Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Anthony Channell Hilfer

SOURCE: "'Not Really Such a Monster': Highsmith's Ripley as Thriller Protagonist and Protean Man," in Midwest Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 4, Summer, 1984, pp. 361-74.

In the following essay, Hilfer characterizes Tom Ripley as a particularly "subversive variation on the possibilities of a suspense thriller protagonist" as well as a "strikingly original exemplar of a contemporary character type, protean man."

Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith's most memorable character, is a problem from the conventional point of view, an opinion enunciated, for instance, by Simone Trevanny, a character in Highsmith's Ripley's Game, for whom his appeal makes no sense: "'I cannot understand. I cannot,' she said. 'Jon, why do you see this monster.'" Her husband, Jon, surrogate to Highsmith's bemused reader, reflects, "Tom was not really such a monster. But how to explain?" How indeed? Tom may not be a monster or at least such a monster but Simone's view of him...
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