In Noir: Where the Weather Plays Its Role
For most of the time, weather rarely plays an important role in literature, but that is not the case in noir fiction. In noir, a writer is a mastermind; every factor presents in his or her story will have its own purpose, even the weather itself. However, despite of importance roles the weather plays in noir, it is portrayed uniquely and distinctively in classic noir stories depending heavily on the style of each writer such as Raymond Chandler’s in “Red Wind” and James M. Cain’s in “Double Indemnity”. Since it is portrayed differently in those stories, the weather, therefore, carries two different goals. Chandler’s hot buzzing Santa Ana wind acts more like a justification for actions of the characters,…show more content… Porter’s essay: “The End of Trail: The American West of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler” mentions the Old West and how violence and corrupted society become its culture. The “Golden West”, as he called the California during Gold Rush period, is a “disappointments of reality”. The “reality” Porter refers to is the time when environment is “plundered and pillaged” as the result of wealth yielding up; geographic and social mobility lead to “rootlessness”; mobility brings “postponement or evasion of problems”, fears and problems are as much as hopes and dreams. This can be related to the exact California during the Great Depression, of how social failure can bring corruption, depression, despair, anxiety and more risky dreams. In “Red Wind” L.A., the reader can see many broken lives of the reality, how disappointment destroys hopes and morality, and how the wind becomes plagued with red of violence and blood. Indeed, it is Red Wind that causes murders, corruptions, and adultery; it is Red Wind that L.A. becomes a battlefield of criminals, the police and femme fatales who stand together against the society they are stuck with. Indeed, Red Wind is a symbol of disappointment, immorality and reality. Red Wind is the Great