What a pleasant surprise this is. Great prose and a far more nuanced and more interesting social commentary than the movie was.

Tom feels far more competent and less like a hermit crab with the shell of Dickey, and more a transgressive embodiment and exploration of passing in the upper crust. Commenting on the inherent violence of the 1% lifestyle, Tom compartmentalizes every component of his selfhood that isn’t in-line with the performance. It wouldn’t be complete without taking life to maintain monied luxury. What is even more intelligent about this, though, is paralleling queer identity closeting with this class angle; making readers in the 50s experience and consider gender roles in the guise of performance in society, in general.

The marginalized have always been able to adjust themselves to the societal norm. The rich believe birth and privilege as taught to them when socialized away from the normals creates a snowflake framework no one could imitate. They’d know who belongs and who doesn’t. In reality, Ripley shows us that if we wanted to be transactional about our identity, we could easily exchange the infringement on our selfhood for the empowerment that these social circles afford, and are, ostensibly, barred from.