Commentary - Corkscrew, by Dashiell Hammett

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Commentary

Corkscrew, by Dashiell Hammett

There are many different aspects of a novel, which capture a reader’s imagination and make it a good read. However undeniably the most important part of the novel has to be the opening, where the author must use certain methods and techniques to capture the readers intrigue and ultimately draw them into the story.

Almost immediately after starting to read this opening I feel that Dashiell Hammet has succeeded in creating this sense of intrigue by opening her story with very striking yet extremely powerful metaphor, ‘Boling like a coffeepot’. The way that she has used such an extreme state, ‘Boiling’, to describe how someone is feeling has an instantaneous impact upon the reader and the position of it also creates an instant sense of urgency.

We know almost instantly also, that this story is written in the first person and it is this, which helps to get the reader involved with the story. When a story is written in first person the reader is instantly drawn closer to the character as they experience the story through the characters own interpretations and personal thoughts. In this particular story the reader is draw even closer to the character through empathy. There are a few short bland statements which makes the character sound as if he speaks in a distant, bleak tone, there are also several references to isolation and loneliness, ‘I was the only passenger’, ‘..without conversation’, ‘No person was in sight’. Further more one gets the impression that he is out of control of this situation and unable to stop what is going to happen. I feel the phrase ‘…carried me..’ conveys this and also ‘.. we pushed up a long slope, topped a sharp ridge and slid down into corkscrew’. The whole image of descending down a corkscrew I feel portrays his feelings of powerlessness about the situation he is going into.

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Another phrase that I feel evokes empathy is when the character speaks of death so calmly and sounding so unmoved and in different,

‘Not that it mattered – if it got any hotter, we would all blow up anyway, car, desert, chauffeur and I would all bang out of existence in one explosive flash. I didn’t care if we did’.

That last statement would move the reader as they will be so shocked that the character can be so unconcerned of death and ultimately it will make them more intrigued to what is making him feel like this.

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