The Talented Mr. Ripley: Highsmith's Charismatic Psychopath

Introduction: The Charismatic Psychopath

Patricia Highsmith created arguably the most charismatic psychopath of the twentieth century when she wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1955. First in a series of five novels, the book revolves around Tom Ripley, the cold, callous, and amoral protagonist whose main objective in life is to achieve a higher social status at any cost. Ripley, however, is no ordinary con man. He is a calculating murderer who cheats, deceives, and kills with premeditated intent. There is nothing accidental about his actions, and yet, for some odd reason, we do not hate him.

The first-person narrative may have a role to play in how readers' emotions are manipulated to side with the killer, but there appear to be other factors at work as well. How can we possibly not hate a person who impersonates a rich young man after casually killing him and then lives a life of crime to suit his ruthlessly ambitious lifestyle? The answer lies in the careful depiction of the killer and his ability to convince us of the righteousness of his actions — despite the fact that they were anything but righteous.

Patricia Highsmith, the author of this immensely engrossing thriller, was herself a figure of peculiar moral fascination, and her fiction reflects a deliberate, unsettling intimacy with the criminal mind. Tom Ripley is a psychopath with a difference: a man whose audacity, intelligence, and cool self-assurance make him impossible to dismiss, even as his crimes mount.

Highsmith's Vision of Abnormality

Highsmith wrote in her diary in 1942 something that might explain the casual abnormality of Ripley's actions: "The abnormal point-of-view is always the best for depicting 20th-century life, not only because so many of us are abnormal, realizing it or not, but because 20th-century life is established and maintained through abnormality" (Gray, 2003). The central theme of the Ripley series, and nearly all other works that followed, was also outlined in her diary:

"I should love to do a novel about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself." (Gray, 2003)

In the novel, Ripley is simply portrayed as a rational human being with an irrational desire to reach the top at any cost. He is fully capable of rationalizing his actions, and as troubling as it sounds, readers seem to warm up to him despite his obvious callousness. Tom Ripley is also immensely fortunate — every time it seems he has come close to being caught, he manages to escape through some stroke of luck, and we somehow heave a sigh of relief when he does.

Ripley's Motives and the Murder of Dickie Greenleaf

The story truly takes off when Ripley, who had so far been impersonating an income tax officer, is approached by Herbert Greenleaf, the fairly wealthy father of an acquaintance. Ripley is asked to track down Dickie Greenleaf and bring him home. His feelings upon first contemplating Dickie's life reveal the envy at the heart of his character:

"Tom thought, Dickie was probably having the time of his life over there. An income, a house, a boat. Why should he want to come home? Dickie's face was becoming clearer in his memory: he had a big smile, blondish hair with crisp waves in it, a happy-go-lucky face. Dickie was lucky. What was he himself doing at twenty-five? Living from week to week. No bank account. Dodging cops now for the first time in his life. He had a talent for mathematics. Why in hell didn't they pay him for it, somewhere? Tom realized that all his muscles had tensed, that the match cover in his fingers was mashed sideways, nearly flat. He was bored, God-damned bloody bored, bored, bored! He wanted to be back at the bar, by himself." (p. 9)

Dickie is enjoying a bohemian life in Italy, taking money and status for granted. Ripley finds him in an enviable position and begins living off Dickie's generosity. The crisis comes when it appears to Ripley that Dickie may soon shun his company. To lose everything he has been enjoying means going back to square one — and that is what motivates Ripley to kill Dickie and assume his identity.

The disturbing intensity of the murder scene is never lost on the reader: "Tom swung a left-handed blow with the oar against the side of Dickie's head. The edge of the oar cut a dull gash that filled with a line of blood as Tom watched. Dickie was on the bottom of the boat, twisted, twisting. Dickie gave a groaning roar of protest that frightened Tom with its loudness and its strength. Tom hit him in the side of the neck, three times, chopping strokes with the edge of the oar, as if the oar were an axe and Dickie's neck a tree."

Tom is not presented as an innocent protagonist corrupted by circumstances. He is an calculating, amoral mind who acts with clear intent, and what makes it all so compelling is that Ripley considers himself highly talented and takes his wrongdoings entirely in stride. In an attempt to impress Dickie, he catalogues his abilities with breezy self-confidence:

"Oh, I can do a number of things — valeting, baby-sitting, accounting — I've got an unfortunate talent for figures. No matter how drunk I get, I can always tell when a waiter's cheating me on a bill. I can forge a signature, fly a helicopter, handle dice, impersonate practically anybody, cook — and do a one-man show in a nightclub in case the regular entertainer's sick. Shall I go on?" Tom was leaning forward, counting them on his fingers. He could have gone on. (p. 58)

Evil as Entertainment: Why Readers Root for Ripley

Ripley's actions are so absolutely thrilling and craftily planned that when he succeeds, readers feel something close to admiration for his genius. Otto Penzler, a former publisher of Highsmith's work, sheds light on this evil-hero paradox: "These superbly crafted tales about the unfailingly charming but entirely reprehensible criminal are irresistible, much like watching Mike Tyson in a boxing ring (or out of it, for that matter). You know it's wrong to be titillated by it, and you feel guilty about enjoying the spectacle, but it's impossible to avert the eyes." (Bowman, 2003)

It is widely believed that Highsmith shared some characteristics with her protagonist. Her replies to questions about Ripley were mostly cryptic, and it appeared that she wanted to justify his actions — which were obviously unjustifiable. When asked about the nature of his violence, Highsmith framed it in terms of existential mystery: "I don't really understand murder, but perhaps that's what fascinates me about it. If one drowns a kitten in a bucket of water, for instance, suddenly the kitten is dead. Something is gone. This to me is a mystery." (Bowman, 2003)

The psychology of the unreliable narrator is central to understanding why readers are drawn in rather than repelled. Highsmith places us so deeply inside Ripley's perspective that his rationalizations begin to feel coherent, even reasonable. His crimes are filtered through a consciousness that experiences no guilt — and that very absence of remorse, paradoxically, makes him fascinating rather than monstrous.

Conclusion: A Masterpiece of Criminal Psychology

The novel is an intricate maze of rationality, insanity, abnormality, and justification. Highsmith has created a masterpiece that endures for its captivating depiction of a criminal mind — one that forces readers to interrogate their own capacity for sympathy and their susceptibility to charm. The Talented Mr. Ripley remains essential reading not only as a work of psychological crime fiction but as a study in how narrative perspective can transform a murderer into an antihero we are, against all reason, reluctant to condemn.

References

Highsmith, P. (1955). The talented Mr. Ripley. New York: Vintage Crime.

Bowman, D. (2003, March–April). Femme fatale: What was it that drove Patricia Highsmith to create a killer as intriguing as Tom Ripley? We may never know. [Publication name not specified], p. 28+.

Gray, J. (2003, June 30). An encounter with evil: Patricia Highsmith was fascinated by the unnoticed amorality of ordinary people. While this led to a troubled life, it was the source of her novels' unsettling power. New Statesman, 132(4644), p. 50+.

Klein, K. G. (1994). Great women mystery writers: Classic to contemporary. Westport, CT: Greenwood.