go cook him dinner. In this retelling, Nollid says it as though she were entirely to blame; he was being yielding and genuine during their argument. He says that she was giving him a hard time and that he asks her to “please fix us a bite, and [he] will cheerfully help her” (105). The reader already knows, from the initial chapters of the narrative, that this isn’t how the argument between Dolly Dillon and Joyce happened, but Nollid is trying to navigate managing the new perceptions of him based on his decisions to rob, frame, and murder. He says that he apologizes to Joyce after she talks disrespectfully to him and tells her that he will fix them a nice dinner, explaining, “That’s the way I talked to her, but you know how much good it does trying to be nice to a tramp. She almost caved my skull in with a scrubbing brush. Then, when I

leave the house to calm myself, she ruins all my clothes and pulls out…and [she saw] it was time to latch onto another sucker” (106). Looking back to his initial telling, even for a second, unveils how different this version is. Dolly Dillon, or Knarf Nollid, is retelling his narrative to minimize the instances of wrong he has done against others in this narrative. The placing of his revision, or retelling, of the narrative is not coincidental; he changes narrative voices in chapters that follow him murdering someone under the narrative voice of Dolly Dillon.

Probably one of the more comical retellings in Chapter 12 is that of Dolly

Dillon’s experience interacting with the older woman and Pete, the two people he has just killed. Nollid explains that he was provoked by the woman and that Pete was “a Nazi or maybe a Communist…a no-good bastard; he admitted being a bum himself…So there was only one thing to do about him” (107). Suddenly Pete is a Communist or Nazi and

Dillon had no choice but to kill him. Similar to Lou Ford, who was just taking scum off the streets, Dolly Dillon was doing a favor to society, hell, to all of America, by killing

Pete. He spends a little bit of time obsessing over the fact that he now has $100,000 before highlighting to the reader that he did yet another good deed by saving Mona. He says, “And Mona. I’d rescued her from her wicked aunt and meted out justice to this guy who had molested her, and I’d recovered this money which was rightfully hers” (108). He is providing more justification to the reader on why what he did was necessary, which blurs the line of what is morally right and morally wrong. Nollid is further changing the narrative to indicate that Mona was molested, rather than that she had sex with Pete in exchange for goods. The reader is faced with an ethical dilemma; does the reader continue to empathize with Dolly Dillon, who has committed these crimes, or does the

reader side with the ethical standards of the law that states justice should have been served through the legal system. The objectively moral thing to do would be to report the molestation to law enforcement officials and allow them to deal with the accused man,

Pete. While Dillon makes a decent attempt to justify Pete's murder, he ultimately reveals his own moral failing.

A literal “to be continued” moment happens at the end of this chapter, which is how we end up with two more chapters of Dolly Dillon making a sidebar retelling of the events prior while using different narrative voices. The chapter ends with Nollid saying to the reader, “But though I seldom complain, you have doubtless read between the lines and you know that I am one hard luck bastard. So, now, right as I stood on the doorstep of Dreams Come True, my whole world crumbled beneath me” (109-110). He wants to remind the reader how unlucky he is and that he deserves to have a dream come true moment. In the narrative voice of Knarf Nollid, the reader experiences a much more tame version of what’s happened but, even though this version of the way things happened would gain more sympathy from the reader, the reader is left questioning which version is true and why he would tell it from a different point of view. At the end of this chapter,

Nollid places an all caps, in parenthesis, “(TO BE CONTINUED)” before cluing the reader in to what is happening at his home: his wife is back and “prettied up” just a few feet away from him (110). He breaks from the recall of the original story he has told so far to move to a first telling of a new part of the narrative. The tension that is brought to the reader, and Dolly Dillon, by Joyce reappearing aims to help Dillon get the reader to be sympathetic to his circumstance. He finally catches a break from his oh-so-unlucky life and his evil wife, Joyce, makes an appearance, seemingly bursting his bubble.

Dillon reminds the reader that he is a victim who has earned a break from all of the mental and emotional anguish he has been through. After struggling with the stress of planning and committing two murders, stealing $100,000, and lying about it to his wife,

Dolly Dillon starts to feel some relief. He says, at the beginning of Chapter 14, “Well, even a punching bag gets a rest once in a while. And now and then, usually right after

I’ve been torn all to pieces, I get a little relief” (120). Although this break doesn’t last long, Dillon has some pleasant interactions with his wife, Joyce. Joyce created a mother- child relationship with him, which made him appear to be calmer. He even expressed that he was happy to be around her, giving the reader a feeling maybe they’ve both changed in some way, but if the reader has been convinced that Dillon has a gray cloud following him, the happiness between them is certain not to last. Joyce asks about the $100,000 she spots, which sends Dillon in a spiral of trying to lie and manage her perception. Dolly

Dillon is at a point in the narrative where he is attempting to manage the perception of both his wife and the reader, which becomes difficult for him. Paranoid that his boss at

Pay-E-Zee Stores or law enforcement may also know about the money, he goes into a downward spiral once again and feels desperate for comfort.

Loneliness takes a toll on Dillon and, even in his own household, he makes the reader believe that he has no one to talk to, except the reader. Chapter 18 is his second big stall in the narrative where he decides to go back and explain himself, re-explain himself. This chapter is also in the narrative voice of Knarf Nollid, rather than Dolly

Dillon, and is a continuation of, or second retelling of, what he felt he needed to tell the reader in Chapter 12. He starts Chapter 18 by saying, “Well, dear reader, in looking over my last installment I discovered that I have made a small error or two in fact. This was no

fault of mine because, although I seldom complain, you have doubtless discovered that I am one hard luck son-of-a-bitch…” (162). Desperate to have the reader back on his side and understanding that he is a victim, Nollid begins to discusses the events differently.

He calls the old woman Mona was living with a “kidnapper” and says that he saved Mona from “a fate worse than death”. He goes on to say that he really just wanted to be honest with his wife, Joyce, about the money, but that he was trying to protect her. He calls himself “easy-going” and says that he would “never hurt anyone…if [he] could get out of it,” which is prepping the reader for a situation where he does hurt someone because he has no other choice. Nollid goes through great lengths to manage the perception of the reader and leaves the reader to be the judge of his actions (165). Dillon also uses the narrator voice of Knarf Nollid again, which makes the reader feel as though Nollid is having a one-on-one conversation with the reader to discuss his interactions with Joyce.

Knarf Nollid’s last “to be continued” moment occurs at the end of Chapter 18 and, again, the “TO BE CONTINUED” is in all caps but this time with an all caps

“(MAYBE)” in parenthesis (168). The next continuation of this type of narration will be in a different voice. Nollid pleas with the reader as he kills his wife, Joyce, who reveals she is pregnant as he is killing her. He says, “It was an accident, of course. Hell, you know me, dear reader, and you are aware that I wouldn’t hurt a goddamned fly if I could get out of it…[but] an unkind Fate decreed that the small understanding between us should end otherwise than happy…” (168). Nollid blames Fate and says that the reader should know by now that he wouldn’t hurt someone if he had the choice not to. Nollid wants to make sure the reader understands that circumstance has made him a killer, but

Jim Thompson has made it clear to the reader that his narrator is unreliable. Dillon, or

Nollid in this chapter, has become increasingly more violent and mentally unstable, especially as the reader learns that Nollid has murdered his pregnant wife. The reader is again left questioning the authenticity of Nollid’s narration and judgment. The chapter abruptly ends with Nollid killing his pregnant wife and disposing of her body; the following chapter Dillon acts as though he is feeling fine, with nothing to worry about.

The last chapter, however, is in a new narrative voice and this voice makes the story even less clear to the reader, showing more unreliability from Dillon and less mental stability.

Dillon uses the last chapter to start his story over, more similar to Chapter 12 than to Chapter 18; however, this chapter is told in a third narrator voice, one that the reader hasn’t met yet. Chapter 22, the last chapter of the narration, is in the voice of Derf Senoj;

Dillon uses the alias Fred Jones after the murders he has committed and this chapter is narrated by him—but backwards. With a backward spelt alias as the narrator, the reader is likely questioning the truthfulness of this aspect of the narration before even beginning to read. This chapter is given a different title from that of 12 and 18; it’s called,

“UPWARD AND ONWARD: THE TURE STORY OF A MAN’S FIGHT AGAINST

HIGH ODDS AND LOW WOMEN…by Derf Senoj” (188). It’s still a true story of a man’s fight against high odds and low women, but this time it’s upward and onwards, rather than through thick and thin. Through thick and thin would imply that you’re sticking with something, and that something appears to be identity. Upwards and onwards implies moving forward and not standing by, not keeping to the same identity. Upwards and onwards shifts to a new life for Dolly, Frank, Dillon, the life of Fred Jones, of Derf

Senoj. He goes on to say how he has been with “six or seven” tramps in a row and that his luck changed when he moved to a new city, Oklahoma City (188). The new woman

that he meets there, Helene, is more desperate for attention than his deceased wife, Joyce.

Helene says to Senoj, “Say I’m your baby. Say it, say anything to me, do anything to…you like. But j-just don’t go away” (190). The interactions between Derf Senoj and

Helene are brief, as he dies at the end of this chapter, the final chapter, but nearly the entire chapter Senoj seems to be in a craze. This craze is both confusing for the reader and is the point at which there is no way for him to gain any credibility back. Not only is the printed text alternating type style, the narration is from another fragmented part of his personality. During the last few pages of the narrative, Dillon is telling two stories at the same time: one story in the traditional way he has through most of the chapters and a second story, italicized, similar to that of the retellings he has done in Chapters 12 and

18, which were meant to delay the ending and manage the perception of the reader. Polito comments on Dillon’s increasing mental instability in the final passages by saying, “as psychotic Dolly Dillon cracks so, in turn, does his story. When Dolly Dillon rents utterly on the final pages, the novel splits into two conclusions, cast in alternating lines of roman and italic type, each as hideous and rank as the other, but impossible to read in sequence”

(Polito 9). In plain text, Dillon tells of his new love bringing him a drink that she has put drugs in to immobilize him (195). Helene begins cutting her hair before she uses the shears on him to emasculate him. In the italicized text, Dillon tells of this same love entering the bathroom to him being naked while straddling the window before he emasculates himself on the broken glass of the window frame and throws himself out of it (196). The narrative ends with the italicized text of Senoj saying, “I threw myself out the window” (196). It appears to the reader that Senoj has plummeted to his death.

The confusion created at the end of the novel draws the reader’s attention to how unreliable Dolly Dillon is in his narration and Polito noted that this is the point at which his story truly cracks (Polito 9); is he Frank Dillon, Dolly Dillon, or Fred Jones? Is he

Knarf Nollid or Derf Senoj? Does what happens to him as Derf Senof actually happen to him, Frank Dillon, or is it part of some psychotic rambling? The reader is also left wondering whether Dillon was a victim of circumstance, of Fate, or if Dillon created the circumstance that made him victim. Dillon struggled with financial instability, relationship issues, and continual mental instability; these are all cultural circumstances that the reader can feel familiar with. Even if the reader understands Dolly Dillon to be a man with bad luck, who can’t catch a break, Dillon did have a choice in committing the crimes throughout the narrative. The reader is left questioning whether the extent to which Dillon suffered from mental illness and instability would absolve him from the responsibility of committing murder.

34 William “Kid” Collins

From the first page of his narrative in After Dark, My Sweet, William “Kid”

Collins clues the reader in to his formally diagnosed mental illness. As victim of mental illness, similar to both Lou Ford and Dolly Dillon, William “Kid” Collins is able to gain sympathy from the empathetic reader. Collins also gives himself the same scapegoat

Dillon and Ford have given, saying that he would only harm someone if provoked. Lou

Ford says that he wouldn’t hurt someone if he could get out of it and Dolly Dillon says that he constantly gives people breaks, implying that he is more often provoked without harming the person, which justifies the times he actually does. William “Kid” Collins starts off the management of the perception of the reader by saying, “I should never go in any place where people might not be nice and polite to me. That’s all they have to do, you know. Just be as nice to me as I am to them” (3). Collins is telling the reader that he recognizes his limitations and wouldn’t put himself in a situation where he anticipated trouble. He is also putting the responsibility on others, saying that they just have to be nice to him; to avoid conflict, people that interact with Collins should just be nice. This seems like a reasonable expectation and the reader is able to see that Collins tries to be a reasonable man in spite of his mental diagnoses.

With regards to his mental illness, William “Kid” Collins cites his medical file.

Admitting that he has been in multiple institutions, he says that his classification card claims he has “Mild criminal tendencies or none, according to environmental factors.

Mild multiple neuroses (environmental) Psychosis, Korsakoff (no syndrome) induced by

shock; aggravated by worry. Treatment: absolute rest, quiet, wholesome food and surroundings. Collins is amiable, polite, patient, but may be very dangerous if aroused…”

(3-4). Placing this information at the beginning for the reader is very intentional, as the information doesn’t seem to apply to what Collins is doing at the beginning of the narrative. Collins wants the reader to be aware of the medical diagnosis right away. In the academic journal, Papers on Language & Literature, Kenneth Payne notes that “His psychosis appears relatively mild (at least when compared to sadistic psychotics like Lou

Ford…or Charles Bigger), and he certainly shows no deep-rooted or pathological urge to kill” (Payne 102). According to his medical file, which is something believed to be reliable, environmental factors control his behavior; while otherwise a gentle-seeming person, if provoked he can become aggressive. Payne agrees as he brings out that the behavior that Collins exhibits is not premeditated “but is typically unleashed in response to some unprovoked act of spite or victimization” (102). This official documentation concurs with his self-assessment that people just need to be nice to him. The reader is not easily convinced that Collins in general has good intentions or that society, or specific people, is the instigator of Collins’s potential poor choices.

William “Kid” Collins is intent on creating a good first impression with the reader. It’s interesting, though, after offering up such specific, verifiable, information,

Collins starts the second chapter commenting on how unreliable one’s assessment of a person can be upon first meeting them. He says, “It’s funny how wrong your first impressions of people can be” (7). Even though he is referring to a woman he just met,

Fay Anderson, one can also see it as an unintentional comment to the reader, who has just encountered him for the first time. Although this may appear as an unintentional

comment from Collins, it’s intentional from the author, Jim Thompson, as he gives the reader a warning that it’s easy to misinterpret someone’s character based on a first impression. Collins, however, has freely given information to the reader, building up his credibility and nature as a reasonable man, only to follow up by saying that first impressions can be wrong. This flaw leaves room for the reader to question their first impression of Collins himself. The reader can more easily understand this as Collins explaining that he must have misjudged Fay Anderson from the start because she is not the woman he thought she would be. Admitting that first impressions are deceiving from the start may give him an excuse later in the book if Fay does something wrong, or pushes him to do something wrong. He is also bringing to attention that it’s possible Fay

Anderson might come to the wrong conclusions about him while meeting for the first time.

When William “Kid” Collins reveals to Fay Anderson that he has fought professionally, as an answer to a direct question she asks him, he tries to downplay his involvement in the sport. Collins knows that he can easily be misjudged if someone were to look up his record for fighting, as his last fight ended with the opponent dying. He tells

Fay that he has professionally fought a little bit but a minimal number of fights, to which she questions if he’s had a head injury. The way she words it slightly provokes a defense in Collins; Fay says, “What happened? Stop a few too many with your head,” to which he responds, “There’s nothing wrong with my head…I got out of it before there was anything wrong” (11). Tension between them builds as Collins tries to manage both Fay and the reader’s perception of him when she questions how long he’s been out of jail.

Collins narrates to the reader, “I tried to keep smiling. I said that, well, as a matter of fact

I had had a few brushes with the police. Just like any citizen would. Never anything serious. Just little misunderstandings and traffic tickets and so on” (11). He is very clear that he tries to be cordial in his manner of speaking and keeps a pleasant tone, even though she is testing his patience with her line of questioning. Collins then continues to share what he says to Fay, he says, “I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Anderson. I’d like to correct an erroneous impression you seem to have about me. I’m not at all stupid, Mrs.

Anderson. I may sound like I am, but I’m really not…I don’t like for people to treat me like I am. Most of my life I’ve been…where it was hard to converse with anyone on an equal footing…[or] carry on an intelligent conversation, so I kind of lost the knack” (11).

Collins, speaking in a humorously formal voice, wants Fay, and the reader, to know that he doesn’t lack intelligence. He wants to make it clear that people have treated him as though he wasn’t bright and that it’s the fault of those he has been around, at work or otherwise, that his conversational skills have seemed to be dumbed down.

Fay Anderson takes what William “Kid” Collins says too lightly and, in this first meaningful conversation, her playful attitude frustrates Collins, as he is desperately trying to make sure both Fay, and the reader, understands that he is typically misunderstood and is smarter than he may appear to be. In response to her final jest in conversation, Collins reprimands her and further explains himself, saying, “I’m trying to explain something. Why don’t you be polite and listen? I was saying that when you don’t get to talk much, you get to where you sound kind of funny when you do talk” (11). So convinced that he needs to continue justifying his way of speaking and level of intellect, he insists she must listen to him and acknowledge that she understands. Collins is reinforcing, to the reader as well, that he wants to be heard and not misunderstood.

Though Fay shuts him up to greet a visitor, Uncle Bud, Collins was able to get his point across, especially to the reader, that he is a reasonable person who does not lack intelligence and just wants to interact with others in a respectable manner. Collins is a victim of mental illness and is disrespected by his peers.

In meeting Fay Anderson’s visitor, Uncle Bud, William “Kid” Collins is able to set the reader up for another plausible reason why he may do something wrong. With Lou

Ford it was his favor to society to murder those specific people, and Dolly Dillon explains he didn’t have a choice when he had to end the lives of those he killed, that he initially wanted to be easy on them. Collins sets the reader up to understand why, when

Uncle Bud asks him to help kidnap a boy for ransom, it might be hard to just say no.

Collins says:

You meet guys like Uncle Bud once…and you feel like you’ve known them all

your life. They make you feel that way.

The first thing you know they’re writing down your address and telephone

number, and the next thing you know they’re dropping around to see you or give

you a ring. Just being friendly, you understand. Not because they want anything.

Sooner or later, of course, they want something; and when they do it’s awfully

hard to say no to them. No matter what it is. (12)

Knowing that it will be hard, even with all of the evidence he has given so far, for the reader to be comfortable with Collins to take part in the kidnapping that occurs later in the novel, Collins makes another appeal to the reader. It’s easy to understand the scenario of meeting someone that Collins poses because it’s likely the reader has had an experience meeting a friendly person who turns out to be comfortable asking for favors or

help. You open your door to your neighbor and the next thing you know they’re knocking on your door asking for a stick of butter or a couple of eggs; you feel bad saying no, naturally. This is a very relatable and plausible situation and Collins leaves the reader to marinade before revealing what Uncle Bud asks of him.

Similar to the other two of Jim Thompson’s protagonists we’ve discussed,

William “Kid” Collins puts in work to manage the perception of both the reader and the people he is interacting with by continually explaining himself. In wanting to make sure

Uncle Bud, and the reader, understands that his mental illness is nothing to worry about, because he understands that it’s something most worry greatly about, Collins says, regarding a conversation he’s having with Uncle Bud, “I said I wouldn’t want him to get the idea that there was anything wrong with me...Because if there’s one thing that scares people, it’s mental trouble” (15). Mental trouble scares people because, as we have seen, especially with Lou Ford, mental illness can seemingly take over a person’s whole being and control their behavior. Collins continues, saying, “You can be an ex-convict, even a murderer, say, and maybe it won’t bother ‘em a bit. They’ll give you a job, take you into their homes, make friends with you. But if you’ve got any kind of mental trouble, or if you’ve ever had any, well, that’s another story…They want no part of you” (15-16). By not just implying, but rather flat out saying that a person with mental trouble is more feared than a murderer, he is further highlighting how much of a victim he is. We’ve read, directly from his medical card, that he is only aggressive when provoked by environmental factors and that he is otherwise quite pleasant; the reader understands he is relatively harmless. When Collins brings out that society, as in other people that he

interacts with, are disturbed and fear people with mental trouble, he gains sympathy from the reader who already knows he is a well-mannered guy.

As well-mannered as William “Kid” Collins is, he still kidnaps a child; the child he kidnaps also happens to be sick with diabetes and in need of medical care. William

“Kid” Collins slowly addresses his disapproval for this type of crime and then explains why it’s a crime he will have to commit. He questions himself as the type of person who would kidnap, saying to himself, “Kidnaping? Me, a kidnaper?” (19). Collins is showing the reader that he is having second thoughts before he explains why he needs to do it. He feels like there’s an opportunity for a better life, in hopes that if he does this one bad thing that he will become free of what he refers to as a “concrete pasture”. He tells Fay,

“The concrete pasture…You keep going and going, and it’s always the same everywhere.

Wherever you’ve been, wherever you go, everywhere you look. Just grayness and hardness, as far as you can see” (29). Fay understands and agrees; the reader is easily able to understand the concept of a concrete pasture and why Collie would want a change from struggling to find success in city after city. After this explanation of how miserable he is with his circumstance in life, he admits to himself, and the reader, that he knows kidnapping is wrong. He says, “Kidnapping—the dirtiest kind of crime there is. Still, it was either this or nothing, the way things looked to me. It was either this, or the old concrete pasture” (31). Collins makes it clear that he feels he has no other choice but to go through with the kidnapping but that he also understands the crime is terrible. The reader is likely uncomfortable with this type of crime and in agreement with Collins that it is the dirtiest crime but if the reader has been successfully convinced of the way Collins is a victim of his circumstance, the reader may be convinced that this truly is a hard

choice to make, siding with Collins. The choice is to be a slave to a miserable life or to kidnap a child and give him back when receiving the ransom money; if the child is being returned unharmed, it’s easy to see why this would be such a hard choice to make for

Collins. He even later describes the trouble he has had getting a job because of his record and lack of skill, which is something many people can relate to (46). With a large sum of money, Collins would have freedom from his circumstance that society has put him in by stigmatizing him as a mentally unstable killer. He truly is “hurt and sore at the whole world,” but feeling sore toward the world makes him more relatable to the reader (54).

As relatable as William “Kid” Collins might seem, he does employ the same tactic Lou Ford and Dolly Dillon use in the chapters before their death: intentionally delaying the narrative, making him lose reliability. William “Kid” Collins begins Chapter

13 explaining, “That next day. Just about everything happened that day. Just about everything seemed to go wrong. It was the day the boy almost died. It was the day Bert tried to kill Uncle Bud. It was the day I robbed Doc Goldman’s office. It was the day Fay tried to—to what? Everything happened. Everything went wrong. Everything got worse than it had been. So maybe I’d better take it from the beginning… let’s go back to the beginning” (80). This technique of intentionally delaying the narrative by pausing to say that he needs to go back to the beginning and include every detail is delaying his eventual death, his sentence for being a criminal. Collins is more easily able to manage the perception of the reader if he spends additional time explaining the situations occurring before his death. In this section of his narrative he gains sympathy from the reader through showing his compassion for the boy he has kidnapped.

Upon realizing the boy is sick, William “Kid” Collins takes it into his own hands to care for him. Collins explains, “I covered him up good. Then, I got a spoon and a cup, and fed him a few sips of lukewarm water…it was all I could do” (81). He is showing the reader that, although it is his fault the boy is without the medical care he needs, Collins is willing to step up and care for him. Collins does not want to see the boy die and would much rather find a way to keep the boy alive and do a proper trade for the ransom money

(84). Uncle Bud doesn’t think that it’s necessary, or worth the effort, to keep the boy alive but Collins goes above and beyond to make sure the boy will live to see his parents again. Collins decides to commit a crime for the good of the boy and steal insulin from his own doctor’s office to bring to the boy. In justifying this crime of theft he says, “But I had to do it. I was doing it for the boy, not myself. So I crossed the reception room and opened the office door” (93). Stealing the insulin and supplies to save the boy makes

Collins seem like a savior to both the boy and the reader. The boy who he kidnapped can now see that Collins doesn’t want him dead and the reader can understand that Collins only wants to get money and rise above his “concrete pasture” victimized way of life.

Nearing the end of the narrative, William “Kid” Collins, attempts to show the reader that he truly never wanted to take part in the kidnapping. Collins, Fay Anderson, and Uncle Bud go to make the exchange of ransom money for the boy they’d kidnapped.

Collins and Fay appear to have plans to betray Uncle Bud by calling the police and letting them know what happened, returning the boy safely to them. He seems to be aware, though, that no matter how good the outcome of the situation, it’s still likely he will be implicated in participating due to his record. Collins makes one last attempt to justify some of his criminal actions to the reader, saying, “…I wasn’t completely responsible for

what I did. I knew what I was doing, so I could be held legally responsible. But I had tried to save the boy’s life—I’d risked discovery and capture to steal that insulin. And it was just possible that I’d been forced to take part in the crime…” (129). He doesn’t want to accept responsibility and uses his one good deed as reason enough to let him off the hook. The reader is able to think through the situation, with Collins reminding them continuously, and see how Collins could be viewed as innocent and was only taking action that was necessary in the conditions he was in.

During the final three pages of the narrative, William “Kid” Collins seems to make the ultimate sacrifice; he puts himself in a position to be killed. He spends a convincing few moments explaining to Fay that he has bad motives and that he’s been lying about his life all along. He tells Fay, “I really had you fooled…I was up for a murder rap…so I went into the act…then I went into the Army…It looked like such a sweet deal that I started working the act full time” (131). Collins explains to Fay that he intentionally plays dumb and when people catch on to his act, he deals with them as he needs to. He goes on to say that he would use mental health institutions as a break from working because he felt mental institutions were similar to a country club. At first it’s hard to see what Collins is trying to accomplish and he almost has the reader convinced that what he’s saying to Fay is the truth; the reader starts to sympathize with Fay, as they’ve been fooled into believing Collins was relatively decent, too. Collins continues to explain to the reader that he was making the story strong to get a reaction out of Fay and that he was glad it was working.

William “Kid” Collins leaves his life in Fay Anderson’s hands during the last moments of the narrative. Collins knew that he would successfully change Fay’s

perception of him and that she would kill him if she had the chance, protecting herself and the boy. Kenneth Payne writes in his article that William “Kid” Collins “is a very rare Thompson protagonist in the way he struggles to overcome his psychological disorder rather than be swept under by it” (Payne 100). Collins knows he will have to die and that he will need to help Fay kill him by making the weapon available to her. While in the car, Collins describes his final moments as he gives Fay the opportunity to end his life. He narrates,

I turned in the seat and opened the door. I slid the gun onto my hip, but not into

the pocket. I let it slip past the pocket—as though I’d missed and didn’t know it—

and down onto the seat. Then I got out, my back turned to her.

There was one shattering explosion, and I pitched forward against the

creek bank.

…And that was the way it should be, I guessed, right where it had always

been. And this—this, what had happened, was, as it had to be. (133)

Collins let Fay have the gun. He made sure that it was possible for her to have a weapon to end his life and that she had motive to do so. Collins also, in this moment, continues to manage the perception of the reader into believing that he’s done something noble. He’s made the ultimate sacrifice and given his life so that Fay and the boy could go off and live happily, without worry of possible blame on her. Payne highlights that “it should be remembered that the “Kid” actually saves two other lives, at the cost of his own” (Payne

104). During these moments, though, it’s easy for the reader to question whether Collins actually did sacrifice his life or if he had altered this part of the narrative to put himself in a more favorable light. It’s just as believable that Fay got hold of the gun on her own,

rather than through an intentional misplace by Collins, and she did have to make a true struggle to kill him and get away. Collins needs the reader to know that not everything bad that happens is his fault; he is only truly responsible for the desire of good outcomes.

46 Charles Bigger

Charles Bigger, or rather Carl Bigelow, of Thompson’s novel Savage Night, holds the most untraditional job of the four narratives discussed in this paper. Lou Ford works in law enforcement, Dolly Dillon is a salesman, and “Kid” Collins is an ex-boxer;

Charles Bigger, on the other hand, is a hit man. His narrative is about one specific hit and he goes by the alias of Carl Bigelow, arguing that it’s just close enough to his name that he’ll naturally respond to it but far enough from his name not to automatically draw suspicion from those who may have heard of him (46). The Foreword of the narrative, written by Mark Winegardner, notes that many of the people Carl Bigelow interacts with

“seem to accept at face value that…[he] is who he says he is—an earnest, humbly dressed young fella named Carl Bigelow who’s about to start classes at the teachers college— because it enables their own ends” (ix). Winegardner’s assessment of some of those that

Bigelow meets in Peardale is accurate and can also apply to the reader; Bigelow’s physical appearance gives him more grace for his wrongdoing and leaves the reader with more moral leeway in their own life, as the reader gauges Bigelow’s decision-making with their own. Carl Bigelow is no different from the other Jim Thompson narrators discussed here, in the sense that he, too, will work very hard for over 200 pages to make sure the reader understands that the crimes he’s committed, and the one he is planning to commit, are necessary even though he doesn’t end up committing the final crime himself.

As a hired killer, Carl Bigelow has little control over his life and he makes that clear from the start of his narrative. Working for a person he refers to as “The Man,” Carl

is a slave. Carl establishes his employer from the beginning, which helps the reader to draw an instant connection with him, as “the man” is often what people refer to as the boss or the system that controls the economic aspect of their life. Carl explains, “I cursed

The Man to myself, calling him every kind of a son-of-a-bitch I could think of. I’d have given everything I had just to be back at the filling station in Arizona. But it couldn’t be that way. It was either me and The Man’s thirty grand, or no me, no nothing” (4). Carl is stuck in a deal with The Man and without following through with the deal he’s in with

The Man he could be killed. He even admits that he would rather do a monotonous job, such as the filling station work he use to do, than be stuck in the situation he is in now.

By calling his previous job a filling station, Carl is connecting with the “9 to 5” working person who might be reading his narrative; he is even able to connect with any individual with a traditional job. He’s a victim to the circumstance of slave labor.

Part of Carl Bigelow’s job in Peardale involves him taking residence there and establishing himself so that he can get close enough to the target to kill him without being suspected. Carl’s plan is to start at a local college and rent a room in the home of the target, Jake Winroy. It’s a little suspicious to be starting in this small town as a mid-year entry, and Carl is constantly managing the perception of the people in town so that they don’t suspect he’s there for a malicious reason. Fay Winroy, Jake’s wife, is flirtatious, forward, and not afraid to question Carl. In responses to her questioning his reasoning for starting at the college, he says, “I don’t really know…It’s hard to put into words. It’s— well, maybe you know how it is. You’ve been doing the same thing for a long time, and you don’t think you’re getting ahead fast enough. So you look around for some way of changing things. And you’re probably so fed up with what you’ve been doing that

anything that comes along looks good to you” (18). Even though later in the narrative it is revealed that Fay wants her husband killed just as much as Carl needs to kill him, this early in the narrative Carl, and the reader, are not aware of that. Carl needs Fay to know that he is a relatable, trustworthy, guy that is going to college because he’s trying to figure life out, the same way the rest of us are. He’s also able to connect with the reader on this level because it’s easy to relate to, and if not specifically relatable it is at least easy to empathize with. Gaining the sympathies of the reader is important to Carl because his whole narrative is about his efforts to kill Jake Winroy and convince the town otherwise. Carl’s description above also draws the reader in to picture the scenario as if it was something they may experience, in describing it with the “you” instead of using “I” in what he says.

Carl Bigelow wants the reader to sympathize with his struggle to create a new life for himself. Carl takes a moment to draw attention directly to his past and his reputation as a killer and makes it seem exaggerated. His reputation as “Little Bigger” is brought up quite a few times and people associate that name with a cold-hearted killer whose brother was murdered. Carl consciously goes out of his way to take the right actions and say the right things so that those who suspect he is Little Bigger don’t feel suspicious of him for too long. In drawing attention to his reputation, he leads in saying, “I finished unpacking, and stretched out on the bed with a true-detective story magazine. I turned through the pages, locating the place I’d left off: …thus the story of Charlie (Little) Bigger, the deadliest, most elusive killer in criminal history” (20). Jim Thompson places the article about his narrator, Carl, in a true-detective magazine, making the facts that are floating around about Carl seem like inflations of the truth. Reporters notoriously exaggerate a

story they’re covering to enhance their piece, and this magazine is likely no exception.

Carl is letting the reader know that he knows what type of information is going around about him and he wants to reader to know he isn’t shying away from it; Carl is admitting to the reader that he has a reputation that is less than glowing but that it doesn’t necessarily define him because, as he has told us, he is just working for The Man because he has no other option.

The fear that Carl Bigelow has of The Man is reflected throughout his narrative; he is continuously reminding the reader that there is no way out of his current situation.

Carl has gone through plenty of trouble to disguise his identity of Charles Bigger; he wears contact lenses, fake teeth, shoes with height lifts, and has gained weight (46). He wants to make sure he is undetected and pulls through for The Man. He says, “Suppose I took sick now, so sick I couldn’t go through with this? The Man would be sore…[if you] screw things up for The Man [and] if they didn’t get you, he would” (46-47). With a traditional job, you’re allotted sick time and could probably manage to take a day to recover. Carl is explaining to the reader that even if he got sick, there is no way to avoid his duties. The Man has made him a victim, slaving with the fear of consequence if he is unable to, or doesn’t want to, complete the job he’s been assigned. He’s also aware that it’s better to work hard and live than give up and die, even though it appears he does the latter at the end of the narrative. In the next chapter of his narrative he says, “When it came to a choice of being nice and dead or crummy and alive, the guy would work overtime at being a heel” (62). Carl realizes that the desire to live motivates people to take on responsibilities to secure that life. The reader knows the importance of life and

what they’ve personally gone through to keep living, which may give Carl a pass as he continues to plan Jake Winroy’s murder.

The Man plays a large role in the narrative, even though he isn’t given a name.

Carl Bigelow fears him and he explains to the reader that nearly everyone else fears or respects him as well. He says, “You’ve heard of the man. Everyone has. There’s hardly a month passes that the papers don’t have a story about him or you don’t see his picture…before some government investigating committee…[or] attending a big political dinner…[he] is a big importer…[and] controls shipping companies, and distilleries, race tracks and jobbing houses, wire services and loan companies” (82). The Man Carl works for represents every “the man” that the reader may have encountered in their life. The

Man is notoriously good, schmoozing with government officials, just as he is notoriously bad, being questioned by those same officials. Carl even mentions that although The Man both supports anti-racetrack laws and controls the tracks, you can’t actually prove that he controls the tracks. Carl is insistent on getting the reader to feel his fear for and dread of disappointing The Man; The Man is the reason behind Carl Bigelow’s, or Little Bigger’s, reputation as a stealthy killer.

The Man has put Carl Bigelow in a position in life where he no longer thinks or consults his conscience before he commits murder. Without some sort of explanation, or several explanations, it’s difficult for the reader to be on board with Carl and his position as a hit man. The reader may come up with a seemingly simple solution: “Well, just quit!” “Run away.” “Don’t let The Man control your life.” Hired killer is a tough pill to swallow but Carl isn’t short of reasons to provide the reader. Before killing Fruit Jar, one of The Man’s workers that The Man tells Carl to eliminate, Carl says how easy it is to

kill. He says, “The trouble with killing is that it’s so easy. You get to where you almost do it without thinking. You do it instead of thinking” (92). Carl highlights how numb you become to the tasks you do for your job; it just so happens that for his job the task is murder. This also shows how easily he is able to do something that he might regret later on. Coincidentally, Carl does question this decision later in the narrative, only to realize that he was likely manipulated into killing Fruit Jar rather than actually doing it to cover his ass, as The Man had made him think.

Carl Bigelow also insinuates that he, like Jim Thompson’s other narrators discussed, has some sort of mental illness. Referred to in the Foreword as a sociopath by

Mark Winegardner, Carl hints at his crazed mentality during his narrative. Carl says,

I could feel it. The hard glaze spreading over my eyes. I could feel my heart

pounding—pounding like someone pounding on a door. Pounding like a scared

kid locked in a closet. I could feel my lungs drawing up like fists, tight and hard

and bloodless, forcing the blood up into my brain

…And no one said anything to me [on the train], so maybe they sensed

what was in me…

…Sure. I knew. Have to watch the temper-temper. So I’d watch it. I liked

to watch it. There was only one thing I’d like better …but everyone saw how

lucky they were. And in a minute or two I’d be alone in my room. And it would

be all right then. (95-96)

Similar to the sickness that takes over Lou Ford when he is in an emotionally compromising position, Carl Bigelow faces the struggle of mental illness. From the way

Carl describes it, it seems as though he was having an anxiety attack on the train. Heart

pounding, glaze over his eyes –fearful and losing control of his emotions as he remembers to check his temper. The anxiety triggers an aggressive reaction in Carl and he mentions that those around him know that they’re lucky he isn’t acting as aggressive as he feels inside. Being a victim of mental illness is more relatable in the case of Carl

Bigelow than that of Lou Ford or the other narrators because anxiety is extremely common. The reader who has felt anxious in their life, especially social anxiety as what appears to be described in this moment, would sympathize with Carl in his moment of weakness. However, the source of Carl’s anxiety and anguish is from the murder he’s just committed, which is not relatable to the reader. Carl is about to interact with Fay Winroy and he snaps at her, yelling and getting physical. The reader is already aware of Carl’s anxiety and understands that the best thing for Carl to do is get out of the crowd and be alone; when Fay robs Carl of that opportunity by unexpectedly being in the hotel room he is anticipating to be alone in, it is more excusable that he loses his temper with her temporarily.

Referring to Carl Bigelow as a sociopath isn’t so far from the mark, as Jim

Thompson sprinkles the sociopathic characteristics throughout the narrative. Carl shares his forced laughs and blushes in conversation with others and he has admitted that he doesn’t put thought in before killing someone. After his interaction with Fay Winroy, though, it’s made very clear that he is completely crazed. Carl starts to fall apart as he and Fay argue. He narrates, “I let the newspapers drop from my hand. I stumbled forward…and made myself start laughing. I whooped with laughter…it was as though a river were washing through me, washing away all the fear and craziness and worry…Once I could start laughing I was all right” (98-99). It’s in a moment like this

that Carl loses the reader, as the reader begins to question his mental health; it’s in this same moment that the reader feels bad for Carl and the mental anguish he struggles with so regularly that he even knows how to calm himself down, with laughter.

It’s no surprise that directly after his mental and emotional breakdown, Carl

Bigelow begins his stalling. More similar to Lou Ford than Dolly Dillon and William

“Kid” Collins, Carl Bigelow begins his stalling midway through the narrative. With still over 100 pages to go, Carl Bigelow begins the 10th chapter, saying, “That next week is hard to tell about. So much happened. So many things that I couldn’t understand—or, that I was afraid to understand. So many things that kept me worried and on edge or scared the living hell out of me” (102). Carl tries to capture back the sympathies of the reader, claiming that he is overcome by fear and worry. He says that so many things happened and he couldn’t comprehend because of how strange and overwhelming it all was. He continues on the page, anticipating his death is approaching by saying, “This might be the first week, but I had a damned good idea that it wasn’t far from the last one”

(102). Carl creates tension and anticipation with the reader, saying that he is near death makes the reader feel sorry for him because, as he mentioned earlier, even the crummiest person just wants to go on living.

Carl Bigelow frames the week to come saying, “That was the week that Jake tried to frame me. It was the week he tried to kill me. It was the week Fay and I began brawling. It was the week Ruthie…” (102). More tension is created as Carl tells the reader an overview of the events that are going to happen in the week to come. The reader is edging on their seat, wanting to know what happens next; the reader wants to know how Carl dies, what his last week was like. Carl, like the narrators before him,

turns back the hand of time to delay his inevitable end. He says, “Jesus! Jesus God, that week! Even now—and what do I have to worry about now?—it rips the guts out of me to think about it. But let’s take things in order. Let’s go back to the Friday before the week began, to Fay and me at the hotel” (103). Carl pumps up the excitement, or torment, that the week to come was for him and then decides, instead of moving forward to narrate about the week to come, he will go back and talk more about the week before, drawing out the time before the week, and of course the end of the week, because he eventually dies. He even implies his death while stalling, questioning what he has to worry about.

The level of stalling continues on the next page as he decides to go back even further to recall another time he had traveled.

In Carl Bigelow’s flash to a time long before he’d been on the hit in Peardale for

The Man, Carl meets a strange writer who owns a farm where he grows “the more interesting portions of the female anatomy” (104). Though Carl needs to give the reader an idea of this place because he later ends up there, and dies there, the description of the farm makes the reader cringe and puts them into a state of confusion, questioning whether this farm actually exists. What seems to happen, as the farmer describes his crops, is the allusion to literature and the act of creating and publishing work. This writer, when speaking of his farm, says, “Bodies. Faces. Eyes. Expressions. Brains. I grew them in a three-dollar-a-week room…And every now and then some lordly book publisher would come down and reap my crop and package it at two-fifty a copy…” (105). Similar to the other Jim Thompson narrators, Carl Bigelow comments on the market for literature, even if it’s through the voice of someone he’s met—we are hearing what the person said through the mouth of Carl anyway. Carl’s end occurs in this place, this farm

in Vermont, which may point to the end of the depth of literature and storytelling because the only thing left growing there, in abundance, is vaginas, the most sexually useful part of the female anatomy. It appears that Jim Thompson stands in as a narrator and comments about the lack of skill of other writers or the lack of mental depth of readers, which brings into question the mental depth of the reader reading these very narratives;

Jim Thompson brings into question the readers moral compass and the level of interest they have in noir and crime drama novels.

Carl Bigelow begins to remind the reader that he is slave to The Man as he tells the details of the next week and how his life starts to spiral out of control. Carl brings The

Man back into the picture and makes sure that the reader understands how bound he is to him, saying, “If you beat the law there was still The Man” (158). Carl knows that he needs to remind the reader of who the real enemy is, especially since he lost the reader slightly during his crazed moment with Fay in the hotel. He then reminds the reader of how unfortunate his life has really been, saying, “I’d been swimming in muck all my life, and I could never quite sink in it and I could never quite get to the other side. I had to go on, choking to death a little at a time” (159). When Carl describes his life in this way, as a true victim of circumstance that it is impossible to rise from, the reader is manipulated to feel sorry for him once again. Carl says that his life is so rough that he is stuck in his circumstance, described as muck, and he neither dies nor rises above it; he is drowning in his own unfortunate life.

As Carl Bigelow ends his narrative, he positions himself as a victim again and reveals that he’ll need to leave Peardale because he wasn’t the one to execute the job he was hired to do. Instead of him killing the target, Jake Winroy, his love interest, Ruthie,

did. He explains, “It was all wrong. The Man wouldn’t like it…But excuses didn’t cut any ice with The Man. He picked you because you were stupid; he made you stupid, you might say. But if you slipped up, you did it. And you got what The Man gave people who slipped. It was done, though, and me, I was done, too” (216). Carl tells the reader that he isn’t dumb but The Man would be upset that Carl didn’t complete the job; it would be

Carl’s fault that Ruthie killed Jake Winroy before Carl could. Carl doesn’t describe the murder because he didn’t get to commit it, though he does say that Jake looked like his neck was destroyed before ending the chapter and talking about his life on the strange farm in Vermont.

Carl Bigelow’s final moments, which are much lengthier than one would imagine, are bizarre and his life seems to end abruptly. Kenneth Payne cites the “ugly vision of horror and chaos” that occurs as Carl “descend[s] into complete psychic collapse before

[his] death” (108). After leaving Peardale, Carl and Ruthie travel to Vermont to stay at the farm he’d heard about from a writer he met while hitchhiking. Carl explains, “I’d never seen the place, just the road that led up to it; and I’d only seen that the one time years before when that writer had driven me by on the way to the train” (218). Carl returns to this place as a retreat from Peardale and an escape from The Man. It’s clear to the reader that a good amount of time passes while Carl and Ruthie are at this farm because Ruthie is pregnant by the end of the narrative. While on the farm, Carl loses most of his vigor; he explains, “The days drifted by, and I wondered what she was waiting for.

And there was nothing to do…except what could be done with ourselves. And I seemed to be shrinking more and more, getting weaker and littler while she got stronger and bigger. And I began to think maybe she was going to do it that way” (220). Carl knew

that she was stealing his life force, his will to live, and while they were secluded on this farm she would eventually end his life, one way or another. Through regular sexual intercourse, Carl’s strength is taken and given to Ruthie, making her stronger and more confident.

Just before Ruthie kills Carl, Carl steps aside from his print-type narrative and speaks truthfully to the reader, saying that he’s being dishonest about the way things were. Toward the beginning of Chapter 22, Carl says that he and Ruthie never talk about anything. He says, “We never talked about anything much…and after a while everything was said that we could say and it would have been like talking to yourself. So we talked less and less, and pretty soon we were hardly talking at all. And then we weren’t talking at all” (221). Carl describes a breakdown in his relationship with Ruthie, even though they didn’t have much of a relationship before this anyway. The lack of communication seems to further break down Carl’s mental stability; although, when the reader continues reading the narrative, it is clear that Carl has lost his mind as he goes back and forth navigating through whether or not he and Ruthie spoke. Carl says, “I said we never talked, but we did. We talked all the time to the goats. I talked to them while she slept and she talked to them while I slept. Or maybe it was the other way around. Anyway, I did my share of talking” (224). Then, on the next page, he admits that, although he’d been talking about goats and his lack of communication with Ruthie, they’d “…been talking all the time, and not to the goats either, because of course there weren’t any goats, and…” (225). When Carl says this at the end of the narrative, it clues the reader in to the victim of mental illness that Carl really is, as it seems as though these final moments are complete delusions rather than truth. Carl’s delusions greatly contribute to

the loss of sympathy the reader has for him. Even though one might feel bad for someone suffering from this great of mental illness, it doesn’t excuse Carl for his position as a hired killer, his previous kills before arriving to Peardale, and killing Fruit Jar for The

Man.

59 Conclusion

Throughout Jim Thompson’s four first-person narrations discussed above, each narrator has questionable moral character: Lou Ford, the sociopathic sheriff who takes matters into his own hands, Dolly Dillon, the door-to-door salesman who can’t seem to be in a romantic relationship without killing his partner, William “Kid” Collins, the mentally ill ex-boxer who kidnaps a sick boy, and Charles Bigger, the hired killer whose reputation precedes him. Thompson’s narrators are not only criminals, but also victims of cultural circumstance who model real ethical dilemmas. The circumstance which they are victims of—mental illness across the board with other specifics by narrator—are relatable to the reader who is able to sympathize with the narrator during their crimes. Each narrator actively attempts to develop a relationship through direct appeals with the reader, allowing the narrators to suggest that they are not deserving of punishment. Although their crimes seem justified, each narrator reveals, through the instability of their psyche, that they are unreliable and thus their pleas for the reader to sympathize with their rhetoric falls short. The reader is often left questioning what they may have done in similar circumstances, as the narrators pose scenarios using the pronoun you, rather than

Thompson implies that the reader is trapped in economic circumstances similar to that of his narrators. He highlights societal flaws and demonstrates how the pursuit of freedom from one’s cultural circumstance bears ethical consequence. Three of the novels’ protagonists become involved in criminal activity in the attempt to break free from

economic determinism. Economic determinism perhaps serves as the points at which the reader is given the most opportunity to empathize with them. These narrators consistently prompt the reader with plausible explanations as to why they need the money they are striving for. This sort of criminal behavior demonstrates the narrators’ attempt to liberate himself from economic circumstance. However, in embracing criminality —plausible though it may seem— the narrators consequently sentence themselves to moral failing and eventual punishment. The reader, in empathizing with the narrators' struggle, is given a parallel, whereby the reader's own economic boundary lines are revealed. The reader is given the chance to consider the consequence involved in crossing his or her own economic borders unethically.

Through each narrator’s criminal behaviors, they appear to break free of their circumstance only to later face consequence in death. Likewise, these narrators anticipate their own demise, as they eventually seem to both understand and submit themselves to a larger, ultimate ethic. Each narrator finds a way to delay their narrative so they can prolong their life through the narrative a little longer and in doing so they show the reader their mental breakdown. Lou Ford is aware that his death is approaching and, in his final moments, thrusts himself in the very situation that ends his life. Dolly Dillon anticipates death, emasculates himself, and jumps out of a window to fall to his end. William “Kid”

Collins purposely puts himself in a position where he creates tension and instigates his murder while providing Fay Anderson with a weapon that kills him. Charles Bigger knows death is inevitable and tells the reader that he is waiting for it to happen just pages before he is killed. The reader understands that the circumstance they, and the narrator, suffer is permanent and the only way to break free of circumstance is through death. This

demonstrates a broader, guiding ethic by which Thompson condemns the actions of his narrators in the hopes that the reader clearly sees the ethical failing of his characters.

While these texts highlight and dramatize crime, the author and the novel as a whole reject the criminal behavior depicted while highlighting a guiding ethical and moral standard that persists throughout Thompson’s work. The Jim Thompson novels that I’ve discussed are ultimately moral novels that are more interested in highlighting the logical reasons that one might attempt to compromise one’s ethical standing for the purposes of personal gain. These novels show the consequence for behavior the narrators’ exhibited, murder and kidnapping, in the attempt to improve their circumstance. In an attempt to improve their circumstance, the narrators each chose to commit crimes against others; these crimes inevitably brought each narrator to a point where they had to face ethical consequence, which shows the reader that happiness can only successfully be attained through moral means.

62 References

Clark, Dorothy G. “Being's Wound: (Un)Explaining Evil in Jim Thompson's The Killer

Inside Me.” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 42, no. 1, 2009.

King, Stephen. “WARNING!WARNING! HITCHHIKERS MAY BE ESCAPED

LUNATICS!” The Killer Inside Me. Mulholland Books, 2014.

Metress, Christopher. “The Emasculation of Narrative Desire: Jim Thompson's A Hell of

a Woman.” Studies in the Humanities, vol. 27.1, June 2000.

Payne, Kenneth. “Billy ‘The Kid’ Collins: Jim Thompson's Enigmatic Savior in After

Dark, My Sweet.” Papers on Language & Literature, vol. 33, 1997.

Polito, Robert. Savage Art: a Biography of Jim Thompson. Vintage Books, 1996.

Thompson, Jim. After Dark, My Sweet. Random House, 1990.

---. A Hell of a Woman. Mulholland Books, 2014.

---. The Killer Inside Me. Mulholland Books, 2014.

---. Savage Night. Mulholland Books, 2014.

Winegardner, Mark. “Foreward.” Savage Night. Mulholland Books, 2014.