The Maltese Falcon Teaching ideas, 9/07
Created by Wendy Low, Director of Youth Education & Outreach
Writers & Books
585-473-2590 x109
wendyl@wab.org
INITIAL Pre-Reading QUESTIONS for written and/or oral group response:
A. Discuss the events, social movements, and “isms” of the early twentieth century.
B. What qualities do you think make a man admirable?
C. How do you decide whom to trust?
D. Individual moral framework, to be filled out for discussion:
Someone asks or invites you to do something that is tempting but morally questionable. Which factors most influence whether you will do it or not? Rate them on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most powerful.
__Universal human nature to give in to temptation.
__Personal loyalties to the people involved.
__My individual gut reaction and how the decision makes me feel at the time.
__The desire to satisfy my own immediate needs and desires.
__What I think will benefit me most in the long run.
__The practical odds of getting away with it without punishment.
__My individual conscience and what I assess as right or wrong in thinking through a situation.
__The desire to be seen by myself as a good person and keep a guilt-free conscience.
__The desire to assert my free will.
__The desire to “fit in” with others.
__Values and standards of behavior shared by my general community.
__Values and standards of behavior learned in school.
__Values learned from my family.
__Values learned from my spiritual community and leaders
__A code of conduct shared by my friends.
__Law and fear of legal consequences.
__My higher power: “God” or whatever spiritual powers exist.
Assess and compare the following forces in terms of their degree of responsibility for human happiness or misery:
__Universal human nature
__Factors in the natural and architectural environment
__Individual character
__Individual Free Will
__Luck
__Fate
__Destiny
__Love
__Familial relationships and loyalty
__Friends and Community relationships and their loyalties and betrayals
__Purposeful work and its success or failure
__Ethics and morals
__Law and legal and governmental institutions
__A higher power: “God,” “The Devil,” or whatever spiritual powers exist
Literary issue questions:
1. The use of an objective narration “fly on the wall” or camera style. The use of facial and gestural close-ups to characterize and its connections to film watching.
2. Mystery and Suspense Genre Novel. Note the places where the narration misleads the reader. Note also the use of stories within stories to delay the action and add suspense to the narrative on key plot points.
3. Is the objective style particularly appropriate to the mystery genre?
4. Serial writing was paid by the word. Hard-boiled writing is terse. Does Hammett ever waste words in this novel? Is there anything that breaks the tension or seems not to contribute to the plot, characterization or themes?
5. Is Sam Spade, the model for hundreds of hard-boiled tough-guy morally ambiguous heroes, an original, or does he have antecedents? Who are his best-known descendants?
6. “Bad girls” in 19th century literature tend to be sentimentalized as misled lost sheep and self-sacrificing Mary Magdalene types. What historical factors led to the birth of the Femme Fatale? Does she have antecedents? Who are Brigid’s best-known descendants?
7. If “the Flitcraft parable,” is, as it is called, a parable, what does it mean and for whom is it intended?
8. In what ways does this story comment on or resonate with the ideas of knights and Crusades and damsels in distress and holy quests? What other Christian symbolism is there, and what is its meaning?
9. How does knowledge of historical events, movements, and ideas from the turn of the century through the 1920s contribute to a deeper understanding of the sources, appeal and impact of this story? Mass immigration from Europe and elsewhere? Urbanization and the decline of rural community values? World War I and industrialized trench warfare? Existentialism? Prohibition, bootlegging and the decline in law-abiding among average citizens? Easy money and the valorization of wealth (the book was written just before the 1929 stock market crash and published just after it.) Women’s rights? Flapper era sexual liberation? Darwinism? Nietsche’s “death of God”?
10. Two of the characters are homosexual. Are they gratuitous stereotypes, is their homosexuality there to add “color” to the story, or is their homosexuality important to plot and to characterization of other characters?
11. What Darwinian attitudes and ideas that are precursors to Fascism are articulated or suggested in the story? Look particularly at Gutman.
Character issues questions:
1. Does Sam Spade trust anyone? Why do people like Effie Perrine and Luke and Tom Polhaus like and trust Spade?
2. What is the point of Spade’s discussion with the taxi driver?
3. Why is Spade such a cynic? Is it his native temperament? His upbringing? What in his personal life or his historical milieu could have made him cynical? What is Spade’s attitude and relationship to Christianity? To democracy? To law? To capitalism?
4. Has Sam ever really fallen for Wonderly/LeBlanc/O’Shaunnessy? At what point does he suspect that she killed Miles, in your estimation?
5. Is Brigid merely selfish and clever, or is she a full-blown sociopath?
6. Do Gutman or Cairo have any principles?
7. Why does Spade keep needling Wilmer Cook?
8. Is Spade tempted by the falcon? By Brigid? Would he cross the line for either or for both together?
9. Does Spade believe in anything? What is his code of conduct? What are the sources of his code of conduct? What does he gain from having one?
10. Is Sam spade happy? Is he proud of his life?
11. What do you make of Sam’s pet names for the women in his life?
12. What is Sam’s relationship with Effie? What do we learn about him from it?
Resources
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Teaching Ideas
Created by Wendy Low, Director of Youth Education & Outreach
Writers & Books
585-473-2590 x109
wendyl@wab.org
