Dashiell Hammett (post 3): Recurring hero-detective, Continental Op, is referred to by his function, not by any name, typical of nameless alternate personalities.

In the two previous posts (search “Hammett”), I discussed multiple personality in The Maltese Falcon, which was most obviously implicated in “the novel’s most important passage” (1, p. 76) about the dissociative fugue of Mr. Flitcraft, which was left out of the movie starring Humphrey Bogart. In regard to naming, multiple personality was suggested by Brigid’s multiple names and changeability. But see those two past posts for more about it.

Names, Signatures, and Identity

“Hammett, who answered to several names himself (Dash, Sam, Dashiell, Hammett), was as cagey about his identity as he was savagely protective of his privacy. He signed himself in an early story as Peter Collinson, which in the underworld slang of the time meant ‘Nobody’s Son.’ Hammett’s first detective is the nameless hero known merely as the Continental Op. He gave later detectives names like Sam, his own first name, and other characters were named for people he admired, such as a former fellow patient nicknamed Whitey. Curiously, he signed several letters with the names of his characters, like Spade, Nicky, and Whitey…” (1, p. xx).

“Before Hammett, the goal had been solving the crime. After Hammett, the detective himself would become a central subject. Hammett’s…premise was that the biggest mystery was the self” (1, p. 44).

Continental Op

“The Continental Op is a fictional character created by Dashiell Hammett. He is a private investigator employed as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office. His name is never mentioned in any story…He appeared in 36 short stories…” and the novels Red Harvest and The Dain Curse (2).

To repeat, Dashiell Hammett’s most frequent protagonist is referred to, not by any name (he is nameless), but in terms of his function: He is an operative of the Continental Detective Agency.

Did Hammett have any reason for his character’s namelessness? Apparently, he had no particular reason. This was just the way the character had come to him, and since the character was getting along fine, he was not going to meddle:

“Hammett told his…editor on October 10, 1923, that he hadn’t deliberately kept his hero nameless. But as the Op had got through two stories without needing a name, he would let him continue…

Indeed, the character was not only nameless, but singleminded:

“The Op is a strange hero-detective. He has no home, no interests except his job, no goal except to get the job done…” (1, p. 46).

Namelessness in Multiple Personality

In multiple personality, while many alternate personalities do have their own names, many other alternate personalities are 1) nameless, and 2) referred to by their function, because they are rather singleminded.

Clinical example: A woman, who was not a writer, was puzzled to have occasionally found handwritten poems in a drawer at home, which she had no interest in or memory of writing. I persisted in asking her about these poems, which made her increasingly uncomfortable, until her demeanor suddenly changed.

Now she knew all about the poems, said she wrote them, and said that that was the only thing she cared about or did. She had no name. So I referred to this alternate personality by her function, as the Poet, which made sense to her.

When I then addressed the woman by her regular name, her demeanor suddenly changed back to the way it was usually. She had no memory of what had just happened, and still could not account for finding those poems in her drawer at home.

For further discussion of names and namelessness, prompted by other writers and works, search “nameless,” “nobody,” and “pseudonyms” in this blog.

1. Sally Cline. Dashiell Hammett: Man of Mystery. A Biography. New York, Arcade Publishing, 2014.

2. Wikipedia. “The Continental Op.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Continental_Op