The sarcastic eye of a private eye

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the way in which the American writer Raymond Chandler uses the description and the ekphrasis in the investigation process of his private eye, Philip Marlowe. Rather observant, the character has a clinical eye to record fundamental details about people and environments, using basically the metaphor, the simile, the hyperbole and the irony and thus drawing a critical portrait of the American Society of the 1930s and 40.