62 pages • 2 hours read
Lee ChildKilling Floor
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: Reimagining the Hero
When Lee Child conceived Jack Reacher, he wanted to rethink the notion of the crime thriller protagonist. In the introduction to the novel, Child remarks, “If you can see a bandwagon, it’s too late to get on” (xiii). Thinking back to his time working in television, as well as what was commonplace in other detective novels he enjoyed, Child notes that the “Lead characters were primus inter pares in a repertory cast…series heroes had partners, friends, jobs, apartments, favorite bars, favorite restaurants, neighbors, family, even dogs and cats” (xiii). The Latin phrase primus inter pares means “first among equals,” suggesting Child’s interpretation of a typical literary hero as someone who is on par with most if not all the other characters in the story.
As a continuation of his efforts to avoid “the bandwagon,” Child created Reacher to be practically invulnerable, even superhuman at times, to put distance between his protagonist and the stereotypes of crime fiction. Child was determined to “start over with an old-fashioned hero who had no problems” (xviii) that was more in line with figures out of classic Westerns: strangers who ride into town and take on corruption. Child’s goal was to transition a detective protagonist out of a cliched “David-versus-Goliath structure. [He] wondered, could Goliath-versus-Goliath work?” (xix). Child personally dislikes heroes who are “generally smart” but do “something stupid three-quarters of the way through the book, merely to set up the last part of the action,” and prefers “crushing victories rather than ninth-inning nail-biters” (xi). For these reasons, Child designed Reacher to be physically intimidating, highly perceptive, emotionally intelligent, and at times to display superhuman strength when taking down enemies.
Genre Context: The Cowboy and the Detective
The Jack Reacher novels typically follow five rules of Westerns established by Lewis Atherton’s “Cattleman and Cowboy: Fact and Fancy” (1961): the protagonist has high moral standards; there is a rigid classification of characters as good or bad; the protagonist displays a romantic and chivalrous attitude toward women; there is an abundance of action; and there is a noble heroine who loves and assists the protagonist. Jeroen Vermeulen proposes Reacher’s characterization is the American cowboy at the most extreme: “his behavior is more violent; his romantic life is more volatile; his personal moral rectitude is more outspoken; and his lifestyle is permanently unsettled” (“Lonely Road to Freedom,” 119-120). The cowboy narrative offers its readers a reassuring fantasy wherein a solitary, righteous person triumphs over the forces of chaos and corruption.
In ”The Simple Art of Murder” (1950), Raymond Chandler analyzes detective novels and the key characteristics of compelling mystery literature. Chandler thinks of the police as “universally corrupt,” and this corruption appears in crime fiction as an integral part of how police officers are portrayed. The criminal antagonist is traditionally someone the detective already knows from his past connections to the “criminal underworld,” and he defeats the antagonist with the help of a romantic interest and a close friend (who usually dies). Chandler posits the detective has to be a kind of vigilante—the murders happen because of some corrupting force, so it follows that true justice must also come from outside the law. The detective’s “flexible” morals enable him to see what the police cannot see, go where they cannot go, and ultimately allow him to comfortably enact an appropriate (or even extreme) punishment for the antagonist. Chandler characterizes the detective as “the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world,” someone who is relatively poor but will take no man’s money dishonestly. The detective takes no man’s insolence without “a due and dispassionate revenge,” and he has a rude wit and a disgust for shams and pettiness. To Chandler, a detective’s story is his search for a hidden truth, and it is an adventure because it happens to a man “fit for adventure.”
Genre Context: Knights-Errant and Chivalric Romance
The knight-errant is a character in medieval literature, specifically chivalric romance. The identifying adjective, “errant,” means “wandering” or “roving,” and refers to the knight-errant’s perpetual wandering in search of quests, adventures, duels, or pursuit of love in order to prove his adherence to chivalric virtues. The knight-errant breaks away from his origins, and his travels require him to test his old chivalric ideals and occasionally assert new ones of his own. Traditionally, the knight-errant performs his deeds in honor of a lady, but as romance literature developed, the knight-errant became a solitary figure whose wandering is rooted in moral idealism rather than courtly love. A knight-errant existed outside feudalistic social and economic structures in his travels, as he removes himself from his service to a master (a noble, a king, a church, etc.) and moves freely between all levels of society. He exists to uplift the downtrodden and cut down the wicked.
In his 2012 introduction to the novel, Child expresses his wish to “tap into the medieval knight-errant paradigm,” as he felt it crucial that Reacher has a “certain nobility” to his character (xv). For Reacher’s backstory, Child made him a Major in the United States Army, as he felt the associations an audience may make with the protagonist being a high-ranking person would influence Reacher’s status as a “white hat.” Child further states that Reacher’s decisions to get involved are rooted in the noblesse oblige, “a French chivalric concept that means ‘nobility obligates,’ which in other words mandates honorable, generous, and responsible behavior because of high rank or birth” (xxi). Reacher’s “chivalric code” is not based on religious virtues or political views, rather, he operates on a morality entirely his own. He is defiant to state authorities, and his sense of honor and duty are largely informed by his military background and his relationship with his older brother, Joe. He interprets an attack on a loved one as equivalent to an attack on himself, so rather than a knight-errant’s “overlord,” Reacher’s master is himself, and his obligations are limited to only the most significant personal bonds.
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