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Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep

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Blackmailing a person often ends in the blackmailer receiving cash from a particular person in order to prevent the release of private information to the public. Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep depicts a wealthy family that hires a private detective in order to take care of a case that involves blackmailing the family to gain money. The author, Chandler, illustrates that people struggling economically will do just about anything to receive money through the conflicts that arise in his novel. Chandler’s message interests his audience greatly due to the fact that many adults living in the United States are able to understand the reason behind every character’s action. As a matter of fact, “four out of [five] U.S. adults struggle” economically, …show more content…

Raymond Chandler published his book in the year 1939, the same time period in which the Great Depression, years 1929 to 1939, took place. During the Great Depression, the Western world experienced an economic decline in which many lost their jobs resulting in an increase in unemployment. As a result, many did not have a source of income which ultimately led Chandler to base his novel on the effects of the economic decline. The effects of the economic downfall parallel to the characters in the novel by trying to manipulate others into sending ransom money through blackmailing. They do just about anything, including illegal crimes, in order to “gain a little dough” (Chandler 84). The protagonist, Philip Marlowe, begins to realize that all the cases involve the only outcome of gaining money. Therefore, the characters are in desperate need of money similar to the people during the Great Depression. Ultimately, because Chandler derives his novel on real events, this actually makes the novel worth reading because anybody from our time of day can easily relate to the characters conflicts because of experiencing problems dealing with financial

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