English literature harrison (Essay Sample)

2135447 Topic category Classics English literature
Work type: Writing
Deadline 9 Feb - 9 PM Title Dashiell Hammett
Number of sources 10
Number of pages 6 Paper format MLA
Course level Bachelor
Type of service Research paper
This paper must be double spaced. It needs a really good introduction and conclusion. It needs paraphrasing and direct quotes and literary criticism. It has to have some depth to it. The paper must be all about dashiell hammett. The writer can refer to some of his novels and works to enhance the paper. There must be a thesis statement underlined at the end of the introductory paragraph. These are the following sources that you must use:
Bloom's
Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.
"Hammett, Dashiell." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2009): 1. MasterFILE
Premier. EBSCO. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.
"HAMMETT, (Samuel) Dashiell." (n.d.): Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia. EBSCO. Web.
8 Dec. 2009.
Reference USA, 2004. 420. Gale Virtual
Reference Library.
"Dashiell Hammett." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Vol. 7. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 106-
108. Gale Virtual Reference Library.
6-9. Gale Virtual Reference Library.
The writer can use any additional sources that will enhance the paper but they must be labeled. The sources should be in parenthesis at the end of every paragraph or so. It depends.
Outline
This paper discusses in details the life of Dashiell Hammett. Hammett was a great novelist of all times despite the fact that he was scantly educated. Having dropped out of school at the age of fourteen, Hammett undertook city life jobs until he later find himself working as a detective, a job which he did not hold, and very soon he quit and started his writing career. He managed to write five novels in total and a couple of short stories. He also helped Hellman to achieve his career goals in the later days of his life. This paper discusses all the above and how he managed to help the country during the first and second World Wars.
Introduction
Dashiell Hammett was a reputable American novelist who is known to have contributed to the world of film and literature. He is also known to have been involved in screenwriting for Hollywood film production (Geoffrey 109). One of Hammett's well known publications is The Maltese Falcon which was produced in 1930 and filmed for three times. This book introduced detective Spade Sam who was investigating the mysterious murder of a colleague and a detective, Archer. In this work, Sam Spade all of a sudden finds himself engaged with some odd characters, all of whom were searching for some black bird statue. In this book, Hammett notes: ‘Samuel Spade had a long and bony jaw, his chin was jutting V under his more flexible V shape of his mouth. His nostrils were curving backwards making another small V. His yellow-greyish eyes seemed horizontal (Wolfe 46). Hammett has been depicted as a great story teller who had a realistic vein for detective stories. His heroes appeared tough and would confront violence through intensive knowledge and a deal of corrupting capability and potential. In all of his novels, Hammett posed a mean image of the American society, where brutality, greed, and treachery appeared to be main driving factors for all human deeds (Geoffrey 39).
Having been born in 1894, Maryland, Samuel Hammett would not continue with his education after the age of fourteen. This is to say, at the age of fourteen, Hammett dropped from school at such an early age, and the next few years would see him holding to a string of jobs in the city. More often that not he would be sacked from these menial jobs (Werlock 38). Later in 1915, Hammett fell upon a vague and intrigue classified advert, and very soon he would find himself working as one of the Pinkerton detectives. He did this job up to 1922 when he stopped being a detective, and instead started writing about detectives. Very soon, Samuel Hammett appeared in the Black Mask magazine, and very soon his novels would become readers’ favourite. Bringing his personal real-life situations as a detective as part of his writing, Hammett is up to this day regarded as one of the founding fathers of the hard-cooked genre which has been intelligently merged with an elevated detective fiction and transformed into literature of the highest level (Mccann 66).
A lot of Hammett’s stories, in one way or the other, featured middle-aged missions of the Continental Detective Agency, which was known as The Continental Op. Sam Spade up to this day has remained as his classical creation of all times, which offers the toughest and shifty detective of The Maltese Falcon. As with The Continental Op, Sam Spade has been based on San Francisco, Hammett’s well known city. From most of the readers who have ever scrutinized Hammett’s work, it has been found out that, if any of his stories mentions some apartment, some building, or a pawnshop, it must have existed, and probably it still does exist (Server 66). Despite the fact that his contributions are very great till this day, Hammett’s career of writing was pretty short. He is known to have had produced exactly four novels, and a number of short stories, between mid 1922 and 1931. This gives just a meager span of exactly nine years. Later in 1934, Hammett came up with a fifth novel known as The Thin Man, and then he would never write any other book since then.
In the years of 1930s, Hammett became active in American politics. He ended up joining the Communist Party and by so doing becoming a strong opponent of the Nazis. However, at the crucial time when Hemingway and some other key writers decided to go to Spain and help their Republican-friends in their Civil War, between 1936 and 1939, Hammett decided to remain in the United States, but tried to help the veterans who had returned from the Civil War. This was the same time was Hellman’s career star was on the rise. Hammett had begun drinking so heavily and it became a problem for him to continue writing, though his support remained crucial and significant for Hellman. Hellman ended up succeeding as one of the greatest playwrights, travelled a lot to countries like Spain and France. During the Second World War, the tubercular Samuel Hammett worked in the army zealously for three years, and here he edited a newspaper that gave information to the troops who had been deployed in Aleutian Islands. This would perhaps be the last moments of his happy life. In the year 1948, Hammett became the vice-chairman for the Civil Rights Congress. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Attorney General deemed the organization totally subversive. Later, Hammett tried to rebuild his writing career, hired a secretary, but he only managed to produce some few notes (Layman 49).
Somebody will have to wonder why Hammett remained so silent without any other publication. Ironically, it will be agreed that Hammett had begun to develop great loathsome of the hard-cooked detective packed genre that he himself had initiated. He had aspired in writing mainstream books which would come to rival the great works of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Since then, Hammett never published any other great book within his last 27 years on earth. In the years of 1950s, Samuel Hammett’s support for the leftist brought him to the limelight of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Before this house, Hammett was called to give a testimony regarding his support for the Lefties, and having refused to mention the names of those who were involved in the movement, he was held behind bars for five months. Because of this happening, Hammett’s was blacklisted, all his books had to be removed from America’s public libraries, and all his radio programmes and shows were cancelled (Layman 85). Hammett’s Career
Hammett has as well gone into the books of history as an individual who had a spectacular career behind himself. Many have been remembering Hammett for his true realism and authenticity. Although he did not school a lot as many writers of his class might have schooled. Most of Hammett’s career experiences will be drawn mainly from his experiences gained at Pinkerton detective operations. He himself once said: ‘all my entire characters have been based on the people I have personally known, or at least know about. (Mccann 71)’ Raymond Chandler was his successor in his literary works. In Simple Art of a Murder, Chandler gives a summary of Hammett’s major accomplishments: ‘Hammett Samuel must have been the real ace performer... many will say that he lacked a true heart, yet, his story, The Glass Key, which he himself thought of deeply depicts his devotion in helping a friend. He was frugal, spare, and a hard-cooked man, and he wrote what only the best writers will be in a position to write. Hammett as well wrote scenes that no man had ever written before (Layman 103).’
The Glass Key produced published in 1930 has apparently been Hammett’s favorite book. The main character in the novel, Beaumont Ned, is partly Hammett’s self-portrait: he appears to be a tall, thin man, and suffering from t...