The Surfer
In Chapter 35, Marlowe watches a speedboat with a guy on a surfboard being towed at high speed behind. Going too fast, the boat nearly tips over and the surfer falls off his board. The boat stops and waits for the surfer to very slowly makes his way back onto the board. The entire incident takes up one paragraph comprised of a dozen or so lines, but in that simple bit of imagery, the surfer becomes a viable symbol for Marlowe’s approach to detective work. Sometimes you get caught up in a rhythm that is going to fast and next thing you know you fall off and have to start all over again at a slow pace.
Single Player Chess
Chess is a fairly mundane symbol for detective work: one must thing several steps ahead, develop a strategy, remain suspicious of all the opponent’s pieces, etc. Chandler takes this symbolic from the mundane and elevates it to another level Marlowe. Marlowe plays chess by himself, but not against himself. He replays famous matches from the past, studying the pre-determined moves in order to view them as a problem to be solved. Thus, chess is not just a symbol of detective work, but for Marlowe it is also a symbol of the necessity to step into the mindset of others in order to solve the problem of why they make the choices they do. Of course, the solitary nature of this engagement is also representative of Marlowe’s sense of independence.
Rejecting Payment for Services Rendered
Marlowe has a recurring habit (not just in this novel, but the others as well) of returning or rejecting payment for services rendered. He doesn’t just reject bribery or being paid for a job not done; he actually rejects being paid for work that he has fairly provided. This tendency and Marlowe’s financial deprivation in general are intended to symbolize his absolute incorruptibility.
High Society and the Low-Life
Most hard-boiled detective stories take place in gritty neighborhoods inhabited by all manner of low-life characters. The criminal activity which Marlowe investigates has always taken him into a world in which the low-life interacts with high society. In this novel, however, the low-life has become high society. Both the wealthy and influential and the gangsters live in splendor. One might well say that the long goodbye here is to the quaint, old-fashioned notion that a distinction can be made anymore. That the lowest of the low and the highest of the highest occupy the same space is a symbol of the level of corruption in which American finds itself.
The Heart of Darkness
At all times, though perhaps not more so than in this novel (well, maybe in The Big Sleep) the task facing Marlowe is to enter into the heart of darkness of Los Angeles and confront the degeneration of humanity lying at the center: the Kurtz. The Long Goodbye (as well as the other Marlowe novels) is symbolically a re-enactment of his detective’s namesake in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Marlowe is named for the hero of that story and they share so many traits: tough but intellectual, cynical yet noble, a hard worker who is also a philosopher and, most of all, an incorruptible knight willing to walk into the heart of darkness despite knowing he can’t avoid being contaminated by what he finds there.
