Notes on

The Postman Always Rings

Twice
by J.M. Cain
Christian Giguère
 About the Novel
• 1934 crime (“noir”) novel by James M. Cain.
• Inspired Camus’ L’étranger
• Cinematic adaptations created “film noir” genre
• Various interpretations concerning the title:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman_Always_Rings_Twice_(
novel)
• The characteristic that places his work firmly in noir, is the
hopelessness. Neat endings are not the playground for the types of
characters he creates. That is true for Frank and Cora as well. The
ending provides a measure of both just and unjust retribution on
the narrator of the story. It is the perfect cap to a tale of people
following the most indecent of human desires.
(https://crimefictionlover.com/2012/03/a-classic-revisited-the-
postman-always-rings-twice/)
Holmes, Dupin and • From W. Ong, Orality and Literacy
the Rational 19th • Sherlock Holmes and Auguste Dupin are examples of
Century Detective rational-minded characters that could only exist in a
print-based literary culture
Narrative
 The Hard-Boiled Noir Novel
• Hard-boiled, like an egg: the fluidity inside gets cooked-up, becomes
condensed: the long, detailed 19th-century narrative mutates into
this short and condensed form
• More literate people from the “middle” and “working” classes =
more questioning of traditional cultural values
• The advent of sociology, the idea that the novel represents the
identity of human societies
• Literature has always been a place where the values of a specific
social group are questioned
• Influence on Albert Camus, The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus,
philosophy of the absurd, existentialism
• The detective novel: the Private Eye –I, the modern individual
• Mickey Spillane (Mike Hammer); Dashiel Hammett (Red Harvest,
The Maltese Falcon); Raymond Chandler; Black Mask magazine
• Contemporaries: Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block, Donald
Westlake, George Pellecanos, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane
• Fatalistic, cynical worldview
• No redemption
• The Antihero
• Everything has been decided, closed system; thus, an enticing
narrative structure
• Types, stereotypes
• Violence and passion vs. culture and reason
Freedom from Conventional Middle-Class
Existence
• It can be said that Cora and Frank are poor, working-class people
looking to escape the conformities of the middle-class “petit-
bourgeois” American lifestyle.
• Cora doesn’t want to work in a cheap restaurant (a “hash house”)
• Cora resents Nick for being simple-minded and greasy and having
the “easy” life of a business owner
• She is attracted towards Frank’s natural ruggedness: he’s “hard”,
oozing masculine virility
• They both dream of being free to roam wherever they want, of
avoiding the constraints of middle-class existence.
• That MC existence is utterly “labelled”: uniforms, symbols, fixed
identities.
 Apollonian spirit
• Apollo is the Olympian god of the sun and light, music and
poetry, healing and plagues, prophecy and knowledge, order
and beauty, archery and agriculture. An embodiment of the
Hellenic ideal of harmony, reason and moderation
personified, a perfect blend of physical superiority and moral
virtue.
• Greek Sun-God. Light, Poetry, Peace, Justice in the State,
Rational Thought, Healing, Simplicity, Populism.
• Nick Papadakis is Greek petit-bourgeois, owner of a small
business. He believes in the modern middle-class idea of
cultural consensus.
• Nick believes that the truth is correlated to public recognition.
 « Air. Is a nice place. No fog, like in a Los Angeles. Nice, a clear. All the
time nice a clear », p.4
“I heard him singing. He had a swell voice”, p.5

• No fog, no confusion. Clarity, Safety in what can be seen,

represented.
• Apollonian: derived from the concept of Apollo, the Greek
god of light, who is often said to rule over the realm of the
self-conscious, and is thus strongly related to the idea of
individuation, through which he provides the world around us
with a sensible structure
• Truth: eventually, truth is always recognized and represented
in the public sphere. We can trust the public sphere. Meaning
is always simple, easy to understand, easy to represent.
• We can trust the opinion of the majority, of what has survived
through time, through history.
• Truth is universal, permanent, ahistorical.
 Dionysian Spirit
• Dionysus, god of festivals (among other things), ‘centred in extravagant
sexual licentiousness’ where ‘the most savage natural instincts were
unleashed’ (The Birth of Tragedy)
• Emerges as an expression of the feeling of ecstasy that accompanies
the sense of loss of the individual self. This sense of individuation,
Nietzsche claims, takes the individual out of nature, away from the
community of beings in which they reside
• Nietzsche felt that Greek tragedy helps to bring forth matters such as
death and one’s own mortality through the form of art, which in turn
makes it a great deal more bearable. The metaphysical comfort springs
from being able to consider these issues in an AP way, for the beauty
of the dialogue and the poetry. It is this combination of AP and DI that
Nietzsche admires, claiming it helps to ‘sugar the pill’ of unpleasant
thoughts by displaying them in an aesthetically pleasing way.
 Nietzsche’s Critique of Values
• Throughout his writings, Nietzsche is interested in how the
natural strength and energy that emanates from human
existence is stifled by culture
• He has many names for this strength. He personifies it through
the figures of Dionysus and Zarathustra. He sometimes
personifies it as OVERMAN. He also calls it THE WILL TO POWER.
• The perfect cultural balance was reached in the Greco-Roman
period. The balance between two forces: THE DIONISIAN AND
THE APOLLONIAN
• Ever since the appearance of Socrates, humans have developed
a culture in Europe that values weakness and sickness. The best
example is Christianity, which associates the Will to Power with
guilt and evil.
• For Nietzsche, being circulates. It’s an energy that must go
forward, not set into stable rotting institutions.
• He tries to illustrate the unacknowledged problems that
Christian-based/Romantic/Bourgeois values create.
• The critical thought of the self-reflecting individual is his
highest authority.
• The opposing concepts of the Dionysian and Apollonian are
central themes within Nietzsche’s first major work, The Birth
of Tragedy
 Frank Chambers
• Frank Chambers: the name foreshadows
his fate: he’s going to end up in prison
• He’s a drifter, doesn’t have any “home”
• He trusts his wits, his intuition
• Enjoys pleasure in pain: sadistic
• Mistrusts and is aggressive towards
authority, the law, the state
• Believes in good fortune, chance, he’s a
gambler.
• “You know I’m born to lose/and gambling’s
for fools/but that’s the way I like it baby/I
ain’t gonna live forever/and don’t forget
the joker !” Motörhead, “The Ace of
Spades”
 Desire and Pain
« I bit her. I sunk my teeth into her lips so deep I could feel the blood
spurt into my mouth. It was running down her neck when I carried her
upstairs », p.11.

Pain is related to the absence of physical homeostasis, i.e. the absence of a

constant, peaceful state, devoid of any tension. Thus, pain can be correlated
with transience, change, mutation.
Can Sadomasochism be seen as a cultural value? A cultural practice? In what
way? How would you explain it ? Why would BDSM be considered something
that humans should learn to cultivate in their lives ?
Pain: dissatisfaction, absence of stability, satisfaction is delayed. The person
experiencing the pain subjects him or her self to a transcendent force.
Why do Frank and Cora feel this need to forgo any control over their
destiny ? Why are they so excited about handing their fate to the Gods?

« They gave me a test. It was all
right in the face. But they talk
now. The pictures, I mean. And
when I began to talk, out there
on the screen, they knew me for
what I was, and so did I. A cheap
Des Moines trollop that had as
much chance in pictures as a
monkey has », p.14
Cora
• Torn between two « worldviews »:
Frank’s free, impulsive, hobo kind of
life; and Nick’s safe, middle-class
existence.
• Crisis in the American worldview
• Worldview: German Weltbild. Welt =
world. Bild = picture, silhouette, form,
but also: concept.
• She does not want to be seen as a
foreigner, as “different”. Why is it so
important for her to be white and
American? In what way are these
traits « reassuring »? Identity:
• Pictures without words can be interpreted in many ways. They
convey mystery. Their « meaning » is not controlled, closed down,
etc. And yet pictures, with their strong representational value,
create the sense of realism that is integral to the middle-class
mindset in modern America.
• Talking, speech, are the first and most simplistic form of
communication. Spoken language is transmitted by the mother
(mother-tongue). Writing always comes after. To some extent, oral
communication can be associated with an individual’s primitive
childhood fantasies, when spoken words, in the absence of any
written signifier, were associated to deep feelings of wanting or
satisfaction.
• In contemporary thought orality is associated with impulse, with
pre-conscious decision-making. Frank and Cora are uneducated,
sexually promiscuous and impulsive.
• Freud: human beings are continually attracted to imago = the
primitive pictures of their early childhood.
 Business
« I went out. I had what I wanted. I had socked one in under her guard, and
socked it in deep, so it hurt. From now on, it would be business between
her and me. She might not say yes, but she wouldn’t stall me. She knew
what I meant, and she knew I had her number », p.7

The word business takes on a peculiar meaning in Frank’s discourse. As if

there were some relationships that were superficial and perfunctory, and
others more authentic. Business means money, it means doing away with
the non-essential. For Frank, doing business means determining if there’s an
impulsive, sexual attraction.
Frank sets forth a theory here: communication is based on sharing the same
« meaning », on understanding what the other « means ». Interestingly,
business is related to meaning. Meaning can sometimes be hidden and
seems to require a « deep connection », something that exists outside
normal consciousness or understanding. In the novel, this deep connection is
related to sex.
• A business relationship is based on the exchange of capital.
Everything is brought down to the level of capital exchange:
one object for another object. It’s an objectified (reified)
relationship
• REIFICATION: dealing with things as if they were people;
dealing with people as if they were things.
• FETISHISM: believing that objects, figures, images, etc. have
occult or religious power. Namely the power to “satisfy”, to
provide utter satisfaction. For Marxists, a characteristic of
consumers in capitalist society.
 Symbols and Meaning
« It had on it all that he had drew on the paper, and a couple of other
things besides. It had a Greek flag and an American flag, and hands
shaking hands, and Satisfaction Guaranteed. It was all in red, white and
blue neon letters (…) »

• The flag = the ultimate SYMBOL.

• Greek: allusion to ancient Greece
• The symbol is a figure which establishes an inexorable
connection between a simple picture and an abstract idea.
The symbol acquires an almost sacred status. If the iconic
picture should be destroyed, this would be considered an
attack on the symbolic idea as well.
• National spirit was important to modern times. It was the
most important sign of personal and collective identity. The
flag’s meaning is absolute, certain, safe. An extension of the
apollonian spirit associated to Nick and bourgeois American
society.
• This safety is transferred to the restaurant sign. In post-war
America, this ultimately safe meaning was transferred to
the CORPORATION, to brands.
“ What are you trying to tell me, that she did it?
I’m not trying to tell you that anybody did it. Leave me alone, nothing
like
that happened.
- How do you know, I thought you were stinko?
- It didn’t happen that I know of.
- Then you mean she did it.
- I don’t mean no such a goddamn thing. I mean what I say and that’s
all I mean” p.62
« After they had the Greek dead enough to suit them, Sackett really
straightened out, and put some stuff in that meant something. He called a
guy that said he represented the Pacific States Accident Insurance
Corporation... », p.69

• The traditional connection between signifier and signified

has been recognized as arbitrary. Signs are arbitrary.
SEMIOTICS is the field that analyzes how these arbitrary
connections were established. According to which cultural
imperatives, etc.
• Does a story absolutely need a motive ? No. But modern
thought compels us to find a reason, a motive, a subject
and a victim, etc.
• The question: How does a text or discourse compel people
to passively accept its authority ?
• Modern production of meaning relies on proof, evidence.
This evidence can easily be manufactured, artificially
produced. What qualifies as proof or evidence ?
• Material proof (CSI stuff), based on sense perception, is
normally considered the ultimate form of evidence. It is
extremely rare. Usually, we as humans rely on abstract
impressions related to trust. Why do I feel I can trust this
meaning ?
• A person’s name, gender, nationality, social class,
profession, vocabulary, linguistic proficiency, non-verbal
communication: cultural, identity politics.
 Intelligence and Authority
« Even if we had gone through with it they would have guessed it. They
always guess it. They guess it anyway, just from habit. Because look how
quick that cop knew something was wrong. That’s what makes my blood
run cold.
(…) You’re my baby.
That’s it, just your dumb baby. All right Frank. I’ll listen to you, from now
on. You be the brains, and I’ll work », p.27.

• Marx: the bourgeois invented this modern concept of

« intelligence » separated from experience. Brains and
work: do they necessarily have to be separated ? Why have
people come to believe this myth ? How has it been used as
an instrument of domination.
• Those who hold the power – those who own the means of
production and thus are able to establish the authority of
their ideas – are always going to know. They are the new
Gods. They see everything. The common people – who,
according to Frank, are impulsive hobos – can never defeat
this power.
• Women « recognized » the power of men, and thus
considered men more « authoritative », even in matters
where they clearly had no ascendant knowledge.
 Fallacious Intent
« then you had a swell idea. Now that he’s had an accident, make
him take out an accident policy, and then knock him off… », p.60-
61.

• Sackett, the district attorney, is wrong about Frank and

Cora’s intentions. In fact, the murder was much less of a
« planned affair » than it seemed to him.
• Sackett personifies modern bourgeois consciousness,
obsessed with what can be proven and demonstrated.
Sackett’s theory is logical, it makes for an easy courtroom
story. It’s much easier to UNDERSTAND what happened by
placing Frank in the position of someone who knew what
he was doing, i.e. to identify a CAUSE to the events. But
Frank is not a BOURGEOIS SUBJECT.
• He does not share the bourgeois confidence and attraction
towards what can be represented and scientifically
demonstrated. He is much more impulsive. There was no
master plan.
• The CAUSES here were UNCONSCIOUS, they lie beyond
intention.
• 2 MYTHS, 1 POPULAR (IMPULSIVE SEX), 1 BOURGEOIS
(INTENTION AS CAUSE)
• Perhaps assigning meaning should be seen as an arbitrarily
cultural process, where reason and desire intertwine…
 Love and Struggle

• « Why couldn’t they leave us alone ? Why couldn’t they let us fight it
out together ? I wouldn’t have minded that. I wouldn’t have minded
even if it meant – you know. We would have had our love. And that’s
all we ever had. But the very first time they started their meanness,
you turned on me. (…) We were up on a mountain. We were up so
high Frank. We had it all, out there, that night. I didn’t know I could
feel anything like that. And we kissed and sealed it so it would be
there forever, no matter what happened We had more than any two
people in the world. And then we fell down. (…) We’re just two
punks, Frank. God kissed us on the brow that night. He gave us all
that two people can ever have. And we just weren’t the kind that
could have it. We had all that love, and we just cracked up under it.
It’s a big airplane engine, that takes you through the sky, right up to
the top of the mountain. But when you put it in a Ford, it just shakes
it to pieces. That’s what we are, Frank, a couple of Fords. God is up
there laughing at us », p.86.
• Agapê: Saint-Paul the Apostle. Universal, transcendent love.
Beyond difference. All human beings are one in the divine
realm of the Christian God. When humans are sent down to
earth, they acquire painful differences.
• Cora exposes her theory of love: perfect, transcendent, god-
sent. Needs to be protected, sealed, up high on a mountain. It
can’t exist on earth. Can’t exist for people like them, common,
uneducated people, people who are dominated by hellish
impulses which lead them to turn on each other. There is no
universal culture in their lives, nothing to transcend their EGO,
their sense of themselves against the world.
• Her life is a struggle with fate, with the outside world, the
meanness. She claims they were not made for love.
• Cora uses a very powerful metaphor: Ford cars.
• Ford: symbol of the middle-class and America’s post-war
boom. Provided cheap cars for his employees. But Ford was
also the first to apply the principles of Taylor on a large
scale.
• Taylorism and Fordism = the modern plant. Everything is
organized mechanically, including the human workforce.
Each worker has one simple task. Mechanical mindset.
Leads to a feeling in the working class of not being of the
same « kind » as bourgeois people, who have time to study
and think, to live a truly human existence.
 The Femme Fatale
« We’re chained to each other, Cora. We thought we were on top of a
mountain. That wasn’t it. It’s on top of us, at that’s where it’s been ever
since that night », p.108.
« I wanted to ruin you, and yet I couldn’t go to see Sackett. It wasn’t
because you kept watching me. I could have run out of the house and
got to him. It was because, like I told you. Well then, I’m rid of the devil,
Frank. (…) So the devil has left me. But has he left you ? (…) While you
were thinking of a way to kill me, Frank, I was thinking the same thing.
Of a way you could kill me. (…) Tomorrow night, if I come back, there’ll
be kisses. Lovely ones, Frank. Not drunken kisses. Kisses with dreams in
them. Kisses that come from life, not Death », p.110.
• Une femme fatale est une femme qui porte malheur. [Jules
Claretie, "La Vie a Paris," 1896]
• The femme fatale archetype found in literature and art
presents seductive and mysterious women whose charms
ensnare lovers and lead them into compromising, dangerous,
and often deadly situations. The folklore and myth systems of
almost every ancient culture are sewn together with the
femme fatale archetype and she appears at fundamental
levels in ancient cosmologies, religions, philosophies, in
creation myths, in the pages of ancient holy books, and in folk
stories and fairy-tales. In the latter, she is often the evil step-
mother; for example, in Hansel and Gretel and Cinderella.
(http://www.ancient-origins.net/history/femme-fatale-
seduced-ancient-sex-crafts-history-s-most-alluring-women-
008447)