B&B

As I was browsing through some poetry I came across this poem by Gjertrud Schnackenberg:

Signs

Threading the palm, a web of little lines
Spells out the lost money, the heart, the head,
The wagging tongues, the sudden deaths, in signs
We would smooth out, like imprints on a bed,

In signs that can’t be helped, geese heading south,
In signs read anxiously, like breath that clouds
A mirror held to a barely open mouth,
Like telegrams, the gathering crowds-

The plane’s X in the sky, spelling disaster:
Before the whistle and hit, a tracer flare;
Before the rubble, a hairline crack in plaster
And a housefly’s panicked scribbling in the air.

——–

Well this poem made me think about the signs and clues in the movie. My first thought was that the movie began by giving Paul just as much of a motive to kill Taylor Henry as the senator. The fight between Taylor and his father is mentioned much earlier in the movie then in the novel and I’ve been looking for other little clues throughout the movie. Things do not really seem as subtle as a “hairline crack in plaster” because I already know who really killed Taylor. It is not hard to look back and surmise that the reason Raulph is so supportive of Paul is because Paul is covering up for him. I guess, like they say, hindsight is 20/20.

I think that Paul seems a little bit blind to signs in the movie. One scene, in Ned (Ed)’s apartment, he picks up Janet Henry’s gloves, which have her initials, in very large letters, on them. He is oblivious and does not notice or even think that they could be hers. Also, he completely misses how Janet feels about Ned. In the scene at the senator’s house, Janet is “cutting” Ned very obvious glances. Paul is so concerned with his story about his newspaper job that he,again, doesn’t notice. He just goes on thinking Janet is in love with him. Janet says that they are not announcing their engagement until after the election and Paul never seems to think that she could just be using him.

So… This first post is going to be on The Glass Key, which I just finished. As I was reading the book tonight, a few things caught my eye. First, on page 162, I noticed that Madvig was being referred to as “the blond man”. At first I thought that there was some character in the scene that I had somehow overlooked. The reason this grabbed my attention is because Madvig is a main character and he had never been identified by this characteristic before. Also, blond hair is such a common, unspecific way of describing a prevalent character. The scene in which this is occuring is an important scene. Beaumont manipulates Madvig into confessing that he killed Henry. I thought that Hammet might have done this to excentuate the idea that even though we see the surface of someone, or on the surface Madvig confesses, we do not know more than what we see or have been told. After finishing the novel, I feel like there is more this subtle choice. When Beaumont comes out and explains that it was in fact the senator that killed his own son, it is obvious that Beaumont knew that Madvig didn’t kill Henry, yet he pushed him anyway. I feel like Hammet saying that Beaumont “frowned at the blond man” really emphasizes this. He is smiling at the surface, at the facade, and the entire person. Hammet really plays with this idea of hidden feelings, facts, and underlying conditions. He seems to believe that there is always something unexpected, whether it be a person or the truth, hiding behind a door that one needs to choose to open.

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