Talented Mr. Ripley discussion guide: Home
Author biography
Highsmith [ˈhī-ˌsmith], Patricia, original name Mary Patricia Plangman [ˈplaŋ-mən] b. Jan. 19, 1921, Fort Worth, Tex., U.S.—died Feb. 4, 1995, Locarno, Switz.
American novelist and short-story writer who was best known for her psychological thrillers in which she delved into the nature of guilt, innocence, goodness, and evil.
Highsmith graduated from Barnard College in 1942. In 1950 she published Strangers on a Train, an intriguing story of two men, one ostensibly good and the other ostensibly evil, who undergo character reversals. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) was the first of several books featuring the adventures of a likeable murderer, Tom RIPLEY, who takes on the identities of his victims. Ripley also appears in Ripley Under Ground (1970), Ripley's Game (1974), The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), and Ripley Under Water (1991). Highsmith's collections of short stories include The Black House (1981) and Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987).
In her Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966; revised and enlarged 1981), Highsmith held that “art has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing.”
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Beautiful Shadow : the life of Patricia Highsmith -- is a full-length 2003 biography by Andrew Wilson
Talented Miss Highsmith -- is a 2009 full-length biography by Joan Schenkar
Criticism, Reviews and more
Author Interview with film critic Gerald Peary
A Close-Reading of The Talented Mr. Ripley as Coming of Age Story by Emily Temple | LitHub.com November 30, 2018
Discussion questions
1. How does the time period effect the way the book was written?
2.How does The Talented Mr. Ripley make a comment on class?
3.In what way does the author explain Tom's development from petty criminal to cold blooded murder?
4.What does Patricia Highsmith want to teach us from Mr. Ripley sustaining a false identity and lying to his friends and to himself?
5.How is The American Dream presented in The Talented Mr Ripley?
6.Why did Mr Ripley deceive others and himself about his identity?
7.When he has dinner with the Greenleafs in New York, Tom promises them he will do everything he can to convince Dickie Greenleaf to return to the U.S. Does Tom keep his promise?
8. What are some of the factors that made Tom's childhood difficult? In your opinion, do they justify Tom's criminal acts as an adult?
9.Is Tom Ripley genuinely interested in other people, or does he just use them?
10.What is Tom Ripley's attitude towards men? Is he sexually attracted to women?
11. How are Dickie Greenleaf and Tom Ripley's relationships with Marge Sherwood different?
12. After Tom kills Freddie Miles and Dickie Greenleaf, is he wracked with guilt and remorse?
13. Why are Dickie Greenleaf's rings so important to Tom? Why does he keep them, even though he knows it is dangerous to have any of Dickie's possessions with him?
Interview with Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith on film
Talented Mr. Ripley
starring Matt Damon and Philip Seymour Hoffman
Purple Noon
Foreign language film based on The Talented Mr. RipleyCry of the Owl
A troubled young man retreats from the big city and his ex-wife for the tranquility of a small town. He is drawn into a relationship with a young woman whose boyfriend goes missing, leaving the new arrival as a suspect.Ripley's game
Criminal Tom Ripley draws an innocent man into a murder for hire scheme.
Other titles by Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith : selected novels and stories by ISBN: 9780393080131Publication Date: 2010-12-06The remarkable renaissance of Patricia Highsmith ("Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley") continues with the publication of "The Highsmith Reader," featuring two groundbreaking novels as well as a trove of penetrating short stories.
Ripley under Water by ISBN: 9780679416777Publication Date: 1992-10-06Tom Ripley passes his leisured days at his French country estate tending the dahlias, practicing the harpsichord, and enjoying the company of his lovely wife, Heloise. Never mind the bloodstains on the basement floor. But some new neighbors have moved to Villeperce: the Pritchards, just arrived from America. they are a ghastly pair, with vulgar manners and even more vulgar taste. Most inconvenient, though, is their curiosity. Ripley does, after all, have a few things to hide. When menacing coincidences begin to occur, a spiraling contest of sinister hints and mutual terrorism ensues, resulting in one of Patricia Highsmith's most elegantly harrowing novels to date. From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley under Ground, Ripley's Game by ISBN: 9780375407925Publication Date: 1999-10-12Three classic crime novels by a master of the macabre appear here together in hardcover for the first time.
Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral, Patricia Highsmith's hero, the inimitable Tom Ripley, stops at nothing--not even murder-- to accomplish his goals. In achieving for himself the opulent life that he was denied as a child, Ripley shows himself to be a master of illusion and manipulation and a disturbingly sympathetic combination of genius and psychopath. As Highsmith navigates the mesmerizing tangle of Ripley's deadly and sinister games, she turns the mystery genre inside out and takes us into the mind of a man utterly indifferent to evil.
