RARA-AVIS: Sadistic Spade

E J M Duggan (eddie.duggan@suffolk.ac.uk)
Fri, 05 Dec 1997 20:49:46 -0800 On Thu, 4 Dec 1997 billha@ionet.net (Bill Hagen) wrote:

[SNIP]
>If so, it seems to go along with a mockery or disdain of others' emotion,
>and getting them to play their emotional hand. He laughs at Brigid's
>tears. Streak of sadism? (Bogart certainly communicated that attitude.)

I think Spade is thoroughly sadistic.
As Bill Hagen points out, he laughs at Brigid O'Shaugnessey; he also
takes obvious delight in humiliating both Wilmer and Cairo. He grins as
he thumps Cairo in an early part of the novel; he deliberately
humiliates Wilmer by disarming him in the symbolic double castration.
Spade deepens the this further by referring to the humiliation in the
presence of other (for example, referring to his disarming of Wilmer; to
his searching of Cairo).

Spade has no affection for Iva---perhaps his sleeping with her is a way
of 'humiliating' Archer?

There are probably more examples---I'm doing this from memory (I *will*
try to re-read the novel before this thread is done!)

ED

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