Analysis of Patricia Highsmith's Character Tom Ripley

The intention of this assignment is to analyse Patricia Highsmith’s character Tom Ripley as a moral being, and the complex position we as the readers are put in when viewing the Ripley character. This assignment will also establish if there is a morality or ideology underpinning Highsmith’s work, and if that ideology is socially reinforcing or purely a subversive one.

Patricia Highsmith is a highly successful female American writer who’s career spanned from “1945 until her death in 1995” (Wilson, 2010). During this period Highsmith was credited with writing 22 pieces, many of which have been recreated into successful film adaptations. According to The New York times (2013) Highsmith specialised in murder and physiological intrigue novels. Critics often categorised Highsmith’s genre as crime fiction (Peters, 2003), but by her own admission she disliked this tag. Greene cited in The New York Times (2013) stated that a more accurate description of her style is that “she creates a world of her own, an irrational and claustrophobic world, which we as the readers enter each time with a sense of personal danger”. This ideology presented by Greene is particularly apparent in the Ripley series. The Ripley series conforms to all descriptions of Highsmith’s writing style and personal idiosyncrasies. It is a thrilling five-book trilogy cast around a young attractive male who is an opportunistic killer named Tom Ripley. Mr Ripley has been orphaned from age five and is a master con artist and impersonator. Throughout the series the audience is presented with a man free of a conscience, who actively engages in a variety of law breaking activities, varying from petty theft to cold-blooded murder. ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ is the first of the Ri...

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Starr, J, 2012, What’s to like about Tom Ripley?, Viewed 14 November 2013, http://www.weeklylizard.com/blog/2011/03/17/whats-to-like-about-tom-ripley/ The New York Times, 2013, Patricia Highsmith, viewed 12 November 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/patricia_highsmith/

Silet, C, 2012, Patricia Highsmith’s, Thomas Ripley, viewed 17 November 2013, http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/ripley/

Bronski, M, 2000, The subversive Ms Highsmith and the Talented Mr Ripley, viewed 16 November, http://www.zcommunications.org/the-subversive-ms-highsmith-and-the-talented-mr-ripley-by-michael-bronski.html

Wilson, A, 2010, Beautiful shadow: a life of Patricia Highsmith, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

Peters, F, 2003, Proximity in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Novels, Cultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness: Wrath, Sex, Crime 3: 189.