Doubting Jonathan

I finally finished reading the Tom Ripley trilogy by Patricia Highsmith last night. Took me over a month to finish off the three novellas totaling around 500 pages.

The 2nd and 3rd stories were fairly underwhelming. The sliminess of the Ripley character in The Talented Mr Ripley was not matched somehow in Ripley Under Ground and Ripley's Game. He transformed somehow into a more confident person, rarely having those moments of uncertainty that was the running theme throughout the first story. Or maybe the fact that he got away easily with two murders in the first story made him more daring later. But there were other factors too that made the trilogy not as interesting as I had thought it would be. Tom Ripley remains one of my most favorite characters from literature though.

Despite the general low standard of writing that I thought Ms Highsmith depicted in the novels, there were instances where the doubts the characters had made it a very good read. Doubts that I keep having or have had.

In the last few pages of the last part that I was reading last night, Jonathan Trevanny, a man dying of cancer, does something that he knows would not be approved by his wife, Simone, whom he loves dearly. Tom Ripley helps him do this. When Simone comes to know of it, she responds in the expected manner - by growing distant and asking for separation. Jonathan is sure he has not done anything wrong and thinks to himself that he still has his self-respect intact. But then, Simone was morale. He has lost Simone, and so, his morale. And isn't morale, after all, self-respect?