The Talented Mr Ripley

I was about three episodes into the Netflix Ripley mini-series when I decided to read the Patricia Highsmith novel it was based on. A question about the setting of the mini-series sparked my interest in the novel. The series claimed to have been set in 1961, but it gave me feelings of post-war Italy, maybe 1949 or so.

The answer is that the Highsmith novel was published in 1955, which means that it captures a cultural sense of the mid-1950s. 1961 is not too far off from that.

By now, everyone should know that the title character, Tom Ripley, is a sociopath[1]. The word “sociopathy” is not used in either presentation. The acting of Andrew Scott in the Netflix series captures the essence of a sociopath. Scott plays Ripley as awkward, autitistic, and anhedonic — Scott's Ripley is one off-beat, creepy dude.[2]


Offbeat and creepy.
The opening scene in the Netflix series is a perfect representation of the sociopath in action. On the spur of the moment, Ripley intercepts a letter from a postal carrier by acting as if he is going into an apartment. He then uses the letter to scam the sender to send a replacement check to him by posing as a bill collector. He has to abandon the cashing of the check when he senses that he is about to be unmasked. The sequence portrays the opportunism of a lot of crime, which has to be the domain of sociopaths who do not hesitate a moment out of guilt or conscience.

In contrast, it doesn't seem that Highsmith had a developed knowledge of sociopathy. Her Ripley is weirdly bipolar. He transitions from bouts of manic exuberance about his plans to bitter resentment about the injustices he feels he has been subjected to. Highsmith's Ripley is not nearly as disciplined as the Netflix Ripley. In Highsmith's novel, for example, Ripley just collects the checks from his victims without ever trying to cash them.

This could reflect the development of the idea of the sociopath/psychopath as a fictional type. We have had decades of tropes and caricatures about high-functioning sociopaths that Highsmith didn't have. While the idea of psychopathy was introduced in the 1950s, sociopathy had been known since the 1930s.[3] One source describes the history of sociopathy as follows:

While psychopathy was yet to make its premiere in the DSM, sociopathic personality disturbance, or sociopathy, was included in the DSM-I. Sociopathy was developed in the 1930s and consisted of antisocial and dissocial reactions and sexual deviation (Pickersgill, 2012). Differences and similarities existed between sociopathic personality disorder and psychopathy, however psychopathy would not have its own category in the DSM until the publication of the DSM III. In DSM-I, sociopathic personality disturbance, antisocial reaction was defined as a diagnosis for chronically antisocial individuals who didn't profit from experience or punishment and maintained no real loyalties (Pickersgill, 2012).

This could explain why Tom Ripley is not the smooth and charming manipulator we expect to see in more recent stories involving psychopaths.

It might also explain why Highsmith edges around the homosexual issue.

It seems clear from Highsmith's novel that Tom is “same sex attracted.” He is a young man (around 24 or 25) who has been “kept” by a wealthier male who treats him as a possession. Highsmith shares that Tom runs in homosexual circles and poses as a homosexual, but is actually a virgin:

His mind went back to certain groups of people he had known in New York, known and dropped finally, all of them, but he regretted now having ever known them. They had taken him up because he amused them, but he had never had anything to do with any of them! When a couple of them had made a pass at him, he had rejected them — though he remembered how he had tried to make it up to them later by getting ice for their drinks, dropping them off in taxis when it was out of his way, because he had been afraid they would start to dislike him. He'd been an ass! And he remembered, too, the humiliating moment when Vic Simmons had said, Oh, for Christ sake, Tommie, shut up! when he had said to a group of people, for perhaps the third or fourth time in Vic's presence, “I can't make up my mind whether I like men or women, so I'm thinking of giving them both up.” Tom had used to pretend he was going to an analyst, because everybody else was going to an analyst, and he had used to spin wildly funny stories about his sessions with his analyst to amuse people at parties, and the line about giving up men and women both had always been good for a laugh, the way he delivered it, until Vic had told him for Christ sake to shut up, and after that Tom had never said it again and never mentioned his analyst again, either. As a matter of fact, there was a lot of truth in it, Tom thought. As people went, he was one of the most innocent and clean-minded he had ever known. That was the irony of this situation with Dickie.

Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley (pp. 79–80). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

On the other hand, everyone who knows Tom suspects that he is a homosexual. He is fixated on Dickie. He becomes jealous when he sees Dickie with his girlfriend, Marge Sherwood.

In the Netflix series, this backstory is not revealed. There are clues that he might be homosexual and attracted to Dickie, such as the weird scene where he dresses as Dickie, which prompts Dickie to tell Tom that he is not “queer.”

In the book, Tom's two murders occur after homosexuality is derided. Before Tom murders Dickie, the two men are watching the gymnastics of a group of men that Dickie describes as “daffodils” by quoting lines from a poem. This sets Tom off on a chain of thinking about taking over Dickie's life after he remembers Aunt Dottie describing him as a “sissy.” Later, Tom justifies killing Freddie Miles for accusing Dickie of “sexual deviation”:

The gin only intensified the same thoughts he had had. He stood looking down at Freddie's long, heavy body in the polo coat that was crumpled under him, that he hadn't the energy or the heart to straighten out, though it annoyed him, and thinking how sad, stupid, clumsy, dangerous, and unnecessary his death had been, and how brutally unfair to Freddie. Of course, one could loathe Freddie, too. A selfish, stupid bastard who had sneered at one of his best friends — Dickie certainly was one of his best friends — just because he suspected him of sexual deviation. Tom laughed at that phrase “sexual deviation.” Where was the sex? Where was the deviation? He looked at Freddie and said low and bitterly: “Freddie Miles, you're a victim of your own dirty mind.”

Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley (pp. 140–141). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

However, Freddie didn't make such an accusation. Tom killed him because Freddie had noticed him wearing Dickie's shoes and Dickie's bracelet.

In contrast, the Netflix series take the Freddie character in the direction of gingercide. In the novel, Freddie is a redhead, which disgusts Ripley. Highsmith writes:

The American's name was Freddie Miles. Tom thought he was hideous. Tom hated red hair, especially this kind of carrot-red hair with white skin and freckles.

Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley (p. 64). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

And who doesn't feel this way? [4]

In the Netflix series, Freddie is played by a former (or current) female — the actor is Elliott Summer, who, as it turns out, is Sting's daughter. The actor who plays Freddie is obviously a woman trying to pass as a man, which means the character is obviously a woman trying to pass as a man, but nothing is ever made of this.

https://medium.com/@peterseanEsq/the-talented-mr-ripley-a-sociopath-looks-at-70-ef5ee13b0d8a