Radical Evil and the Infinite Other in Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me

Abstract

Jim Thompson’s harrowing novel, The Killer Inside Me, in which the psychopathic narrator himself dies at the end of the story, operates as an allegorical embodiment and expression of inexplicable evil resulting in useless suffering. The metaphysical implication and fictive logic of transforming the novel’s horrific and yet materialistically mundane narrative into a posthumous confession transforms this existential life-trap into an ethical indictment of radical evil. The ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Thompson’s contemporary, which focuses upon the inexpungeable reality of the Other, to which we each individually owe an infinite responsibility that precedes our birth and survives our death, allows us to make metaphysical sense of Thompson’s confounding narrative conclusion, while providing us a critical ethical perspective from which to appreciate and benefit from Thompson’s prophetic cautionary tale.