User:Mask of the Universe/The Big Sleep

EDIT the Background Section to include the setting of the novel
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The Big Sleep takes place in the 1930s, and thus was also largely influenced by the massive social upheaval during the interwar period. During the harsh 1930s, the American people lost much faith in the government due to their repeated intervention failures, experienced the rise of gang violence from Prohibition, and endured the severe decline of public welfare from disasters such as the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. Chandler himself was fired from his job at an oil company in 1932, which would lead him to begin writing in the grittier and more cynical hard-boiled genre that mirrored the hardships of its time. In American essayist Herbert Ruhm's introduction to the Black Mask, a hard-boiled magazine that Chandler initially wrote for, Ruhm found that: "...the streets of the cities best reflected the moral disorder of the era. Events were depicted in language of these streets; mean, slangy, prejudiced, sometimes witty and always tough."

Through this time of suffering, people began flocking towards big cities such as Los Angeles—also the setting of The Big Sleep—for work, which consequently made cities hotspots for the new meshing of demographic and socioeconomic changes. As a result, roots of modernity and mass culture began to form in America, slowly eroding old social norms such as the traditional views of masculinity and family. This plays heavily into Chandler's depiction of Marlowe as a chivalrous lone wolf of the old guard, futilely trying to change the world around him.

Themes
Masculinity is at the very core of The Big Sleep. In the very beginning of the novel, Chandler already sets up the masculine characterization of Marlowe when he observes a stained-glass panel portraying a knight attempting to rescue a damsel in distress. Readers have interpreted Marlowe's self-identification with the knight as illustrating a conformity to the chivalrous old views of masculinity. His disdain for queer relationships, such as with Geiger and Lundgren, sheds more light on what delineates Marlowe's masculinity as strictly conforming to the heteronormative perspective.

Marlowe's loyalty to the Sternwoods also caused readers to make connections to themes of family hierarchies and relations. Marlowe's isolation hangs over the entire novel, and readers have inferred that Marlowe's close dedication to his client is his implicit desire to be part of a family, citing Marlowe's continued use of "we" in interrogating suspects as his attempt to integrate himself into the family.