Hey everyone, thought I would throw my Analysis in here today (I left it unedited to show how my original thought process went). Hope to see everyone else’s soon! Enjoy 🙂
Second Analysis: Further Investigations
“Cairo coughed a little apologetic cough and smiled nervously with lips that had lost some of their redness. His dark eyes were humid and bashful and very earnest. “I intend to search your offices. Mr. Spade. I warn you that if you attempt to prevent me I shall certainly shoot you.”
–Mr. Cairo, Pg. 45 2nd Paragraph
Within the noir genre, and more specifically The Maltese Falcon, there are heavy hints at what society (at the time) thinks of gender, sexuality, and masculinity. This passage is able to get the point across that the new character, Joel Cairo, is mainly feminine and fragile. Characteristics that represent a character as a man or a women are suddenly blurred together in a way that makes it hard to tell if Mr. Cairo were a man or women if the terms “his” or “him” were omitted entirely.
His persona is distinctly less firm or even confident when it comes to every action as compared to Mr. Spade. As a “man” that is holding another person at gunpoint he coughs apologetically and even smiles in an unsure manner. A man can’t be unsure in a time of pressure or potential combat or reveal some form of weakness like a smile. What kind of tough guy (more like punk) is this? Clearly Hammet doesn’t think he is at all, adding to it that he has bashful and earnest eyes that just bash their eyelashes at the detective. Whereas Spade’s yellow and firm gaze would likely punch the guy out cold then come up with a snarky remark about how he wants to blow the man’s brains out.
The underlying message behind these distinctions within this character is that (at the time) being homosexual, or potentially homosexual, was the exact opposite of being a man and possibly even worse than a women. Someone who doesn’t belong and is a disgrace to what they are trying to do in life, or in this case threaten a man at gunpoint (using a gun he likely hasn’t the foggiest how to use) and get what he wants. The entirety of the situation both in and out of the passage comes and hits Cairo harder than he can possibly comprehend, both physically and mentally, due to his frail and feminine demeanor.
What does this mean for the story overall? Well, if Spade wishes to succeed he must be a strong and confident man (which he more or less already is). This pattern of masculinity plays alongside the gender divide, now placing the separation of characters in a three way split, revealing that this story and other Noir stories like it rely on a man, a “real” man, a character that has to face attacks and deal with the obstacles of silly women and pathetic men.