42 pages • 1 hour read
Raymond ChandlerThe Long Goodbye
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is the protagonist of The Long Goodbye. He is an investigator who is swept up in the complicated lives of the rich and powerful. As a private detective, he is not a rich man. He has no close family and thinks occasionally about the life he might have led, had he chosen a different profession. His poverty and isolation contrast with the people he investigates, constantly reminding Marlowe of his lack of resources. They mock his house, his office, and his wages, knowing that they have far more than he ever will. For all his material poverty, however, Marlowe is not morally impoverished. He is a fiercely moral person who does what he feels needs to be done, even when doing so will cost him money or endanger his life. He makes no money from either the Lennox or the Wade case; he refuses payment on numerous occasions because payment would taint the morality of his actions. In this sense, Marlowe functions as the moral center of the novel and the perfect counterpoint to the portrayals of the rich and powerful: They are wealthy and immoral, whereas Marlowe is content to be impoverished but to retain his morality.
A key aspect of Marlowe’s character is his misanthropy. He seeks out things which annoy him, from celebrity gossip columns to small time crooks. Marlowe engages with his least favorite parts of the world to distract himself from the brutal reality of the society he inhabits. As a private investigator, he is exposed to the hidden trauma of the world. His clients commit terrible acts, and he must uncover their terrible secrets. By making himself annoyed by celebrity gossip, Marlowe can find a healthier way to vent his disgust with the world. He can make himself angry without having to think about the more painful parts of existence. In this sense, Marlowe’s misanthropy is a defense mechanism, shielding him from the most difficult parts of his job. Despite this misanthropy, Marlowe never fully embraces cynicism. He remains too moral and optimistic to completely abandon hope. Unlike Wade or Potter, Marlowe sees some reason to continue to be a moral person, even if he must exercise this morality in a world he dislikes. Marlowe may have a bleak view of the world, but he never stops thinking that the world is worth saving.
The narrative of The Long Goodbye is the process of Marlowe learning to say farewell. His unlikely friendship with Lennox is one of the few human connections Marlowe had with the world, and he regrets that Lennox exited his life without the opportunity to properly say goodbye to one another. Marlowe obsesses over Lennox’s apparent suicide due to this fact, as the suicide robbed Marlowe of the chance to say farewell to the closest person he had to a friend. Over the course of the novel, Marlowe realizes that learning the truth about the case is the real goodbye that he needed. When Lennox returns at the novel’s end, Marlowe does not show any affection for his friend. He does not reconcile his anxieties by finally saying goodbye. Instead, he realizes that the man in front of him is not the man he once knew. Learning the truth about Lennox’s lie and ensuring that the truth about the case is made public is the goodbye that Marlowe truly required. The titular long goodbye is not a single expression or gesture, but the case itself.
Terry Lennox
Terry Lennox is a man marked by his past. The scars on the sides of his face are physical symbols of his trauma following his capture and torture during World War II. At that time, Lennox lost everything, including his loving wife Eileen, his physical health, and even his mind. Even after Lennox was released and returned to society, the pain of his past prevented him from integrating into society. After he married Sylvia, a rich heiress, he still could not be happy. Her wealth and power did nothing to repair the physical and mental fractures of his past, as the trauma of what he lost was too great. In this sense, Lennox is the embodiment of the horrors of the war, which persist for those returning to peaceful society. After everything Lennox experienced and endured during the war, he cannot live a peaceful life. He knows the depraved depths to which humanity can sink, so no amount of luxury cars or expensive homes will satisfy him.
Amid Lennox’s occasional alcoholic binges and separation from his wealthy wife, Lennox and Marlowe form an unlikely friendship. Their friendship is uneasy and seems built on very little beyond an appreciation for cocktails. Nevertheless, the friendship is important to Lennox because it provides him with sincere and honest human interaction. Through his marriage to Sylvia, Lennox spends most of his time surrounded by the rich and powerful people of Los Angeles. These people do not understand what Lennox has experienced; they live in an insulated bubble, separated from the reality of society. They have retreated into a numb, wealthy form of existence which does not make them happy. Marlowe’s sincerity provides a comfort for Lennox, allowing him to escape from the fake reality of the rich and powerful.
Lennox’s pained existence is interrupted by his wife’s murder. The murder is enough to jolt Lennox into action; he flees immediately and then reaches out to his former military comrades to help him fake his death. The murder of Sylvia by Eileen is enough to shock Lennox out of the cycle of hollow numbness into which he had sunk. His faked suicide in Mexico is a symbolic act, in which he puts his past behind him and becomes someone else. He even changes his physical appearance and his citizenship, becoming someone else—someone who is removed from the trauma of being Terry Lennox. After Paul Marston, this is Lennox’s third identity. Like Lennox, his new identity is borne out of a period of intense violence. When Lennox returns to say goodbye to Marlowe, the private detective hardly recognizes Lennox. In more than just a physical sense, Lennox has changed. The man marked by trauma has realized that the identities of Lennox or Marston cannot make him happy. The only way to deal with this trauma is to figuratively kill it. For Lennox, the long goodbye of the title is him finally being able to say farewell to the pain of his past. In doing so, however, he accepts that he must sacrifice his friendship with Marlowe.
Eileen Wade
The first time Marlowe sees Eileen Wade, he is struck by her beauty. He becomes interested in the case because he is sexually attracted to Eileen, as are many men who come into contact with her. Her ethereal beauty becomes an important part of her character, because the beautiful façade she presents to the world contrasts with the darkness in her life. Eileen is someone who has loved and lost. During World War II, she lost the man she truly loved. She believed that Lennox died during the war and that she would never reunite with him. She married Wade instead, and after years together they are wealthy, but their lives are punctuated by bouts of extreme violence. Wade’s alcoholism is so extreme that he blacks out and cannot remember hurting his wife. Rather than a life spent with the man she truly loved, Eileen endures a marriage with an alcoholic abuser. Her suffering is compounded by learning that her husband is having an affair with Sylvia and that Sylvia is married to Lennox, who survived the war. The beautiful Eileen is forced to confront the trauma of her past and the darkness of her existence, maintaining her beautiful façade and not revealing to the world the abuse and suffering she has endured.
Eileen becomes convinced that her chance at happiness has passed. She cannot be with Lennox, and her husband is abusive and unfaithful. Ultimately, she murders both Wade and Sylvia. After Marlowe reveals her role in the deaths, Eileen cannot bring herself to live so unhappily. She kills herself, choosing to at least preserve her beauty rather than allow her exterior façade to crumble along with her happiness.
Roger Wade
Roger Wade is an abusive alcoholic who cannot confront his character flaws. He drinks heavily rather than scrutinize the parts of his life which make him unhappy. As a writer, he is very successful. However, he hates the types of books he writes. He tries to take out his feelings of inadequacy by pompously and pretentiously mocking Marlowe for not being a literate man, as though he is desperate to show off his academic and literary credentials despite the pulpy reputation of his novels. Wade also cheats on his wife, seeking out affairs with women like Sylvia because he is unhappy at home. As well as being cruel and dishonest with people, he self-medicates with alcohol. His heavy drinking is a way to soothe the demons which rage within him. To Roger Wade, alcohol is an escape from the constant nagging sense of inadequacy that he feels regarding his career and his life.
Wade drinks so heavily that he can no longer control himself. He cannot remember his periods of intense violence; he does not remember hitting Eileen. However, he retains a lingering sense of guilt about these actions. As an alcoholic, however, the only solution he can imagine is to drink heavily again. His problems with alcohol intensify because he lacks the tools to process his feelings of guilt or to understand the reasons behind his actions. This dependency on alcohol to soothe his raging emotions creates a self-perpetuating cycle, in which he becomes increasingly uncontrolled and uninhibited. He is pushed by his wife Eileen, who loathes him for being abusive, for being unfaithful, and for not being Terry Lennox. She subtly encourages his alcoholism, sealing his fate.
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By Raymond Chandler
