Rhetoric in Practice Literature & Language Essay Paper

Analyzing James M. Cain's 1943 Crime Novel: Double Indemnit Your Name
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May 22, 2020
Rhetoric in Practice
James M. Cain's 1943 crime novel, Double Indemnity, tells the story of Walter Huff, an insurance agent who falls in love with Phyllis Nirdlinger. She had initially come his way to inquire about her husband's accident insurance, whom, as it is later on revealed, she is planning to murder. Intrigued by the charming Phyllis and the promise of sex, he finds himself thrown into a rabbit hole of crime, deceit, and betrayal by agreeing to help her commit the perfect crime.
Despite being able to do the crime, circumstances led to their plans backfiring on them. As Barton Keyes, an insurance company, claims manager becomes more and more suspicious of the two. Walter decides to kill her. Unbeknownst to him, she too is planning the same. After a series of ambushes and both trying to kill each other, they find themselves jumping off a ship, killing each other, and thus ending the story.
The next novel, Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress tells the story of Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, an African-American man and a World War II veteran who had just lost his job, only to find himself embroiled in a world of racism, murder, sex, corruption, and deceit. He finds himself employed later on by a man named DeWitt Albright and is tasked to find a woman named Daphne Monet, who is revealed to have stolen a considerable amount of money from a man named Todd Carter.
In his quest, he found himself as a suspect of a murder, and when he finally finds the elusive Daphne Monet. Albright is revealed to be interested in the money too. After some more adventures, they find out that Daphne Monet isn't actually what she says she is but is actually a racially ambiguous looking African-American woman and a sister of a local gangster named Ruby Hanks. Easy takes a third of her money through blackmail and later on threatens Todd Carter that he will leak the fact that he was in love with an African-American woman, something considered taboo at the time unless Carter makes sure that he is protected from the law. In the end, Easy ends up taking detective work, and Daphne/Ruby disappears forever.
Both novels have essential characteristics often associated with crime fiction. Both novel's plots center on a crime that sets a series of events, some unfortunate, in motion. The main protagonist is male, who is spurred into danger by a beautiful, tempting woman. The presence (or in the case of The Devil in the Blue Dress, the lack thereof) of a tremendous amount of money also contributes as a prime motivation for the characters of the story.
Interestingly, it is not only the femme fatales of the story that shares commonalities. Both novels' protagonists are anti-heroes, opposite of the typical valiant and honorable lead male character. In this case, Walter and Easy are, in one way or another, criminals. But these acts are offset by those done by the femme Fatales of the story.
In this essay, I will talk draw a comparison between the relationships of the male anti-hero and the femme fatale who lived in a world of chaos and disorder, corruption and insecurity, and how only one of them is redeemed and the ...