The Devil Within Us: Who is Tom Ripley?

Patricia Highsmith, who captures every era with her timeless works and is constantly rediscovered, has been on the radar of cinema from the first period of her works until today.

His first work, Strangers on a Train, written in 1950, was brought to the screen by Alfred Hitchcock one year after its publication, and his best-known character, Tom Ripley, appeared in 5 different films from 1960 to 2005.

The Price of the Salt, which had to be published in 1952 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan due to Highsmith's sexual identity and the content of the work, met with the audience 63 years later as Carol.

Tom Ripley is a fictional character in the Ripley series of crime novels by American novelist Patricia Highsmith, as well as several film adaptations. He is a career criminal, con artist, and serial killer who always gets away with his crimes. The five novels in which he appears—The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water—were published between 1955 and 1991. In every novel, he comes perilously close to getting caught or killed, but ultimately escapes danger.

During this process spanning many years, Patricia Highsmith's works have been the source of dozens of films; Despite the changing world, evolving cinema, and changing audiences, its characters have managed to survive every period.

The new breath he brought to the detective fiction genre, his deep struggle against social taboos regarding sexual identity and orientation, and his character creation that was so out of line that he was exposed to allegations of misogyny, remain impressive even today.

If we were to summarize Patricia Highsmith's oeuvre in one word, that word would definitely be "character". Each of the heroes in his works, especially Bruno in Strangers on a Train, Tom Ripley, the subject of our article, Philip Carter in The Glass Cell, and Carol in The Price of the Salt, are multi-faceted, deep, and from life as if they would appear before you anywhere at any time.

Their ambitions, desires, hopes, weaknesses, expectations, emotional ups and downs, and tendency towards darkness are the manifestation of the common spirit of human beings, independent of the place and time they belong to. Despite this generalizability, each character is unique and unique; They are both general enough that everyone can find pieces of themselves and yet specific enough to be unlike anyone else. The real world is perfectly adapted into fiction by Highsmith.

Tom Ripley

Tom Ripley has a special place in Patricia Highsmith's gallery of characters. This is also true for Highsmith, who is said to have signed some of his letters as Tom and Pat: Tom is like a son whom he raises with care. In 1955, The Talented Mr. Highsmith, who wrote Ripley, returned to Ripley's life 15 years later and wrote the second book, and in 1991, he left behind the Ripliad series of 5 books.

Ripliad, the only series by Highsmith, who is a very productive writer, has also attracted the attention of cinema and television. Five different films have been adapted from the first three books of the Tom Ripley series, which first appeared on the screen in 1960 under the name Plein Soleil, with the last one being released in 2005.

Tom Ripley had a tragic childhood; His parents drowned in Boston Bay, and he was raised by an aunt who never missed an opportunity to say, "The money I spent raising you was much more than the life insurance you inherited from your father."

There was not much change in his life after his childhood, which was devoid of love, lonely, and poor; He could not avoid being the other in New York, where he came with big dreams, but he remained unemployed for "dangerously long periods", and remained silent to all kinds of insults and belittlements of people he did not like, just because they opened their homes to him.

Tom Ripley's opportunity to find a billionaire's son, Dickie Greenleaf, in Italy and convince him to return to America is an offer too big to refuse for a loser whose life is going wrong.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is not just a detective novel, it is also a social work that examines the reflection of class differences on individuals; In addition to being individuals, Dickie and Tom are representatives of the class they belong to, and class-based justifications, experiences, and desires underlie their actions.

The change that Tom shows during his time in Southern Italy is not just a personal change; On the other hand, it is the story of someone making a vertical transition between classes. At this point, the feeling arises that the seeds planted through the duo Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno in Strangers on a Train have grown and turned into Dickie Greenleaf and Tom Ripley, the faint class criticism has become stronger and flourished, and the struggle has moved to another area.

Plein Soleil, The Talented Mr Ripley's first adventure on the screen, is primarily an inspiration rather than a pure adaptation; Director René Clément does not aim to convey the novel faithfully. In my opinion, there are three main reasons for this: The first and most important is the way Alfred Hitchcock adapted Strangers on a Train and the success it achieved, the second is that Tom Ripley's sequel stories have not been written yet, and the last is that the film is of French origin. These three factors caused Tom Ripley's story to be reflected on the screen differently, and René Clément created his own world without paying much attention to the parts of the story in the book other than the setting and character.

The Talented Mr Ripley

The 1999 adaptation, which has the same name as the book, is a modern adaptation that follows the theme of the book almost exactly, and you can see Anthony Minghella's perfect control over the story and the character of Tom Ripley at every moment of the film.

Almost all of the critical turning points, characters, places, and events in the story are also in the movie. Minghella even builds a more intricate and successful structure by adding parts to the story that will strengthen the detective aspect of the novel and increase its level of credibility.

The Ripley series, which started airing on Netflix on April 4, 2024, is directed by the famous director Steven Zaillian. Zaillian is the director, screenwriter, and producer of the film.

WHAT IS THE SUBJECT OF THE RIPLEY SERIES?

In 1960s New York, Tom Ripley is hired by a wealthy man to persuade his rebellious son to return home from Italy. But Tom's introduction to Dickie Greenleaf's comfortable life abroad is "the first step into a complicated life of deception, fraud and murder".

WHERE WAS THE RIPLEY SERIES ADAPTED FROM?

The Ripley series is based on Patricia Highsmith's 1955 crime novel The Talented Mr Ripley.