Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Postman's Irony and Differences from Double Indemnity

I really enjoyed reading The Postman Always Rings Twice, it was a really quick read and I liked that the female character wasn't malevolent.  I appreciated Caine's use of language to show that Cora and Frank were of the lower class.  It really made it apparent while reading their dialect that they hadn't been educated well, if at all.  I really enjoyed the fact that Caine really contrasted his female characters from his two different novels.  It was nice to see the miserable Cora who had no hidden motive for the murder of her husband, versus Phyllis, who was just after the money.

I thought that the ending was a perfect use of irony, since Frank was rushing to get Cora to the hospital to save her life, but instead, in an ironic twist, killed her in a car accident.  I thought that Caine ended his novel perfectly and I wouldn't have changed a thing.

1 comment:

  1. I definitely liked Cora more than I liked Phyllis. As for the differences between the novels, I found it a little weird that insurance policies were brought up as pretty key players in the story for both of them. I guess it's just a natural fit, considering that both the novels have two people conspiring to murder people and have it look like an accident. I was worried at the beginning, especially with Cora's introduction ("Then I saw her") and with the subsequent tryst they had, that Cora was going to wind up being another femme fatale from the very start. I suppose, though, that she eventually turned into one, it just took her a little bit.

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