48 pages • 1 hour read
Red Harvest
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Themes
The Importance of a Moral Code
Throughout Red Harvest, the Op differentiates himself from the people of Personville through his adherence to a moral code. For the Op, the code exists somewhere between the rule of law, the regulations of his detective agency, and his morality. For the other characters, morality is little more than a passing thought as they become increasingly mired in violence and corruption. The Op may be violent, and he may break the law on occasion, but his actions always strive to uphold the importance of a moral code amid the town’s corruption.
Corruption is bad, he believes, so he has permission to break laws occasionally to combat corruption. The rules of the detective agency can be similarly ignored (albeit only temporarily) if the Op believes that he is working for the greater benefit of the agency, prioritizing the completion of the assignment over the Old Man’s requests for reports. While the Op may break the rules, he is constantly conscious of his moral code, particularly when he is in danger of breaking it. This adherence is what shapes his identity and what defines him as a man in this society.
Other characters, like Noonan, are foils to the Op by recognizing no moral code at all. The Op has no problem lying to Noonan because he knows that Noonan is an immoral and corrupt man. On several occasions, Noonan deliberately lies to the Op in an attempt to orchestrate the Op’s death. The Op is sent into a house shortly before the police open fire, which condemns Noonan in the Op’s view. Noonan’s immorality extends to the entire corrupt police department, which is why the Op does not feel guilty after shooting a police officer. The police department demonstrates the importance of a moral code because they so explicitly reject the codified rule of law which should govern the city. The police are not just corrupt; they are as much an active, violent gang as any other group of criminals in the city.
At the end of the novel, the Op reaffirms his commitment to his moral code by refusing any position of power in Personville. He will not materially benefit from what he has done, as he believes that he was working by his moral code rather than anything like greed or self-interest. Instead, he leaves the city and returns to San Francisco. Though he has broken the law and the agency’s rules, he submits himself for judgment in front of the Old Man. Through the Op’s willingness to submit to judgment, the novel presents a slightly more optimistic view of society, in which good men with strong moral codes can offer correction to a nihilistic society that abandons morality.
The Poisonous Nature of Corruption
From the opening line of the novel, the Op describes Personville as a poisonous city. Elihu’s power grab has invited criminal elements into governmental institutions. These criminals have poisoned the morality of the city and left Personville in a permanent state of decay. The entire city exists as a money-making operation for a select group of people, rather than any sort of functioning society. In this way, Personville illustrates the poisonous nature of corruption.
The corruption manifests most explicitly as violence. Elihu’s violent attitude toward the striking miners ushered in the even greater violence of the criminal gangs. His son, Donald, becomes a victim of the violence as soon as he tries to expose the city’s corruption in The Herald and through hiring the Op. One corruption begets another, spreading throughout the wider society and affecting the health of those involved. No one in Personville seems healthy. From the Op’s perspective, the male population of Personville is affected by substance misuse disorder, immorality, health problems, and skin diseases. Dan Rolff has tuberculosis which he can only treat with laudanum. Rolff can numb himself to the pain, but he cannot cure it, just as so many other characters are numb to the corruption and unable to act.
The Op fears that the city’s corruption might have a negative influence on him as well. The Op has a clear moral code that governs and guides his actions, but he confesses to Dinah that he can feel the exhilaration of the violence overwhelming him. The Op can feel himself being tempted, but he actively struggles to overcome this temptation, fearing that allowing himself to become corrupted would result in a loss of identity. He overcomes the temptation through force of will, eventually triumphing over the corruption which has poisoned so many others.
Over the course of the novel, the Op emerges as the only real antidote to crime and corruption in Poisonville. He turns the criminals against one another, and they demonstrate their lack of loyalty by killing each other. After they are defeated, however, the Op leaves. He leaves behind the same city, the same institutions, and the same people. Those who have survived the violence of recent days emerge into a power vacuum, with none of the institutional issues addressed. The novel’s ending is thus ambiguous, leaving it an open question as to whether the corruption has been eliminated once and for all.
The Impacts of Male Violence
Red Harvest is a novel filled with violence, but the vast majority of the violent acts are committed by men. The novel presents a very specific version of masculinity, in which men want to appear tough and demonstrate their toughness through unrepentant acts of violence against others. Their violence is devastating for the social life of the town and for various individuals within it, reflecting the wider impacts of male violence.
The pervasive violence of Personville has ruined the social fabric of the community. There is no real cooperation between different members, only temporary alliances that can be violated at any moment. The Op is often approached by male characters who voluntarily offer to betray their erstwhile allies in the hopes of their own advancement, and such characters readily kill one another without any outward displays of guilt. The Op remarks on how high the death toll is shortly after his arrival; the cycle of male violence appears endless, with each death only leading to more deaths in turn.
Even the Op is so invested in this idea of male violence that his plan to deal with corruption in the city is based on using such violence himself. He plans to turn the most corrupt men in the city against one another, knowing that any imagined or real insult will result in actual violence. He spins many stories, only some of which are true, and the resulting demonstration of male violence leaves most of the characters dead. As such, the novel suggests that the primary victims of male violence are men who destroy each other in ever-escalating displays of violent masculinity.
Dinah Brand is notable in that she tries to use this toxic masculinity to her advantage. She uses violence to further her own goals with men. She pits men like Reno and Whisper against one another, hoping to enrich herself in the process. She also allows Dan Rolff to live with her but abuses him, perpetuating the violence she sees all around her in her own behavior. Rolff, in turn, eventually goes on a violent rampage. Even the supposed intellect Rolff is not immune from the poisonous influence of toxic masculinity.
Dinah’s attempts to put Reno and Whisper against one another end tragically. Even as she is beginning to turn more toward the Op than the men of Personville, Whisper uses her to double-cross Reno, only for all three of them to end up dead. Dinah is killed accidentally by the same forces of male violence which she tried to weaponize. Her tragic fate is a demonstration of the implicit dangers of male violence, which is a force that —once unleashed—leaves nothing but destruction in its wake.
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