"Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights."
Marlowe always tries to act in an honorable way, taking care of the weak and protecting his clients. But his honorable attitude is misplaced in a society that is rotten to the core. Marlowe however does not realize that his efforts to make a better world are misplaced and he continues to fight for what he thinks is good and fight for the people he thinks are worth protecting.
‘’Vivian is spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless. Carmen is a child who likes to pull wings off flies. Neither of them has anymore moral sense than a cat. Neither have I. No Sternwood ever had...’’
The quote appears in the second chapter of the novel, when the General and Marlowe talk for the first time. Then, the General also talks about his two daughters, Vivian and Carmen. The way he describes them is important because it reveals how he sees them. The General refuses to believe that his children are dangerous or capable of anything bad. For him, the girls are immoral but harmless. What he doesn’t realize is that his children are twisted, playing with him and doing whatever they want behind his back.
I was wearing my powder-blue suit... I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
Marlowe described himself at the beginning of the novel just in the same way he describes the weather. The way he describes himself is important because it reveals some information about the detective. Marlowe was clean and neat but he let it be understood that it was not something common for him. He knew how a respectable private detective was supposed to look but that didn’t mean that he conformed to those criteria. Instead, he chooses to try and please himself, knowing that what the others believe about him has little to no importance in the long run.
