Blog Entry #3

In the last half of Double Indemnity, we find out that Walter’s passion towards Phyllis turns into fear as he slowly realizes that he was just a pawn in Phyllis’ game. We also find out that Walter ironically has fallen in love with Lola and that his infatuation towards Phyllis was never genuine.  In order to protect himself from the crime, Walter decides that he must murder Phyllis.  Oddly enough, he is double-crossed when Phyllis gets to him first by shooting him in the chest and Lola and her boyfriend are wrongfully accused of the crime.  Because of his love for Lola and to keep her from being wrongly accused, Walter decides to confess to the murder of Mr. Nirdlinger to his friend and insurance investigator Keyes.  Having confessed to the murder, Keyes decides to help Walter by constructing an elaborate plot in which Walter and Phyllis are both set to flee the country on board a ship that was paid for by the insurance company.  This was done to minimize bad publicity towards the insurance company and to avoid a criminal trial.  The ending of the novel conveys Walter and Phyllis joining each other in committing suicide, which in my opinion was appropriate to the novel.

It felt like the ending to Double Indemnity was unsatisfying.  It was a bit depressing and abrupt, yet it felt like justice was served.  It was depressing in a way because it felt like throughout the whole novel, we viewed the story through the eyes of Walter and it felt like we were meant to identify with him.  He controlled the story and its tone from the beginning and I felt a little support towards him, considering him to be the misled victim.  Don’t get me wrong, he is every bit as much a murderer as Phyllis.  He committed his crime willingly because he thought it would give him something he wanted, just like Phyllis herself.  He is a criminal and the story does not deny that.   I just view his demise as a tragic fall rather than the collapse of a dangerous influence of evil.  The novel also felt like it abruptly ended in a way.  I was intrigued at how the author, Cain built up such a story and a plot that seemed to always grab my attention, but at the end, he unexpectedly makes a really odd choice in his way of ending the story.  His final sentences, “I didn’t hear the stateroom door open, but she’s beside me now while I’m writing.   I can feel her.  The moon” (Cain, Double Indemnity, 115).  It’s not the kind of choice that intrigued me, but it makes me want to know what that meant.  Those last two words just felt like it made everything weirder.  For as straightforward as noir is, the closing sentence felt out of place.  Perhaps Cain purposely did this to leave it open for the reader’s imagination just as he did in describing the murder earlier in the book.  It’s worth that in the end that a twisted sense of justice is done. Walter achieves redemption of sorts, Phyllis is left alone in the hands of Walter where pretty much we can imagine what he will do to her, and the three characters that do show the most moral principle throughout the book come out of it well. 

The book is very similar to the film, however the end is completely different.  It’s one of those books that will leave you in limbo at the end, somewhat unsatisfied. Perhaps both Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder felt the same about the ending of the novel, thus when it came to film it, I think they had to change the ending to make it more satisfying to the audience and movie viewing public.