>Why the "v motif," the blond Satan look for Spade?
Name, death card
>allusion, but are we supposed to read "SS" too? Is
this a case of pumping
>up the significance?
I suppose 'Spade' drips with significance, those that Bill
mentions, as
well as a spade being a tool for 'digging up' clues; there's
also, I
suppose, something vaguely phallic there too. I don't know
about the
'SS' business, but 'supposed to read' is always a tricky
one---texts
mean whatever they can be made to mean.
However, it's worth thinking about Spade in context; that is,
in the
Hammett ouevre: Spade may simply be a way of marking his
difference from
the Continental Op, who is characterised as short, plump,
nameless,
works for a large organisation. Spade, by contrast, is over
six foot,
is angular, named, and works for a small two-man---whoops,
there goes
Archer---one man outfit.
ED
-- +------------------------------------------------------------------69+ | T H E B I G H O U S E O F K N O W L E D G E | | Home of The Maltese Falcon FAQ v. 3 | | <http://www.ejmd.mcmail.com/-1.htm> |
# # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.