Dashiel Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” (1929) is a devastating critique of the American Dream. Often seen as a straightforward detective novel, a closer contextual reading reveals a damning indictment of American capitalism and society.
At the heart of the novel is the quest for the Maltese
Falcon, an elusive golden statute encrusted with highly precious stones. The
falcon is never seen, never found, always slipping through the hands of the
pursuers and melting away, like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow. There is little evidence it actually exists, but the treasure hunters
seek it obsessively, and great financial and physical cost to themselves. What
is this if not the perfect metaphor for the American Dream, the promise of
wealth and happiness that so many Americans pursed (and pursue) but can never
quite attain? When the gang think they have at one point found the statue, it
turns out to be a fake, lead instead of gold. Hammett is surely saying that the
American Dream, like the falcon, is a myth and a fake.
The falcon is also the loot of imperialism, made from gems
and gold stolen by the Crusaders: “For years they had preyed on the Saracens,
had taken nobody knows what spoils of gems, precious metals silks, ivories –
the cream of the cream of the East. Hammett identifies the Crusades as not a
matter of religion, but plunder: “We all know that the Holy Wars to them, as to
the Templars, were largely a matter of loot”. (483)
In Hammett’s prohibition-era America, society is unjust and
intolerant. The police in Hammett’s novel are incompetent and corrupt, agents
of a corrupt and unjust society. At one point Spade tells Iva, Archer’s widow,
in relation to talking to the police “Maybe it’d be best to say “no” right
across the board”. This was Hammett’s response (in effect) when question by the
McCarthy investigation into communism in the arts in America in the 1950’s (to
be precise, he pleaded his 5th Amendment rights to all questions”) a
stance which eventually landed him in jail. The novel ends with Spade turning
his lover into the police, and turning his back on love, another rejection of
the romantic illusion of middle class life.
Or is this all nonsense? Does knowing that Hammett was a
communist, was black-listed, and jailed for his politics make such a reading of
“The Maltese Falcon” sustainable? I have to admit I had never thought of it as
a critique of the American Dream until I read a short biography of him. Until
then I thought of it as a straightforward albeit genre-defining detective
novel. Is contextual analysis, in which the author’s life is mined for lenses
through which the novel can be read, a sensible approach to reading? I confess
until now, I thought not, but the idea that the falcon is a metaphor for the
American Dream is a pretty powerful one.
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