Social criticism in Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 17 University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar ) course: Twentieth Century Crime Fiction language: English abstract: This essay will explore how social criticism is performed in two novels of Dashiell Hammett. Red Harvest is often described as the first hard-boiled novel giving it the status of a literary landmark. Here the author gives us a clear impression of his characteristic world and his social vision of it. Therefore the novel appears to be an interesting subject to look how this kind of literature employs social criticism. The other book that will be examined here is The Maltese Falcon one of the most popular and best known hard-boiled crime novels ever that has served as a model for many authors. As Robert Shulman argues Hammet gives his social vision its fullest expression in this novel showing his concern with American individualism. Thus as this examination is limited to two works it seems most sensible to use The Maltese Falcon along with Red Harvest for this purpose to produce a good insight into the social criticism in Hammett's books. Before beginning with the study it is necessary to make clear what 'social criticism' is here as the term itself has a wide meaning. 'Social' will be discussed in the sense as the Merriam-Webster dictionary puts it of or relating to human society the interaction of the individual and the group or the welfare of human beings as members of society. This means that in a smaller sense the term 'social' concerns the way the individuals the characters of the novels deal with each other and in a larger sense how the society is organized and how its institutions treat the individual and the group which also brings economic and political components into the scope of the study. The Maltese Falcon and Red Harvest are particularly well suited for such a study as they both use d