42 pages • 1 hour read
Raymond ChandlerThe Long Goodbye
Raymond ChandlerFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
In the parking lot of a club called the Dancers, private detective Philip Marlowe meets a drunk man named Terry Lennox. After Lennox politely complains to his ex-wife Sylvia about his lack of money, she leaves. Marlowe offers to drive Lennox home to “sober him up” (5). He notices small scars on Lennox’s skin which suggest that Lennox has undergone cosmetic surgery. When Lennox is sober enough, he apologizes to Marlowe and returns to his “small and stuffy and impersonal” (6) apartment. Marlowe leaves, pitying the poor, alcoholic Lennox.
Chapter 2 Summary
A month later, Marlowe sees Lennox drunk on the street. He takes Lennox home and helps him fetch an expensive suitcase from the bus station depository. Lennox explains that he married Sylvia for her family’s wealth, but now he is too proud to ask her for money. Marlowe has “a feeling” (8) about Lennox, so he helps him arrange a bus trip to Las Vegas, where Randy Starr—Lennox’s friend from the Army—will find him a job. After Lennox leaves, Sylvia calls Marlowe. She is concerned about her ex-husband. After telling her Lennox’s plan, Marlowe criticizing her for not helping her husband when he was “down and out, starving, dirty, without a bean” (10).
Chapter 3 Summary
Marlowe learns that Lennox has remarried Sylvia and returned to the life of luxury. Lennox visits Marlowe regularly and they drink together, though Lennox is no longer an alcoholic. Marlowe notices that Lennox seems numb to the world in a loveless marriage which provides him with every material thing he could ever want. Lennox mentions that he was raised in “an orphanage in Salt Lake City” (13), but Marlowe declines to ask more about his life story, including how he injured his face and required cosmetic surgery. He now regrets not asking, as “it just might have saved a couple of lives” (14).
Chapter 4 Summary
The last time that Marlowe drinks with Lennox in a bar, Lennox describes his unhappy marriage. He explains that Sylvia fears her overbearing father, Harlan Potter, who is “ruthless as a Gestapo thug” (15) despite his aristocratic, polite veneer. Potter dislikes his sexually promiscuous daughter and is, in Lennox’s opinion, waiting for her to get caught in some sort of scandal so that he can disown or hurt her. Marlowe tells Lennox that he talks “too damn much” (16).
Chapter 5 Summary
Lennox appears early at Marlowe’s home in a disheveled state, carrying an unused gun. He asks Marlowe to drive him to Tijuana for a flight. Marlowe agrees to help his friend, apologizing for his scathing comments during their last meeting. Marlowe does not want to know why Lennox is fleeing the country because he does not want to jeopardize his private detective’s license by implicating himself in a crime. He drives Lennox to the airport in Mexico.
Chapter 6 Summary
Marlowe returns to Los Angeles. As he arrives back at his home, he is met by Sergeant Green and Detective Dayton. They want to talk to Marlowe about Lennox, but Marlowe refuses to talk. They explain that Sylvia was found dead in the guest house at her mansion, “beat to pieces with a bronze statuette of a monkey” (24). They believe that Lennox found his wife having an affair with another man, so he killed her and ran away. After a heated discussion, they take Marlowe to the local police station.
Chapter 7 Summary
At the police station, Captain Gregorius roughly interrogates Marlowe about Lennox. Marlowe refuses to talk to the Captain, calling him incompetent. Gregorius dismisses Marlowe as “a little old cop-hater” (29), but, when he receives a phone call from the district attorney’s office, the captain’s mood changes. He reveals that the district attorney (DA) will charge Marlowe with murder. Before he sends Marlowe away, Gregorius spits in Marlowe’s face.
Chapter 8 Summary
Marlowe spends three days in jail until a lawyer named Sewell Endicott comes to him. Endicott, who is the former DA, has been sent to help Marlowe free of charge, but he does not want to say who is paying for his services. Marlowe declines his help.
Chapter 9 Summary
Marlowe is released and taken to the DA’s office. He meets District Attorney Grenz, who sits in front of a recording device and demands a full statement. Grenz claims that Lennox has been caught and that Marlowe should cooperate now, as his office wants to proceed quickly with a case which has “sex, scandal, money, [a] beautiful unfaithful wife, [and a] wounded war hero husband” (38). Marlowe does not believe Grenz’s story, so Grenz admits that Lennox apparently shot himself in a hotel room in Mexico and left a note in which he confessed to the murder. Marlowe refuses to cooperate, as he does not want to damage his reputation as a trustworthy private detective. Grenz relents and lets Marlowe go.
Chapter 10 Summary
Outside, a journalist named Lonnie Morgan offers Marlowe a ride. They discuss the Lennox case, and Morgan complains that someone rich and powerful is “building a wall” (40) around the story. He believes Sylvia’s father wants the murder case to be quietly dismissed. At home, Marlowe ruminates on the fact that Lennox’s suicide seems too convenient.
Chapters 1-10 Analysis
Lennox is introduced to the audience through his physical scarring. Marlowe notices the scars on the sides of Lennox’s face and immediately associates the them with knife wounds or surgery. To Marlowe, the scars are symbols of violence. As such, Marlowe’s first observation and Lennox’s introduction to the audience are couched in terms of brutality. Given the murder and suicide that will follow, the implication of violence in Lennox’s introduction foreshadows the rest of the novel. Like his suspicions about the scars on Lennox’s face, Marlowe is vaguely correct in his first assumptions about the murder case, but the finer details of the scars—and the story—are yet to be revealed.
Through his burgeoning friendship with Lennox, Marlowe realizes that Lennox is a deeply unhappy man. He has everything that Marlow lacks: Lennox has a wife who eventually seems to love him, and through her he has access to a vast amount of money. Despite this romance and wealth, however, Lennox prefers his quiet drinks with Marlowe over anything else. Marlowe offers Lennox something that Sylvia and her rich friends cannot: sincerity. Despite being a relatively impoverished man, Marlowe is sincere. Lennox covets that sincerity, as he has chosen to return to the unfulfilling world of the rich and the powerful. The drinks with Marlowe are Lennox’s only respite from the numb emptiness of existence. Thus, Lennox embodies one of the key themes of the novel. His time among the rich and the powerful illustrates how wealth fails to generate happiness. None of the rich characters in the novel are happy; they all hide their traumas, which they swap with one another, spreading the pain around. Lennox accepts that he will never be happy, so he gives himself over to the emptiness of wealth while occasionally meeting with Marlowe to feel something resembling a human emotion.
Lennox’s state of numbness does not last. After Sylvia’s murder, he is forced to flee to Mexico with the one person he can really trust. Marlowe does not want to know the truth about Lennox because he understands that something truly terrible must have happened and he does not want to implicate himself—legally or morally. He performs a favor for his friend, and in return Lennox allows Marlowe to retain his plausible deniability. Their brief friendship is enough to give Marlowe an idea of Terry Lennox, which in turn is enough for him to doubt the facts surrounding Lennox’s suicide. The doubts regarding Lennox’s suicide will needle away at Marlowe throughout the novel. He never accepts the official version of events, and the ensuing narrative justifies his cynicism. Even as everyone else tells Marlowe to accept the story, he continues to doubt them. His doubt shows either that he was the only person to truly know Lennox, or that he is the only person who cares enough to reflect on Lennox’s character. Everyone else has accepted the numbness which defined Lennox’s recent life, and they simply choose not to care that the facts do not fit. Society’s indifference to the truth shows the hollowed-out nature of the world Marlowe inhabits.
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