Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” explores the concept of social manipulation and self awareness

Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is often placed under the guise of being a mystery novel, a fair assumption, but one that is far too generalized. Highsmith constructs a journey into the mind of Tom Ripley, the main character, and his very psyche. It serves as not only a commentary on mental health, personality disorders, murder, and the want to become someone else but a look into the spectrum of human emotion and interaction. Every Character represents negative and positive apsects of human emotion and personality, part of the mystery is how the metaphorical cards fall when these people interact. One can not help but feel able to relate the personas of these characters to people in their own life and in themself as well.
For example, Freddie Miles displays greed and ignorance, Marge naivety and desire to love, Dickie casual indifference, Tom self awareness and selfish entitlement, Mr. Greenleaf a desire to control. Watching these characters interact and develop a showing of these personality types leaves the reader wondering what could happen next from the perspective of Tom’s awareness. Highsmith does a fantastic job portraying Tom’s level of self awareness as so high that he often undermines it himself to fully believe his own crafted deception. This is especially displayed following his journey into crime and what entails after it.
Highsmith’s use of Tom as both an internal narrator and someone who views himself as an external character in situations allows the reader to become absorbed in the haze of his own mind. Every ounce of paranoia, every calculation of what might go wrong in his plan, every risk he takes, the reader becomes engrossed in the same heats of the moment. The weight of his errors and regret weighs upon the reader as well. Highsmith also myseteriously leaves the reader to wonder if Tom had alterior motives to his crime other than the desire to become his victim.

Tom is portrayed as someone who does not interact with a lot of women and when he does, it seems as if he holds negative sentiment towards them just in fact that they are of the opposite sex. He is more negative and judgemental about women’s beauty standards but praises Dickie for his features and charm on multiple occasions. Tom becomes so obssessed with Dickie that his rejection of Tom causes him to become mentally unhinged. In a fit of rage he even imagines himself kissing and killing Dickie in the same instances as he stares at Dickie asleep on the train. Later in the novel, it is revealed that Tom regrets his actions and treatment of Dickie, he fantasizes about how great their lives would be if he and Dickie could have found common ground. He imagine shimself living with Dickie and being adored by his parents and friends as well. Highsmith does a wonderful job of keeping this apparent but subtle even in the mind of Tom, as if he can’t come to terms with this himself or realize it’s a major factor in driving his actions. Perhaps he was so aware of this trait that he feared the judgement nad negativity due to his previous experiences in childhood that he had mentally surpressed it to ensure “survival” in a disapproving society. Highsmith weaves a web of consciousness within Tom that even provides hints to his subconscious as he struggles to come to terms with his own realities. Leaving the reader to piece together thier own perception of Tom, to relate to Tom and find a talented Mr. Ripley within themselves and question the degree of their own awareness. The subjective mystery seems to be in how the reader uses Tom to look at themselves and adjusts his perecptions or actions to themsleves while mentally follow along. Who do you see? Highsmith beautifully and almost unknowingly coerces you to ask this question through her expert use of literary devices and storytelling.
