The Girl With the Silver Eyes

The Girl With the Silver Eyes by Dashiell Hammett was another example of the typical hard-boiled story. I found this plot to be less interesting than previous ones that we have read. This story had less mystery and far less interesting characters. I feel that the mystery wasn’t even really a mystery. The detective seemed to know everything about Jeanne Delano before the reader even did. He knew about her previous involvement in the crime scene and the murders that arouse from it.

It was interesting to me that Hammett referred to Jeanne various times as “the girl with the silver eyes.” This is at first how the detective recognized her at the White Shack even though she had altered her outer appearance she was still distinguishable by her eyes. This dark, silver-gray color that identifies her, puts her in the light of a criminal. Each time she made a move, Hammett was sure to describe her eyes in that moment as remaining silver as they had always been. Regardless of what she did to disguise herself, it didn’t matter. Her eyes were enough. This could mean that it is impossible to escape from your past once again; a common theme that is found in most hard-boiled stories.

I took the “silver eyes” to mean snake like. “A slimy reptile whose highest thought had been a skinful a dope had gone grimly to death that she might get away-“(page 976). This quotes supports my opinion of her snake like motives. Jeanne, formerly known as Elvira, did everything in her power to slither away from situations in which she felt she could do so with her beauty. I also took her to have the personality of a snake when the detective describes the way that she had whispered in his ear at the end of the story.

I feel as though this short story is found in the third section of this collection of stories, The Dames, because it is clearly about Jeanne and her ulterior motives rather than a male character and his antics in crime. I never once thought of her to be innocent like the damsel in distress; she was always more of the femme fatale to me even though some of the other male characters alluded to the fact that they thought she may have been helpless. This story veered away from the other stories we have read solely due to the fact that the main criminal was Jeanne, yet nobody knew it but the detective.

Questions:
1. Would Jeanne be considered as a femme fatale?
2. Is there another meaning to “silver eyes”?
3. What exactly do you think Jeanne said to the detective before she was finally put away?