Mister Blofeld:
The subject in question grew up parentless and in squalor, dominated by an emasculating aunt, and in mortal terror of authority. He early learned invisibility, accumulating a store of rage and resentment at the world’s indifference to his needs that even he fails to acknowledge consciously. Do not be fooled by the blandness he hides behind.
Tom Ripley is a liar on a par with Odysseus, practicing dissemblance and deception merely to stay in practice. He is so effective as to even deceive himself – self-examination is something that he recoils from. It is inadvisable to ever put him in a situation where he has to look within himself – it will provoke him in unexpected and unpredictable ways, with dire results.
Ripley is an accomplished murderer, his early bumbling efforts evolving through a Darwinian learning curve into a finesse approaching genius. His specialty is improvisation, and of engineering fatal "accidents." It is fortunate for the rest of us that he understands just how much effort surrounds a successful killing. Murder is something he holds as a last resort, if only because the cleanup and damage control is so inconvenient and tedious. His ability for self-deception enables him to handle police interrogations and investigations with aplomb.
His personality harkens back to the Renaissance style, prompting comparison with Cellini or Hannibal Lector (though without the artisan’s crude, thuggish brutality, or the Doctor’s cannibalistic malevolence). Tom’s penchant for leisure is not due to laziness, but rather reflects his inborn need to distinguish himself from the herd – his refusal to be a wage slave is not arrogance, but a classical inborn self-knowledge that he is an exception, a natural aristocrat. His need for beautiful and expensive things is an expression of his highly developed esthetic sense, a need for splendor to embellish his almost solipsistic existentialist mind-set. Again like the men of the Renaissance, Tom will not allow slights and insults to go unpunished – offending him through bad manners is a sure-fire way to observe his convoluted techniques of revenge first hand. It is not advised for amateurs, or for anyone not willing to go all the way.
Contrary to some expressed opinions, Tom Ripley is not gay. He is almost asexual, despite being able to function physically in a way that approaches normalcy (though any woman that expects "normal" intimacy to follow his caresses will be sorely disappointed). The famous incident where he wanted to bathe with Dicky Greenleaf was not, in the opinion of this profiler, an expression of homo-eroticism. Rather, it was a subconscious desire to "don" Dicky, to become him – not unlike Ed Gein’s and Buffalo Bill’s need to wear "girl suits."
A true chameleon, Tom was aware from the start that his lowly beginnings did not reflect his actual quality, and that he needed better. He is not hypocritical enough to fool himself that he "deserves" the good life. He has never begged or asked for anything – everything he has achieved, he has achieved at great risk, through his own efforts, and without apology.
The question has to be asked: who deserves a life of ease and beauty more? Tom Ripley, the self made man who rose from nothing and achieved his ends in a scuttling single-minded rush? Or the spoiled children of the rich, born to privilege and besotted with their own sense of entitlement? Ultimately, Tom Ripley is a much more interesting person than any of his victims, and the world would be a duller place without him in it.
Final recommendations: Do not confront this man. Do not intrude on his life, create a nuisance of yourself, and – most definitely – do not ever appear to be a threat to him. Law enforcement’s only chance to take him down will be with a high tech sting – he is immune to the psychological manipulations necessary to extract a confession, and his paranoiac genius precludes him leaving any effective forensic evidence. For one of our assassins, the best approach would be with either a remotely controlled explosive device, or the services of an exceptionally competent sniper – and even then, his death would not be a fore gone conclusion. Make no mistakes with Tom Ripley – he is a formidable foe.
Sincerely,
The SPECTRE profiling team
Copyright© 2006 Pearce Hansen
PEARCE
HANSEN
Born
in SF in the 50s into a train wreck of a family, the subject under discussion
came up in Oakland in the 70s and then traveled widely, misspending
his youth careening from one terror-in-retrospect abortive learning experience
to the next. Cab driver, bouncer, kick boxer, Marine: all the stereotypical noir
writer's breeding grounds apply here. Has seen most of the continents, and is
not nearly as dysfunctional as his writing might seem to imply. His debut novel, Street Raised,
will be published by PointBlank
Press in 2006.
Contact Pearce