Raymond Chandler’s detective protagonist Phillip Marlowe can be interpreted not only from within the context of the genre of crime fiction, but moreover as a symbolic figure that elucidates both the social structure of Los Angeles and the United States during the Great Depression. In other words, the very existence of Marlowe and the precise crimes with which he is concerned become descriptions of the corruptive nature of this social structure, a corruption that is primarily caused by class distinction. Marlowe functions as a certain mediator between class and corruption, insofar as he reveals how class differences are maintained by corruption and simultaneously encourage corruption. In this regard, Marlowe can be viewed as a character that embodies a specific sense of social justice, one that is opposed to economic forms of exploitation.

What is immediately compelling about the Marlowe character is his commitment to ideals. This idealism, however, is not abstract, but is rooted in real social inequalities. Hence, Marlowe can be viewed as in conflict with these very inequalities. As Megan E. Abott writes, Marlowe embodies “populist class resentment.” (48) This implies that during the time of the Great Depression those affected by the depression that America recognized class difference, and understood that the latter was constituted by social inequality. Accordingly, Marlowe’s opposition to the wealthy classes is an opposition to class difference. This becomes clear in Chandler’s work The Big Sleep, in which Marlowe is explicitly conscious of class differences, his descriptions inciting a certain distaste with the affluence of the higher classes of Los Angeles: “The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high…the entrance doors…would have let in a troop of Indian elephants.” (1) Marlowe thus functions as a social critic who acutely remarks on the excesses of the wealthier classes. This remark as taken within the historical context of the Depression functions as a clear criticism of disparity in American wealth. In other words, excess becomes particularly visible in economic times constituted by mass inequality.

A crucial aspect of the Marlowe series is how corruption relates to the promotion of such inequality. For Gene D. Phillips, it is this corruption that also produces the very crime that Marlowe is to embark on stopping, as Marlowe exists within a social context “in which corruption and betrayal are the order of the day.” (151) Accordingly, because of the ubiquity of this lack of social justice and ideals, crime becomes a symptom of the general inadequacy of the social system itself. Class differences become a means by which to detect crime. For example, in The Long Goodbye, Marlowe gives the following class based reasoning for corruption and crime, after seeing a policeman in a Cadillac automobile: “Policemen don’t drive Cadillacs. Cadillacs with red spotlights belong to the big boys, mayors and police commissioners, perhaps District Attorneys. Perhaps hoodlums.” (47) According to the presence of a clearly delineated class structure, Marlowe is able to become conscious of possible crime through anomalies in this structure, such as a policeman owning a certain automobile. At the same time, however, this very class structure promotes such crime, because it is a structure without ideals. This is explicit in The Big Sleep, in which a policeman openly confesses the omnipresence of corruption: “I’m a copper,” he said. “Just a plain ordinary copper. Reasonably honest. As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it’s out of style.” (30) The ubiquity of corruption suggests that Marlowe exists as detective precisely because there is such corruption and social inequality: in this regard, he symbolizes a point of resistance to the matrix of class difference, corruption and crime that constitutes the specific narratives of Chandler’s works. Inequality allows Marlowe to identify crime, but this crime itself is a product of such inequality. Because of this vicious circle, Chandler can be viewed as using Marlowe as a social critic of the entire structure itself.