Morality In Bitter Medicine V. I.

Secondly, as Cawelti argues, they are emotionally and morally involved with the person or crime. In Bitter Medicine V.I. becomes romantically involved with Peter. Although at first she does not know the role Peter played in the crime and it seems that when she does find out she is able to detach herself from him. However, it is unclear to what extent she could have detached herself. On the one hand, as she realises his involvement she does create a situation in where he can be exposed. Nevertheless, it seems that his suicide is the main catalyst that creates a detachment for her in the crime. She almost faints when he shoots himself1 and at the end of the novel the image of his death remains engraved in her memory.2 The fact then that she

In terms of legality, it seems that positive results excuse the detective's behaviour with the hard-boiled genre having a general attitude of acceptance on this. However, the novels do suggest the fragile position of the detective as it is a matter of making a wrong decision that can turn make their questionable methods turn against them; they might become criminals even though it was not their intention. The implication in terms of morality, suggests the question of morality could be above the law, yet at the same time creates an ambiguous space where the detective's morality has to be genuine as they become the judge of the criminal's fate. Chandler's agues that the hard-boiled detective is a man of honour, yet as argued before, the detective remains on a fine line between legality and criminality and, therefore, it is more complicated than being certain that the detective is good of heart. At the end, the PI have more benefits than the police due to their position of being an outsider and being able to defy the rules, however, they can only get away with it as long as they bring the criminals to justice and remain on the side of legality. Their position is one for superiority compared to the police, yet their position is fragile as their decisions and results have