Red Harvest Violence Quotes

During his investigations into Donald's murder, the Op learns that Elihu was responsible for hiring thugs to help him put an end to a labor strike. Afterwards, the thugs weren't willing to give up their power, which means that violence doesn't always offer the best solution to a problem. Clearly, it backfired on Elihu because he couldn't rat out the thugs since he was the one who hired them in the first place.

This quote is our only clue as to why Hammett titled the novel Red Harvest. The Op plans on getting everyone to turn against each other so that they'll all spill each other's blood and do his dirty work for him. Take a look at "What's Up With the Title?" for more on the significance of the title.

You don't want to mess with the big shots or else you're liable to find a knife sticking out of the back of your neck like poor Ike Bush here. Bush decided not to take a dive during the fighting match (and a lot of money was riding on him to lose the fight). When you don't follow orders, then you'd better watch your back.

The Op gets ready to go with Noonan to Whisper's supposed hideout. The cop cars are loaded with guns and rifles. Hammett gets us ready for the impeding gunfight scene by drawing our attention to all the heavy ammunition.

Noonan's men fire round after round of bullets into the warehouse where Whisper is supposedly hiding. Notice the sinister comparison here of the machine gun to a "death factory," churning out corpses by the dozens. The novel itself can be read as a kind of death factory as well, given the fact that several dozen bodies are killed.

All this blood and death is finally getting to Noonan. In one of his rare moments of vulnerability, Noonan expresses his disgust with all the killing and we actually find ourselves sympathizing with him. What does Noonan's disgust reveal to us about the dangers of violence?

That's a lotta names, half of which we don't remember or haven't even heard of. What's the deal? Hammett seems to be intentionally trying to confuse us or throw us off with this proliferation of dead bodies. It's impossible to remember all their identities, so we become numb to the violence. Hammett might even be riffing off of the stereotypical "Who done it?" mystery, where instead of tracing a murder down to a single murderer, we can't keep track of who was killed or who did the killing.

This is probably the only moment in the novel when the Op expresses actual feelings of regret for his role in starting all the violence. He tells Dinah how he could have chosen other methods, but that the "best" way involved a lot of killing. Do you buy this explanation? Has Personville poisoned the Op with bloodlust, or is he only making excuses for himself?

Try to imagine that you're filming this scene and you're looking through the camera lens. First zoom in so that all you can see is the Op's head as he wakes up. Then move the camera slowly down along the Op's right arm and pause at his hand, which is holding a wooden handle. Then very slowly, move the camera along the handle until we realize that it's an ice pick, and trace the curve of the blade down to where it's buried in Dinah's chest. So what was the whole point of that visual exercise? Well, besides the fact that it's fun pretending to be a cameraman, the way Hammett builds up the suspense in this moment is masterful. We don't realize what is happening until the first last second when it dawns on the Op that Dinah is dead.

This is the moment of reversal when the Op goes from being the hunter to the hunted. He is wanted by the police, and he can't even remember if he killed Dinah. The line between villain and hero is at its most hazy in this moment.