There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
Interpretation
The quote reflects how the environment and circumstances can influence human behavior and relationships. It suggests that tension can arise from external factors, leading to unpredictable outcomes.
Raymond Chandler's quote captures the essence of how external environmental conditions, particularly the intense and uncomfortable heat of the Santa Ana winds, can exacerbate human emotions and interactions. It implies that such nights, marked by a heightened sense of irritation and discomfort, can lead to conflict and volatility among people, as represented by the potential for fights at parties and underlying tensions in relationships. This metaphorical observation speaks to the fragility of human interaction under stress and the unpredictability of circumstances, indicating that on nights like these, anything is possible, including unexpected joys, such as receiving a full glass of beer in a bar.
In practice
In a heated discussion about social dynamics, one might use this quote to illustrate how external circumstances can lead to unexpected conflicts.
Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." —
The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty ... a man with no loyalty in him, with no sense of love or reverence or devotion due to something outside and above his poor daily life, with its pains and pleasures, profits and losses, is as evil a case as man can be.
Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action.
They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.
The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them ... the weak will become prey to the strong.
There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives
It is very remarkable, that in the book of life, we find some almost of all kinds of occupations, who notwithstanding served God in their respective generations, and shone as so many lights in the world.
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