different literary traditions, forming a story that is not solely one "type" or another, but both—like Tom himself, who is Dickie and Tom at once.

In the "Preface" to his book, Patricia Highsmith, Russell Harrison curiously qualifies the genre of Highsmith's work. Harrison writes, "For a long time, her work was, in the United States, viewed as crime or suspense fiction," but he is careful to explain that while her work is not representative of "literary realism," it does evince and "create in readers" "states of extreme psychological tension unlike anything produced by her contemporaries." Harrison's reading of Highsmith's works as psychological and social, reflecting the ways in which the "self" is created, informed, and altered by society, illustrates that her novels are, in a sense, subversive—challenging the norms of the societies that she unveils. While her works cannot be reduced to the categories "crime" or "suspense" fiction, her treatment of the characters' quest for identification within (or rejection of) an often hostile environment leaves the reader with a whirlwind of questions regarding the construction of the "self" and its social role.

Highsmith's fourth published novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, focuses on the question of "identification"—a question not so easily resolved for the resilient Tom Ripley. Tom Ripley is talented, yes, but he is alienated from a larger society and himself. Tom's talent is fraud (not "a fraud"), for he does possess the talent of imitation. But before Tom begins to see himself as another, reconstructing "Tom Ripley," we are introduced to "Tom" and recognize that his character is, at best, a construct, for he is too eager to escape his world to become someone else. The novel begins with Tom's fear of being discovered, being "found out," a fear that manifests itself in a disastrous and climactic scene once Tom can no longer hide behind his well constructed facade. Though Tom evolves into a criminal (in the largest sense, for he becomes a murderer), he is originally conceived, and represented as, a voyeur. Watching and waiting, Tom hides in a bar, caught between the social sphere that he inhabits and a mental prison that leads him to question that he is about to be "found out" for fraud. But it is at this moment of fear of "discovery" that Tom discovers an escape—from his world, its inhabitants, and himself.

Ironically, Tom's introduction into this new world is one marked by his identification as "Tom Ripley," an identity that he will later erase in the context of his journey to Italy, to Dickie Greenleaf, and away from a unified notion of self. "Pardon me, are you Tom Ripley?" Herbert Greenleaf implores on the second page of the novel. It is at this moment that Tom breathes a sigh of relief; "Free!" he thinks to himself. Herbert Greenleaf offers Tom the opportunity to leave his world, at Herbert Greenleaf's expense. While the two men sit across from each other at the bar, in conversation, the dissimilarity is striking. Herbert Greenleaf is a shipbuilding magnate; Tom Ripley is wanted for fraud. But both characters despair over their respective lots—Herbert Greenleaf wants his son, Dickie Greenleaf, to return from Mongibello and enter the "family business," while Tom wants to escape like Dickie—to live a life of leisure. But Herbert Greenleaf has heard (mistakenly) that Dickie and Tom are friends (the two are little more than acquaintances). He thinks that "Tom Ripley" is the one to encourage and facilitate his son's return. And yet, during this meeting and the next to follow at the Greenleafs' home, Tom is readily constructing stories about his friendship with Dickie, to merely "pass the time." Amused by the Greenleafs' plight, their desire to see their son's safe return, and driven by his own needs, Tom Ripley willingly accepts the offer of a lifetime—a trip to Europe.

Tom's migration to Europe signifies a rebirth for his character. "He was starting a new life. Good-bye to all the second-hand people he had hung around and had let hang around him in the past three years in New York. . . . A clean slate," the narrator tells us as Tom begins to "play a role on the ship." From-this point on, Tom continually renegotiates his identity, trying on different "hats" as readily as he dons a cap that transforms him into a "country gentleman, a thug, an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a plain American eccentric, depending on how he wore it." A "plain American," indeed, for Tom, upon arriving in Italy, attempts to become this "other" American, an expatriate, a young American of leisure, freedom, and volition to become someone else. It is at this moment that Dickie's life appears before him, literally. Tom's desire then is directed toward Dickie—all that Dickie possesses and is.

Tom introduces himself to Dickie as "Tom Ripley," but Dickie's question, "Tom what is it?" illustrates Tom's non-existence in Italy at this point. Tom does not know the area, or the people, and can only tell Dickie that he does not know how long he will stay, for he has to "look the place over." Dickie reaffirms Tom's spectral presence in Italy as he validates Tom's suspicion that "You don't seem to remember me from New York." As Tom gradually moves into Dickie's life and, eventually, home, he appears elusive, indefinable. When asked about his "job," Tom confesses that he can do a "number of things . . . forge a signature, fly a helicopter, handle dice, impersonate practically anybody." While Dickie is impressed by Tom's stories and imitations, Tom's desire for Dickie becomes problematic, for Tom is so elusive. The reader knows Tom not by his own descriptions but by his desire to become "liked" by Dickie—for that was something that Tom wanted "more than anything else in the world"—and then "like" Dickie. Early in Tom and Dickie's "friendship" (for it is hard to term it without qualification, as Dickie tires of Tom and Tom desires Dickie rather compulsively), Tom begins to see himself like Dickie. Admiring Dickie's rings, Tom recognizes that "Dickie had long, bony hands, a little like my own hands." And it is this process of "mirroring" that inevitably drives Dickie away from Tom, for the imitation is too good, and too disconcerting for Dickie's tastes.

Tom's desire for Dickie is intriguing in its dimensions, for, as much as Tom wants Dickie to like him, he wants to be like Dickie, and, as some instances in the text support, be with Dickie. When Marge, a fellow expatriate living in Mongibello alongside (somewhat "with") Dickie, disrupts and interrupts Tom's plans with Dickie— for Cortina in the winter and in the more present time of Mongibello—Tom begins to resent her presence. Dickie attempts to reconcile his "friendship" with Marge. But Dickie embraces her, while Tom, again the voyeur, witnesses. Enraged, and feeling lost, alienated, Tom can only despair over the turn of events and wonder, "And Dickie— !" Violent and out of control, Tom enters Dickie's room to disrupt the situation, and then, more chillingly, calms and begins to dress as Dickie. "Marge, you must understand that I don't love you," Tom states before the mirror, "in Dickie's voice, with Dickie's higher pitch on the emphasized words, with the little growl in his throat at the end of the phrase that could be pleasant or unpleasant, intimate or cool, according to Dickie's mood." Examining his reflection in the mirror, Tom begins to realize how much he could look like Dickie when a voice interrupts the narrative—"What're you doing?" Dickie enters the room. He is upset with Tom, and states, "I wish you'd get out of my clothes . . . Shoes, too? Are you crazy?"

This moment is significant in the destruction of the friendship, and the fragmentation of Tom. At this moment, Dickie informs Tom, "I'm not queer. I don't know if you have the idea that I am or not." Tom claims that he had not thought so, and attempts to dissuade Dickie from believing that he is. Though the text never explicitly defines Tom's sexual preferences or history, Dickie seems somewhat unconvinced. As Tom begins to speculate on their (Tom and Dickie's) New York crowd, Tom distinguishes that some of that crowd is homosexual, further blurring the lines of sexuality and friendship between himself and Dickie. But, at this point, Dickie too appears elusive, leading the reader to wonder if they are both homosexual characters. But we never resolve this issue, for, as Tom states, "I feel as if I've . . . ," Dickie fails to listen. Tom is left desiring Dickie's company and Dickie's desires are left indecipherable.

In their "final" trip together—final in the sense that Dickie tires of Tom and Tom will not stand for Dickie's rejection—a curious scene evolves that again complicates the dynamics of their relationship. In San Remo, Tom and Dickie go to the beach and discover a group of acrobats, in which Tom expresses an interest. Again, Dickie questions Tom's sexuality, and this scene stages the denouement of the relationship. Dickie's taunts leave Tom feeling ashamed and abandoned, for he realizes that "Dickie was just shoving him out in the cold." Tom's desperation, and yet cool and calculated response to the realization, is evinced in his thought: "He could . . . he could become Dickie Greenleaf himself. He could do everything that Dickie did." While Tom will no longer to live with Dickie, he can, in fact, subsume Dickie's identity—become Dickie himself. From this point, Tom deliberates no more, and plans to kill Dickie.

Once resolved to kill Dickie, Tom has no bouts of conscience. Ethics and morality are as far from Tom's mind as America. Tom's fear is not of becoming a "murderer," or guilt of committing the act, but rather a fear of the "deep water." Psychoanalytically speaking, he is afraid of himself—not Dickie— the depth of his own psyche and the impenetrability of his "self." Tom fails to know himself, and is afraid of that fact, but the amorality that is expressed in his cold and cruel thoughts illustrate the utter absence of self that is "Tom Ripley," and this absence is what constitutes the majority of the novel, as the narrator states, "And the story there."

The "story there" is intriguing in its propositions, for Tom as "Dickie Greenleaf" must convince the European society that he is an American of wealth and privilege, yet Tom's desire to become Dickie is not merely a longing to become a wealthy American, but a new "type." Tom wanders through Europe—Rome and then Paris—positing his new identity, and his function as an American "expatriate." For Tom, his newly defined role is not one of boundaries, but flexible borders; he is able to become a part of each world that he enters: "This was the clean slate he had thought about on the boat coming over from America. This was the real annihilation of his past and of himself, Tom Ripley, who was made up of that past, and his rebirth as a completely new person." When Tom, as "Dickie," is invited to the home of a Frenchwoman, he wonders, "How many Americans alone in Paris could get themselves invited to a French home only a week or so in the city?" Indoctrinated (though in a limited sense) into these communities, Tom feels part of them, yet alienated from others, because "It wouldn't do to become too friendly with any of these . . . One of them might know somebody who knew Dickie very well, someone who might be at the next party." This new identity, though more flexible than that of "Tom Ripley," is still constrained and again leads to devastation.

Since Tom "had two people to take care of," he has to maintain this delicate construction of self. Avoiding the unveiling and unraveling of his plot, Tom must murder an "innocent" Freddie Miles, who suspects that Tom's facade is anything but real. Marge, too, becomes suspicious of Tom, and Dickie's disappearance. All the while, Tom continues to imitate Dickie, to "act those things with every gesture," and rids Dickie's traces from his new possessions. But Dickie cannot be erased from the text, for Tom inscribes his own body with markers of Dickie's absent presence—his rings, his clothes, his initials on luggage. Such markers indicate the inevitability that Dickie cannot be erased from the text, and that Tom can never fully "be" Dickie Greenleaf. Tom prepares for the inevitability when he must become "Tom Ripley" again:

It was a good idea to practice jumping into his own character again, because the time might come when he would need to in a matter of seconds, and it was strangely easy to forget the exact timbre of Tom Ripley's voice. He conversed with Marge until the sound of his own voice in his ears was exactly the same as he remembered it . . . But mostly he was Dickie, discoursing in a low tone with Freddie and Marge, and by long distance with Dickie's mother

The conflation of Tom and Dickie occurs when the detective in Rome wonders about Dickie's involvement with Freddie, for "witnesses" spied Freddie with Dickie on the night of his death. Ironically, Tom can only save himself by "re-becoming" Tom, for Dickie is now suspect. As Dickie, Tom is no longer safe, and it is to "himself" that he returns.

But "Tom" has no self—and this new construction and affirmation of "Tom Ripley" is no more telling than the former. He lies to construct this other "Dickie Greenleaf" who may have murdered Freddie, while framing himself as an "innocent abroad." Wandering the countryside alone, he tells the detective he was—and a wanderer he remains. But Tom will not return to the poverty of his former life, for he has one last trick up his sleeve. Tom, forging Dickie's signature, had made certain that he was Dickie's benefactor, and so signs the estate that will grant Tom the freedom and prosperity he desires, at Dickie's expense (in all senses of the word).

And yet while Tom constructs himself anew, he is not altogether different from the Tom Ripley we met at the beginning of the novel. Worrying that he will be "found out," Tom boards a ship to Greece, on the "lookout" for policemen who would come to arrest him. Herbert Greenleaf again intervenes, in a letter, though, for his role in the novel is as tentative as it first was—he is Tom's benefactor. Mr. Greenleaf's response that he will not contest the will seals Tom's fate—again. Tom is able to travel on, with Dickie's money in hand. Ironically, though Tom is recreated, he is the same; although Tom can no longer live as Dickie, for Dickie is now the suspected murderer who killed himself in grief, he will live like Dickie. Ending as it began, "And the story there" continues, ripe for the next Ripley saga.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is both like and unlike the text it alludes to—Henry James' The Ambassadors. The modernist impulse away from the unified self to the representation of "human subjectivity" illustrates a shift away from the omniscient narrator. In James, we find a narrator, who relays Strether's point of view, while calling its narration into question. In James' work, we glimpse the unconscious—what Strether is unable to consciously articulate and realize, but we are unable to process it all neatly, and flatly, as traditional omniscient narration allows. Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley narrates Tom's story, while relaying Tom's point of view, but, like in James, narration allows us to piece together what is beneath the surface in addition to what is conscious thought. Like James, Highsmith explores what it means to be an American touring Europe, especially after the war had divided (and yet somehow unified) the chasm between the two lands. Exploring the very notion of "identity" through the eyes of the "expatriate," Highsmith continues the conversation begun by James, and turns it inward.

In psychoanalytic terms, Highsmith's novel is closely related to earlier works of literary "mirroring." Edgar Allen Poe's "William Wilson" begins with a narrator reluctant to tell his story, or reveal his name, and the reader gets the sense that he is repressing (or deliberately reconstructing) his identity as he pens the story. While the narrative differs (between first and third person narration) between the two works, "William Wilson" is like The Talented Mr. Ripley (and vice versa) due to the fact that Poe's character cannot fully realize himself. Even when he is faced with his mirrored reflection, smeared with blood, he almost fails to recognize what he has done. Like William Wilson, Tom Ripley deliberately keeps these two identities distinct; Freddie must be murdered when he sees Tom as "Dickie" and Tom even contemplates murdering Marge if she realizes too much. Similarly, in Poe's eerie style, William Wilson is denied (and denies) self-realization, and, instead, favors keeping his two "selves" separate, until he no longer can.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is another text that introduces this idea of a literary "hall of mirrors," through which characters like Richard III and Hamlet have posited what identity signifies. Wilde's Dorian Gray is split—between the "idealized" self and the "real." Without a "moral conscience," Gray does as he pleases, and the idealized Gray bears the wounds of the character's ill actions, so that, finally, self-destruction results when Gray can no longer deny his "self." But this hall of mirrors goes back still further, for the Brothers Grimm's version of "Snow White," where the queen begs the mirror's affirmation only to find that another version, her idealized self, exists elsewhere; she then resolves to kill the girl to subsume, and assume, her place.

In 1950, Highsmith published Strangers on a Train, a novel from which Alfred Hitchcock adapted his famous film. The Talented Mr. Ripley is Highsmith's fourth published novel, and the first of a series of novels featuring Tom Ripley: Ripley Underground (1970), Ripley's Game (1974), The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), and Ripley Under Water (1990). As The Talented Mr. Ripley ends with Tom looking over his shoulder for policemen, and then to the taxi driver, indicating that Tom's journey is to continue, so do the subsequent novels follow Tom's perpetual struggles. Harrison writes that the central thread of the later Ripley novels is "domesticity," for Ripley weds Heloise (a character absent from this first work), obtains and retains a servant, Madame Annette, and his home, Belle Ombre. But the domesticity of these later Ripley novels is far different from the "domestic" realm of Mongibello, where Dickie, Marge, and Tom cohabit and entertain rather than sustain. And Ripley's newfound domesticity is distinct from that of Highsmith's novels that span 1957-1962, as Harrison argues, for domesticity in Deep Water (1957), This Sweet Sickness (1960), and The Cry of the Owl (1962) is "one of the most harrowing human experiences."

Highsmith's "domestic" novels of 1957-1962 are especially intriguing once we take into account their location. Set in "familial America," these novels explore the "American Dream," an illness that we witnessed Tom Ripley symptomatic of. Community is suspect and suspecting, and the lines between guilt and innocence are not so clearly drawn. Like in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith explores the role of the individual in society, but it is a different society—alienation is now "at home" in America. This societal "plague," alienation, reflects existential beliefs, and her characters, like Tom Ripley, at times appear like the "existential hero." Like Camus' The Stranger, Tom Ripley is isolated, and his actions are influenced by this realization.

But Strangers on a Train is perhaps more closely aligned to the tale of Tom Ripley evidenced in The Talented Mr. Ripley than the four subsequent Ripley novels, for it focuses on the relationship between two men, obsession, and murder. One man uses the other as "mirror," posits a "new" identity, and commits a crime to achieve this new "self." In Strangers on a Train, Guy Haines meets Charles Anthony Bruno, and a "relationship" is established, much by the insistence of Bruno, to a destructive end. In this work, we witness the dynamics of two men—both desiring certain ends and yet alienated from each other. The stakes are high, for one has the capacity to carry out the "plan" and makes a proposition that distresses the other. Here we have the microcosm of the plot of the first Ripley novel, but, with its variations, Strangers on a Train offers a different glimpse into the formulation and reconstruction of identities.

In 1960, Rene Clement adapted The Talented Mr. Ripleyinto a "French thriller" titled Purple Noon, or Plein Soleil. In relation to the novel, this film begins in media res, for Tom Ripley (Alain Delon) and Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) are in Rome, and no intimation of Mr. Greenleaf's proposition to Tom is given until it is revealed in later discussions. The film's premise, in its totality, is the same: Tom desires Philippe's life, and murders him to get it. Significant differences occur, though, in the formation of the plot.

As the film opens, Tom and Philippe appear as close friends, but the homosexual undertones (and overtones) are absent. To iterate this distinction, the film places Tom and Philippe in a carriage with a woman whom they dupe into believing Philippe is blind. Both begin to kiss the woman, illustrating a triadic relationship that is only posited in the novel through Marge's and Tom's desires for Dickie. In this film, Tom is implicated in Philippe's love affair as his mirror—enacting the same act with a woman as Philippe is. This distinction is reemphasized through Marge's role. Tom as well as Philippe desires Clement's Marge (Marie Laforet). An amorous fight between Philippe and Marge leads to her "escape" from the boat, leaving Tom with the opportunity to kill Philippe.

And yet even the circumstances surrounding, or denouement of, the murder is altered drastically. Philippe suspects Tom's plan to murder him, and directly asks him of it. Tom plays a game of cat and mouse with Philippe, telling him that he will be able to imitate Philippe's signature, and attain his money, with practice. Tom appears cold, and calculating, and even more deliberate than Highsmith's character, for Tom appears to have no fear at all—not even of water. Before Marge is sent ashore, Tom is set adrift—on the rowboat. Literally severed from the main boat, Tom despairs and anguishes as the hot sun burns him. When rescued, Tom then moves in to kill Philippe.

Although Clement's Tom imitates Philippe's signature, feigns Philippe's identity, and murders Freddy, he is strikingly different. Marge mourns Philippe until Tom reenters her life and professes his love for her. After willing her "his" inheritance, Tom convinces Marge that he loves her more than Philippe could have, and becomes romantically involved with her. And yet one fatal flaw does catch him—a detail that Highsmith's Tom did not, and would not have, overlooked. Tom never cuts Philippe loose, literally, and, when the boat is put up for sale (ironically named "Marge" rather than "Pipistrello" of the novel), the body rises to the surface. The end of the film finds Tom awaiting Marge's return after witnessing the boat's sale (and, unbeknownst to him, the body's "unveiling") and being "found out" by police.

In 1999, Anthony Minghella adapted The Talented Mr. Ripley in a strikingly distinct way—from both Clement's film and Highsmith's text. As the film opens, Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) appears—in fragments. Tom's face appears in slivers, as if shards of glass are revealing pieces of his identity. And when the title appears on the screen, it is written with a plethora of adjectives that appear in a rapid succession until it rests on "talented." From the onset of the film, facets of Tom's identity are inscribed upon him; he does not define himself. As we hear his voice-over narration, "If I could just go back. If I could rub everything out . . ." we learn of his desire to erase himself, and all that he had done. In this sense, Minghella's Tom reveals guilt through introspection and a retrospective perspective that neither Highsmith's nor Clement's Tom was able to attain. And Minghella's Tom is more sensitive; he is not the deliberate killer that Highsmith introduces. Tom is "talented" and "musical," as Peter Smith- Kingsley tells us at the film's end, and this "musicality" and "vulnerability" of Tom is what Minghella captures. This Tom is a musician, as is Dickie (instead of the painter in Highsmith's novel); for Minghella, relationships are worked out in "musical terms" so that Dickie's identification with jazz, "its mantra of freedom and existentialism," is juxtaposed with, and confronted by, Tom's "formal classicism," so that Tom, ultimately, must "improvise." Improvisation leads to fragmentation, and the many mirrors upon which Tom attempts to see himself illustrates how Minghella's film posits a character that is longing for completion, unity, but is prevented.

In an interview with The Onion A.V. Club, Minghella distinguishes his film from Clement's, a film he likes "on its own terms," by stating, "What intrigued me about Ripley is that it seemed most of all about class, about the American experience of Europe, about the obsession of one man for another, and, most of all, conceptually about a man who commits murder and is not caught. Purple Noon is about a man who commits murder and is caught: It's about a European in Europe, he's not obsessed with another man in any real sense at all, and it's not really a film about class . . ." Minghella's Tom Ripley is more like Highsmith's than Clement's, but he alters the ending to illustrate a "moral imperative." Minghella writes, "Ripley, always looking for love, always looking to love and be loved, has to kill his opportunity for love. He ends the movie alone, free, and in a hell of his own making . . . in annihilating self, assuming someone's identity, Ripley is condemned never to be free to be truly himself ever again." To create this "other" Tom, Minghella adapts the "murder" to illustrate that Tom's revelation of his love for Dickie (Jude Law), which leads to Dickie's taunts that he is "boring" and "a little girl," ultimate rejection, and violence, is, in fact, an "accident." This way, Tom is even more "like" us, a victim of revealing too much desire and need, and denied that which he so needs.

The introduction of Peter Smith-Kingsley (Jack Davenport), brought to the forefront of the film where he was only a marginal character in the novel, illustrates Tom's capacity to love, and be loved, until his crime is almost brought to the surface— through Meredith's (Cate Blanchett) sighting of "Dickie" as well as Tom's increasing guilt. It is Peter who voices the revision of Tom's proclamation "I suppose I always thought—better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody" to read "Tom is not a nobody." Tom "has someone to love him" but Tom can't let him, and Tom must crush Peter, because he needs too much, and does not have enough of himself to give. In the novel, Tom looks at Peter and thinks that "the same thing could happen with Peter . . . except that he didn't look enough like Peter" and Tom is ashamed to realize that he could have thought that he could do the same thing again. But Minghella's Peter represents a revision of Highsmith's text and Tom's relationship with Dickie; this relationship was and could have been based on mutual need, had Tom more of himself (not Dickie) to give. Even at the end of the film, Tom is confused about who he is to Peter as he implores, "Tell me some good things about Tom Ripley." But it's too late, as Minghella's Tom tells us, "I'm lost, too. I'm going to be stuck in the basement, aren't I . . . and so nobody can ever find me."

Minghella explores the limits of film adaptation as he writes, "But if the intimate gestures of a novel, its private conversation between writer and reader, are not available to the filmmaker, they are exchanged for other, equally powerful, tools." Minghella's argument continues those of film theorists like Seymour Chatman who explore the limits and strengths of film and the "cinematic narrator." But what Purple Noon and Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley show us, perhaps more importantly than "What Novels Can Do That Films Can't (And Vice Versa)" (to borrow from Chatman's essay's title), is what "interpretation" signifies. Minghella's Tom is vulnerable and alienated; Clement's is a product of his society, and very much a part of the society. Highsmith's Tom is somewhere in between; he is not remorseful, but haunted. He is alienated, but at the threshold of the society, and, as the novel ends, we envision that he will be able to glide into another, if not become fully embraced there. Minghella's Tom will be eternally locked in the cabin, as we leave him, trapped in his own thoughts.