The Talented Mr. Ripley

It is common, these days, to create villains who live three-dimensionally in the reader’s imagination, who have histories that explain their behavior and complicate their characters. Media sensations like Breaking Bad introduce villains like Walter White, who begins as a sympathetic character—a victim, even—and gradually morphs into a hardened criminal the audience has been trained to root for. The sympathetic villain is not a new archetype, however, and one of its most popular iterations in modern literature is the character of Tom Ripley. Tom’s character was compelling enough for Highsmith to write five novels featuring him, known as The Ripleiad, which have been adapted in film, television, and radio. Although The Talented Mr. Ripley was written in 1955, the fascination with this character endures, inspiring an adaptation into a 2023 Showtime series.

This long-term fascination with the character is due in no small part to Highsmith’s much-lauded ability to push beyond “bad guy” stereotypes and flat characters to create a more nuanced portrait of the classic villain. In literature and film, psychological thrillers with complicated villains provide a compelling vehicle for the audience to consider the questions of morality, such as how much greed is inevitable in human nature, and what it says about society when the crimes of the privileged or powerful go unpunished.

By the end of the novel, Tom is a murderer, a con man, and a thief. Yet before Highsmith reveals the depths to which he is capable of sinking, she creates a moral framework in which Tom has been forced to be creative to succeed. She paints a portrait of a “troubled victim” who was denied access to love and social acceptance: Tom was orphaned as a child, was brought up by an indifferent relative, and as an adult is so filled with self-loathing that, when forced to return to his own identity, he “hate[s] going back to himself as he would have hated putting on a shabby suit of clothes” (181). Because the novel is narrated from a close-third-person point of view, the reader bears full witness to all of Tom’s doubts, feelings of inadequacy, humiliation, and fear. The portrait of Tom as a remorseless killer is further complicated by his physical reaction to the act of murder and his horror at what he is capable of, as when he narrowly escapes killing Marge:

[W]hat seemed to terrify him was not the dialogue or his hallucinatory belief that he had done it (he knew he hadn’t), but the memory of himself standing in front of Marge with the shoe in his hand, imagining all this in a cool, methodical way. And the fact that he had done it twice before (239).

Tom is, at times, frightened by his own capacity for cool-headed violence and murder, but that does not stop him from continuing to commit those same acts.

Tom is clearheaded about his actions, although he sometimes attempts to rationalize them, as when he blames Freddie for instigating his own murder: “Freddie Miles, you’re a victim of your own dirty mind” (141). And yet he also holds himself accountable: “He could say he hadn’t wanted to do them, but he had done them. He didn’t want to be a murderer” (240). He comes to fear his own murderous impulses and worries about his ability to control them: “Tom did not know why, but he felt more frightened that night, walking through San Spiridione with Marge, than if he had been alone” (221). This thought occurs just after he has the impulse to push Marge into the canal; his fear is not for his own safety but for Marge’s safety with him. These conflicting thoughts and impulses remind the reader that Tom is a complicated character, sometimes a mystery even to himself, not easily labeled or dismissed.

Highsmith’s skill lies in creating a typically unsympathetic character who still draws the reader’s loyalty. She deliberately maintains this tension throughout the novel, balancing Tom’s violent and selfish actions—actions that he himself is occasionally horrified and repulsed by—with his cunning evasion of continuous obstacles and his revealing feelings of fear, shame, and vulnerability. Highsmith’s nuanced, layered portrayal of Tom Ripley makes him a standout example in the literary tradition of the compelling sympathetic villain.