Double Indemnity

“I was standing right on the deep end, looking over the edge, and I kept telling myself to get out of there, and get quick, and never come back. But that was what I kept telling myself. What I was doing was peeping over that edge, and all the time I was trying to pull away from it, there was something in me that kept edging a little closer, trying to get a better look.”

Huff describes his pull to temptation and darkness, which he imbues with the physical qualities of an actual place, calling it “the deep end.” What Huff tells himself in his head and what he actually does are two very different things. Huff has a conscience to some degree but cannot resist Phyllis’s allure. The femme fatale’s seductive powers are usually made to seem somewhat magical and irresistible in noir novels.

“Maybe I’m crazy. But there’s something in me that loves Death. I think of myself as Death, sometimes. In a scarlet shroud, floating through the night. I’m so beautiful, then. And sad. And hungry to make the whole world happy, by taking them out where I am, into the night, away from all trouble, all unhappiness.”

Phyllis rationalizes her actions by claiming that death makes people happier than being alive. Her self-image as an embodiment of Death persists right up to her own death at the end of the novel. Phyllis anthropomorphizes Death as a person that exists “out there,” away from modern life and its sorrows.

“You think [insurance is] a business, don’t you, just like your business, and maybe a little better than that, because it’s the friend of the widow, the orphan, and the needy in time of trouble? It’s not. It’s the biggest gambling wheel in the world. It don’t look like it, but it is, from the way they figure the percentage on the 00 to the look on their face when they cash your chips.”

Huff’s cynical views do not extend to all businesses in the world, just the insurance business. He separates insurance from other businesses by using a metaphor, where something is likened to something else without using “like” or “as.” He likens insurance to gambling: “It’s the biggest gambling wheel in the world.” Gambling, unlike business, is seen as a transaction between two entities (typically a casino and a player) who both want to gain an advantage over the other.

“I showed her that her only chance was to talk dumb, not start the car, and wait him out, until he would get so sore, and so worried over the time, that he would make a martyr out of himself and get it himself.”

Crime fiction often relies on misogynistic stereotypes that paint women as unintelligent and lesser than men. Phyllis and Huff rely on this stereotype to the advantage of their scheme. Nirdlinger makes himself into a “martyr” by believing these ideas and taking command of the situation—as men are expected to do— and going back to the house to retrieve Phyllis’s pocketbook.

“I put my crutches under one arm, threw my leg over the rail, and let myself down. One of the crutches hit the ties and spun me so I almost fell. I hung on. When we came square abreast of the sign I dropped off.”

Huff almost meets the fate that he has staged for Nirdlinger. As Huff follows through with his crime, imagery of falling is attached to his actions. Here he almost falls accidentally and then purposefully “drops off” into the darkness of the night. This reflects his dropping off into the “deep end” of corruption.

“That man must have weighed 200 pounds, but he had him on her back, holding him by the handle, and staggering along with him, over the tracks. His head was hanging down beside her head. They looked like something in a horror picture.”

Huff uses a simile, where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as,” to compare Phyllis to a monster from a horror film as she carries the corpse of her husband: “They looked like something in a horror picture.” (Bold my emphasis.) Classic horror films were in their golden age when Cain was writing Double Indemnity, and would have been well-known to his contemporary audience. Cain’s imagery expresses Huff’s growing disgust for Phyllis as well as his own guilt.

“There we were, after what we had done, snarling at each other like a couple of animals, and neither one of us could stop. It was like somebody had shot us full of some kind of dope.”

Huff’s relationship with Phyllis quickly deteriorates after the murder because neither of them truly love one another. Huff’s relationship with Phyllis is a downwards spiral where he never feels in control of his own actions. This loss of control is reflected in Huff’s “fall” into darkness throughout the novel. Here, Cain uses another simile, where Huff compares himself and Phyllis to "a couple of animals.”

“I had killed a man. I had killed a man to get a woman. I had put myself in her power, so there was one person in the world that could point a finger at me, and I would have to die. I had done all that for her, and I never wanted to see her again as long as I lived. That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.”

Huff only desired Phyllis when she was a woman he couldn’t have due to her being married. Once he has her, the idea that she has power over him in the form of incriminating evidence destroys his desire. Huff’s relationship with women is filtered through his need for control in every situation.

Huff’s guilt is emphasized by repetition and short, declarative sentences: The first four sentences above begin with “I,” reflecting Huff’s awareness of his culpability. He also shows his sense of blame in repeating: “I had killed a man.”

“We’ve got an advertising budget of $100,000 a year. We describe ourselves as the friend of the widow and orphan. We spend all that for goodwill, and then what? We lay ourselves open to the charge that we’d accuse a woman of murder even, rather than pay a just claim.”

Due to the large amount of inflation between the 1930s and today, 100,000 dollars is approximately two million dollars in 2022. General Fidelity spends such a large sum of money to project that they are “the friend of the widow and orphan;” it returns more money to them in the long run. Huff’s cynicism over the “gambling wheel” of insurance plays out in Phyllis’s case.

“I knocked off a quart of cognac, but it didn’t have any effect. My legs felt funny, and my ears rang, but my eyes kept staring at the dark, and my mind kept pounding on it, what I was going to do. I didn’t know. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t even get drunk.”

The imagery of darkness is most prominent in Huff’s quiet moments of guilt and anxiety. Huff’s sense of dread overrides his physical functions to an almost magical level, stopping him from getting drunk. Here, Cain uses repetition and short clauses, creating a sense of drama, tension, and urgency: "I didn’t know. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t even get drunk.” (Bold my emphasis.)

“I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake. That night I did something I hadn’t done in years. I prayed.”

Huff uses a simile— “I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake”—to emphasize his toxic relationship with Phyllis. He compares her to an inhuman predator and himself to prey. This echoes his earlier comparison to them as “a couple of animals.” His lack of love is tied to his perceived lack of power in the relationship.

“She looked different from the last time I had seen her. Then, she looked like a kid. Now, she looked like a woman.”

Huff views Lola, who is only 19, as a full-grown woman because of the trauma she has suffered. Huff is the source of the trauma that has made Lola an adult in his eyes. This suggests that Huff wants Lola because of the power he has over her.

“If the man was in on it, there were two of them that could hang me. I got to laughing, a hysterical cackle, there in the dark. I thought about Lola, how sweet she was, and the awful thing I had done to her. […] All of a sudden I sat up and turned on the light. I knew what that meant. I was in love with her.”

Huff moves from the dark into the light when he realizes he is in love with Lola. This transition out of the dark is one of Huff’s few moments of clarity. The light from his lamp symbolizes both the innocence of Lola and the good life Huff has fallen from. Cain uses short, declarative sentences and repetition to underscore Huff’s epiphany: “I knew what that meant. I was in love with her.” (Bold my emphasis.)

“I had gone completely nuts about her. Having it hanging over me all the time, what I had done to her, and how awful it would be if she ever found out, that had something to do with it, but it wasn’t all.”

Huff understands that murdering Lola’s father has pushed him to being “nuts about” Lola. This is framed as due to both guilt and control: If Huff gets her to love him, he can control the situation and keep her from ever finding out that he killed her father. This is the inverse of his relationship with Phyllis, who he feels has power over him.

“I’ll tell them to ask her about the time I came in on her, in her bedroom, with some kind of foolish red silk thing on her, that looked like a shroud or something, with her face all smeared up with white powder and red lipstick, with a dagger in her hand, making faces at herself in front of a mirror.”

Phyllis’s obsession with Death makes her careless about incriminating herself. The words “foolish,” “smeared up,” and “making faces at herself,” are all used to give Phyllis an air of mental instability. Phyllis suddenly loses her seductive appeal and cannot apply makeup properly. Outdated ideas of insanity and mental illness are often used in incriminating villains in classical crime fiction. Phyllis also resembles Miss Havisham in Charles Dicken’s novel Great Expectations. After being left at the altar, Miss Havisham wandered the house in her shroud-like wedding gown for decades. Both Miss Havisham and Phyllis are archetypes seen across multiple literary genres.

“I don’t know when I decided to kill Phyllis. It seemed to me that ever since that night, somewhere in the back of my head I had known I would have to kill her, for what she knew about me, and because the world isn’t big enough for two people once they’ve got something like that on each other.”

The murder that Huff thought would bring him and Phyllis together has torn them apart. Huff is terrified of the prospect of giving another person the leverage over him that Phyllis has. Huff describes his plot to murder Phyllis as an inevitability, suggesting that he lacks agency. His entire involvement with Phyllis is portrayed as something out of his hands and illustrating the theme of Temptation and the Femme Fatale.

“Maybe I haven’t explained it right, yet, how I felt about this girl Lola. It wasn’t anything like what I had felt for Phyllis. That was some kind of unhealthy excitement that came over me just at the sight of her. This wasn’t anything like that. It was just a sweet peace that came over me as soon as I was with her […].”

Huff describes Phyllis and Lola as foils. The “sweet peace” of Lola is juxtaposed with the “unhealthy excitement” of Phyllis. Huff’s relationship with Phyllis is portrayed as dirty, dangerous, and sexual, while his chaste relationship with Lola is the only thing that brings him peace in an anxiety-ridden narrative.

“I wasn’t the only one that figured the world wasn’t big enough for two people, when they knew that about each other. I had come there to kill her, but she had beaten me to it.”

Cain creates this parallel thought process between Phyllis and Huff to imply that this betrayal is a natural consequence of plotting a murder together. That Phyllis planned to murder him shows that Huff wasn’t wrong to want to cover his tracks.

“Well, that theatre program saved you. […] That double wad of paper wasn’t much, but it was enough.”

Huff is ironically saved from certain death by his alibi, the theater program. Phyllis shooting it symbolizes her killing his alibi; Huff’s presence at the park with a bullet wound has made it impossible for him to escape suspicion any longer.

“I closed my eyes. I couldn’t think of anything but Lola, a lot of cops around her, maybe beating her up, trying to make her spill something that she knew no more about than the man in the moon. Her face jumped in front of me and all of a sudden something hit it in the mouth, and it started to bleed.”

Huff’s vivid imagination supplies him with horrible visions of Lola being brutalized by police. There’s still a slight possibility that Huff might get away with the murder, but the thought of Lola taking the fall for him is too much. Lola’s innocence in Huff’s eyes pushes him to admit his own guilt to save her. 

“While I was telling [Keyes about the murder] I hoped for some kind of peace when I got done. It had been bottled up in me a long time. I had been sleeping with it, dreaming about it, breathing with it. I didn’t get any peace.”

Huff’s guilt is not assuaged by admitting to his crime, suggesting that he has a conscience deep down. The murder haunts every second of Huff’s life, even when he sleeps. Peace has alluded Huff since he began his affair with Phyllis. The above quote uses syndeton, where words are separated by commas: "I had been sleeping with it, dreaming about it, breathing with it.” This slows down the pacing and creates a sense of lyricism.

“I don’t often like somebody. At my trade, you can’t afford to. The whole human race looks—a little bit crooked.”

Keyes is the archetypal hardboiled detective. Viewing humanity as “crooked” is the kind of cynicism that weighs down the hardboiled detective and makes him so good at his job. If Keyes didn’t view humanity this way, Phyllis and Huff would have gotten away with the murder. The same cynicism that led Huff to kill Nirdlinger helps Keyes solve the crime. In this way, Huff and Keyes are foils: though they have a similar worldview, they use their cynicism for different purposes.

“I didn’t look at her. Some kind of peace came to me then at last. I knew I couldn’t have her and never could have had her. I couldn’t kiss the girl whose father I killed.”

This is the closest that Huff comes to experiencing serenity in the novel. It’s “some kind of” peace, suggesting an emotion that’s similar to peace without being complete. Huff lets go of the impossible dream of having a normal life with the chaste ingénue and accepts that he cannot escape his crimes.