Exploring Narrator-Reader Relationships with Jim Thompson’s Victims of Circumstance: Lou Ford, Dolly Dillon, William “Kid” Collins, and Charles Bigger

By examining Jim Thompson’s novels, published between 1952-1955–The Killer Inside Me, A Hell of a Woman, After Dark, My Sweet, and Savage Night–this essay interrogates the relationship created between the narrator and the reader, how the narrator–and Thompson in turn–highlights certain societal flaws, emphasizing how ethical consequence is born out of the attempt to attain freedom from one’s cultural circumstance–both in terms of economic restraint and mental health status. Through this, Thompson implies that the reader is trapped in similar economic and ethical predispositions. The reader is often left questioning what they might have done, or been able to do, in similar circumstances. This creates a larger frame by which Thompson implies that the reader is trapped in similar economic and ethical pre-dispositions as his narrators. He highlights societal flaws, demonstrating how the pursuit of freedom of one’s cultural circumstance bears ethical consequence.
2018
Includes bibliography.
Degree granted: Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018.
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection