55 pages • 1 hour read
Patricia HighsmithThe Talented Mr. Ripley
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: The source material contains offensive language to refer to gay men.
Tom Ripley, who has been running an IRS scam, is being followed through New York City by a man whom he believes is with the police. Finally, the man approaches him and introduces himself as Herbert Greenleaf. Herbert has gotten Tom’s name from a mutual acquaintance who told him that Tom knows his son, Dickie. Once Tom realizes that he will not be arrested, he has a drink with Herbert, whose son he knows slightly, though not as well as their friend implied. Herbert says that Dickie is in Italy, ostensibly living as a painter, and he would like his son to come home. He then asks Tom to travel to Italy and try to convince Dickie to return to New York, offering to pay Tom’s expenses. After some initial resistance, Tom agrees.
Chapter 2 Summary
Tom returns home after his drink with Herbert. He decides not to tell anyone, not even his friend and roommate Bob Delancey, about his trip to Europe. He has been living with Bob mainly because he can receive mail there for his pseudonym; he has been posing as an IRS agent named George McAlpin to collect people’s unpaid taxes. Because he has received only checks, which he cannot cash, the scam is turning out to be more of a prank, but Tom is not bothered by this. He decides to call one more person on his IRS list and mails the man a letter on stationery that he stole from the IRS during his brief employment there. After some reluctance, the man agrees to send the money, and Tom hangs up, pleased with himself.
Chapter 3 Summary
Herbert has invited Tom to have dinner with himself and his wife, Emily, at their home. She asks Tom to take socks and a bathrobe to Dickie when he travels. Tom tells them that he is from Boston, works for an advertising firm, and went to college in Denver. He admits that his parents died when he was young and he was raised by his aunt Dottie. Emily shows Tom photographs of Dickie throughout his life as well as of him in the fictional town of Mongibello, Italy, where he currently lives. In some of the photos, he is with Marge Sherwood, an American girl who also lives there. After Mrs. Greenleaf goes to bed, Herbert and Tom have another drink, and he tells Tom that she has leukemia. They discuss Tom’s trip further, including travel arrangements and money. Herbert asks Tom if he has ever read The Ambassadors by Henry James, but Tom has not. Tom finally prepares to go, and Herbert invites him to visit the family’s shipyard one day. Tom promises to and then leaves, relieved.
Chapter 4 Summary
Tom is preparing to depart for Europe, and his boat sails in just a few days. He is not looking forward to being on a boat for that long, as he has a fear of water and has never learned to swim. He attributes this to his parents’ death by drowning. He only tells one friend that he is leaving—Cleo, a girl with whom he has one of his closest, albeit platonic, relationships. They spend the evening together, and Tom says goodbye to her. He believes that he may never see her again or return to New York at all. The next day he goes to Brooks Brothers to buy the socks and robe for Dickie. He puts them on Herbert’s account and buys himself a shirt with his own money, even though he could have put it on their account.
Chapter 5 Summary
Tom believes that no one will be at the ship to see him off on his journey, but when he gets to the boat, Bob and several other people are in his stateroom. They all stay and have several drinks. Their behavior is obnoxious to Tom, and he cannot wait for them to leave. He and another man, Paul, go up on deck to get away from everyone in the cabin. Finally, the steward announces the departure, and when Tom returns to his room, everyone is gone and the room has been tidied, so there is no sign of them. There is, however, a fruit basket from Herbert and Emily, something that he has never received before, and he is overcome with emotion.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
From the very first sentences of the novel, Highsmith sets up an atmosphere of tension and mystery. Tom believes he is being followed and is about to be arrested, and the reader is brought into his paranoia as he evades Herbert. Although, in this case, the sense of being pursued is due to Tom’s criminal enterprises, that same sense will remain with Tom throughout the novel. He constantly feels hunted, a feeling which, it will become clear later, has more to do with Tom’s need to take risks as a way of staving off boredom and loneliness, illustrating the theme of Taking Risks: The Thrill of the Chase.
These early chapters also immediately raise the motif of water, which will be threaded throughout the story. Tom’s parents died by drowning, and he has a fear of water that he has never overcome, not even having learned to swim. Yet Tom finds himself almost immediately on a ship, crossing the ocean to Europe. Water will continue to pervade the text, in one form or another, and the use of it, almost immediately, is another way of ratcheting up the tension in the novel from the very beginning, a necessary component of the psychological-thriller genre to which the novel belongs.
The symbolic importance of rings also comes into play in these opening chapters. Tom admires Herbert’s “gold signet ring with the nearly worn-away crest” (15). The ring itself clearly represents Herbert’s money and social class, both of which Tom aspires to, and the “worn-away crest” indicates both old money and social status. This symbolism of the ring will continue later with the introduction of Dickie’s own rings, which will play a pivotal role in Tom’s transformation, as well as in his near capture that threatens throughout.
These chapters have already painted Tom as a slippery character with flexible morals, but Highsmith offers some redemption for him when he pays for his own shirt at Brooks Brothers. Tom is already adopting a new persona, moving from someone who is comfortable living with Bob and making his living through a criminal enterprise to someone who is comfortable in a first-class ship’s cabin. He expresses an earnest desire to move beyond his social class and even to leave his petty criminality in New York behind: “Whatever happened with Dickie, he would acquit himself well, and Mr. Greenleaf would know that he had, and would respect him for it” (37). Highsmith makes Tom’s ambitions clear and also emphasizes his apparent intention to make an honest effort at his errand. Yet these opening chapters also examine Tom’s character, indicated not only by his criminal activity but also by his ability for Playing Roles, lying, and shape-shifting. Highsmith juggles these positive and negative attributes alternately so that the reader remains sympathetic to Tom even as the extent of his deception, and his ability and willingness to deceive for his own gain, are on full display.
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