Use of realism in literature and art

Realism in an American, Fictional story of Detection -- Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest

So, a realist style, you say? How to convey a sense of realism? Use short sentences. Terse dialogue. Deploy words that are direct in their meaning. Don't be stingy with the slang and other types of common and prosaic language. Don't use too many complex metaphors or words many syllables or subtleties. But do use words that have a lot of 'local color.' Use characters that pull no punches when telling the truth, but might be inclined to gives someone a punch in the mouth, when crossed, or even when the character is just in a bad mood. Show rather than tell. "A woman in green and a man in gray." (5) Write how characters sound rather than in the King's English -- a "shoit not a shirt." (3)

All of these literary techniques, when deployed by Dashiell Hammett in Red Harvest create a verbal atmosphere of realism, even if "Personville," also called "Poisonville, " might not be the world the reader 'really' inhabits. (15) Realism is a fictional technique; after all, it does not mean that the story is real, non-fictional, or true to life. One could also argue that as a genre work of fiction, Red Harvest is merely a popular detective novel that obeys conventions of plot, of rising, climatic, and falling action. In its structure, the work is a popular form of entertainment and not really 'realistic' at all. How often does one meet a man like Continental Op, anyway, or use private eyes when one's son is murdered?

But the dark, seedy side to American life, where even the police are corrupt and the press is represented "by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey" rather than a voice of truth, where private citizens must seek justice on their own dime and dollar, gives the novel added force, perhaps not of reality, but as a critique of American society with a force beyond the fictional. (3) True, Hammett's main characters are schematic, in the sense that the frigid, stony blonde in green of the first chapter, the uncouth reporter, the corrupt cop, and the hard-boiled 'dick' Op who narrates the plot are all expected types, stock characters rather than innovations. Still, Hammett does not sugar coat these sock characters lack of morality and reveal any one of them to have a heart of gold later on.

The convoluted storyline of Red Harvest and the obscure motivations of its main characters also make considerable demands upon the reader's intellect and attention, beyond that of usual detective fiction. The reader's suspicions are immediately peaked when cooler than cool Continental Op is hired by his murdered client Donald Wilson's father Elihu. In Op's quest to cleanse the town of crime, the private eye must commit almost as many crimes as the criminals themselves, against his own flexible yet still present sense of ethics, morals, and the law.

The narrator's role in events as a detached, icy participant adds to the sense of the novel as a dispassionate critique, rather than pure pleasure. Even the name, Continental Op, suggests one who is urbane in his operations. He is a man who stands apart from his passions and involvement, even while he provides the camera lens, the focus of the entire novel. It is human nature to stand apart and to wish to be cool -- yet human nature cannot help but sink to the morals of one's environment, despite one's better intentions, the morals of violence and treachery.