On Raymond Chandler 's "tough Guy"

As one of the most popular hero in the world literature, the image of Tough Man has its own special charms. One of those most popular tough men in the world literature concludes the old man in the novel Old Man written by Hemingway, Yuzhanao in the novel Red Sorghum written by Moyan and so on. Besides novels, the movies also show their great interests on those tough men, such as the Terminator acted by Schwarzenegger, a stern man acted by Takakura. Actually all those tough men are not only show their toughness, but also handsome, thus get much of the fame in the society.All of those images of tough guy can be traced back to the Hard-boiled detective fiction, which made those tough men much popular from the end of 19 century and the beginning of 20 century. With the development of detective fiction, those images of tough men went abroad. Though many writers from different countries give different images of tough man, they have not yet get rid of the prototype influence. As a result, this paper aims to comb those literature works (mainly focus on the works of Raymond Chandler) of tough man, analysis the relative works from different respect, and explore the reasons of the popularity of those tough men, then give the conclusion of the value and meaning of literature research on the image of the tough man.The paper is composed by three parts:Introduction, Text and Conclusion. In the part of the introduction, I give my own understanding of what is tough man, introduce the writing experience and achievements of Raymond Chandler, and the translations of his books and the research on his relative novels.The text will be divided by five chapters. The first chapter discusses Tough man Complex of Raymond Chandler; try to find the reason why Chandler created those images of tough man. The second chapter gives analysis on those tough men in Raymond Chandler’s novels and makes comparation with their counterparts written by Hemingway and Conan Doyle, then show the characteristics of those tough guys in Raymond Chandler’s novels can be generalized as tenderness, detective civilians, new individualism and knight detective. The third chapter gives analysis on the description of violence and death in Raymond Chandler’s novels, and gives further descriptions to show the inevitability of tough man. The forth chapter makes comparative analysis on classical mystery and hard-boiled detective, show the characteristic and style of Raymond Chandler’s tough guy. The fifth chapter shows the nothingness world under Raymond Chandler’pen, and the nothingness of main heroes and plots. All his tough men are infected with American loneliness, everything is actually nothing.On the final, the hard-boiled detective written by Raymond Chandler has many differences compared with other detectives and tough guys in other novels at the same time. For Raymond Chandler, his tough heroes are not only created by personal love, but also created by the society situation. The world war, the corruption of the society, the money worship and so on, all those things help to creat Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective and make it much more realistic. Then, the detective novels not only help people get away from the reality, but also help them face the reality. At the same time, the experience of the First World War for Raymond Chandler also helps his deep understanding on tough guy. For those tough men, they belong to the battle ground. When the war ends, then they lose the meaning of the presence, and then are abandoned. Raymond Chandler helps those abandoned guys reborn, he makes them everywhere. In this respect, the research on Raymond Chandler not only give more discuss on the development of the detective novels, but also the social background. Tracing back the specialty of hard-boiled detective in Raymond Chandler’s novels builds up the specialty of this paper. "He is coldness, cynical and humorous, a tiny civilian but can hold on his views. He holds on nothing while holds on something. He is violent, and he is also tender." All those contradictions build up the richness and specialties of those images. This paper is just show you such a kind of tough world with tough men.