Write 6 pages thesis on the topic the big sleep by raymond chandler as a living document of the socio-economic anxieties. The Big Sleep is written at the backdrop of the 1930s, the period of the Great Depression in American history. This was the time when America was completely cynical and disillusioned about the prospects for its future. A repetitive mention of money can be found in the novel and money acts as an ideal for any kind of work. Money seems to be the seed of every crime and we find characters within the novel fight and bribe each other for money only. The opening page of the novel shows that Marlowe is “dressed up” because he is about to enter a house that is owned by a millionaire. Money in short, throughout the novel, is shown as an object that is coveted, enjoyed and respected. Therefore the mirroring of the desperation throughout the entire nation of America becomes more obvious in the plot of the novel. The Hardboiled detectives of the novels written during that period are all epitomes of masculinity. Tough, rough male characters were all presented in these novels to show the social and political turmoil of the period that made a man stubborn and rigid. The protagonists in these novels are the hard-boiled detectives and all of them bear some typical archetypal characteristics of working-class men of the period (Breu, “Hard-Boiled Masculinities”). Chandler’s Marlowe is represented as an icon of masculinity found in the hard-boiled detective series of the era. Philip Marlowe is an honest, wisecracking private detective who is represented to the readers as a seemingly straightforward person. Marlowe is represented as everyday “man’s man”.