Wealth, Status, and Social Mobility Theme Analysis

Every character in The Big Sleep fits into a specific socioeconomic class, which determines their respective roles in the dark underworld of 1930s L.A. During his mission to find out who is blackmailing his client, private detective Philip Marlowe meets a wide range of characters and sees firsthand how wealth and status give clear advantages to the figures running the city’s various rackets. Meanwhile those who start out with nothing struggle immensely to improve their lot. The novel suggests through this lack of social mobility that the American Dream itself is a lie, as those at the bottom rungs of society can never get a foot up while those at the top can never be taken down. In fact, the novel goes so far as to suggest that such unfairness is built into the fabric of American society, whose functioning requires keeping the powerless firmly entrenched in their low social positions.

A shabby private detective, Marlowe belongs to a “soldier” class, available for hire. Such a position grants him access into the upper end of the societal spectrum, yet this is only temporary. Wealthy racketeer Eddie Mars tells Marlowe: “I wish old Sternwood would hire himself a soldier like you on a straight salary.” Mars’s comment classes Marlowe as an underling, whom the superior General Sternwood can “hire” to do his bidding. Money talks in this world, as Mars considers Marlowe someone to be bought, rather than an equal.

Chandler extends this metaphor, as Marlowe equates himself with a knight in a chess game he plays alone in his sparse apartment: “The move with the knight was wrong […] Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights.” The chess game reflects the wider, symbolic battle for dominance taking place within the city. Each player is vying for victory, and Marlowe believes the game is too big and complicated for him to win alone; knights—like Marlow—do not win. They ensure their king survives. This, in turn, is symbolic of the way in which the upper class relies on lower-class individuals like Marlowe to maintain their power.

In the hallway of the Sternwood mansion, home to Marlowe’s clients, the detective sees a “knight in the stained-glass window still wasn’t getting anywhere untying the naked damsel from the tree.” Marlowe’s focus on the knight’s stasis and ineffectiveness reveals his own feelings of powerlessness, as he is unable to put right the wrongs he sees in the world. His low social standing and therefore limited influence cannot interfere with the plans of more powerful men.

In contrast, L.A.’s elite are untouchable. Marlowe’s client, the wealthy and aged General Sternwood, does not need to lift a finger to ensure his intentions are fulfilled. At the end of the novel, Marlowe reflects: “He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting.” Sternwood’s “bloodless hands” represent the fact he can pay others to do his dirty work. As he lays calmly in his luxurious “canopied bed,” in contrast to Marlowe’s fold-down wall bed, the old man’s wealth and status protect him; he can hire “soldiers” like Marlowe to defend his reputation and so maintain his social position.

Mars is another figure among many untouchable, wealthy men who, Chandler suggests, will never be knocked down. At the Missing Persons Bureau, Captain Gregory tells Marlowe: “I’d like to see the flashy well-dressed muggs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred hard guys [...] You and me both lived too long to think I’m likely to see it happen.” Like Sternwood’s symbolically clean hands, Mars has manicured hands, as his hired men get their hands dirty on his behalf.

Meanwhile, those who start out with nothing are unable to drag themselves out of the gutter. The grifter Joe Brody, whom Marlowe considers “smart,” fails to steal Geiger’s pornography racket from under him because he does not have the resources to perceive or control the wider situation. Instead, Brody ends up shot for a murder he didn’t commit. Brody’s failure is a direct contrast to the wealthy elites, who have the resources to remain informed of and distanced from the city’s complex web of criminality. Another self-identified grifter, Harry Jones, is assassinated by Mars’s solider Lash Canino, for getting into a game that’s too big for him. Canino tells Jones his “mistake” was contacting Marlowe, which “Eddie don’t like.” The wealthy elite seek to retain their power and stamp out any upstarts that intrude on their territory.

In The Big Sleep, money means power, which in turn ensures and maintains social status. Wealthy men have the resources to distance themselves from the moral filth of L.A.’s criminal underworld, regardless of their complicity in its doings. Their hired men protect the “well-dressed” figures’ good names and reputations on their behalf. Meanwhile, “slum-bred hard guys” and even “soldiers” are unable to pull themselves out of the “nastiness,” and feel powerless to change this status quo. Chandler argues that this arrangement has become central to life and identity in 1930s America, as even law enforcement cannot imagine the playing field being leveled in the criminal world.