Blog Post on The Talented Mr. Ripley (Spoilers!)

I just read a really great book, called The Talented Mr. Ripley and I thought it was one of the best books I have read. It is about a man Tom Ripley, who travels to Italy to persuade a friends to move back to the states. He ends up getting jealous of his friend and kills him, and then takes over his identity.
I thought Tom(Mr. Ripley) was the most interesting character in the book.  He seems normal and cool and collected, but he would kill a man. He is not like a normal "psycho path" he has lived a normal life and is usually very happy. But the smallest things can make him so angry. He hates unfairness, and I think he has to take out his anger that way. Not to be too mean or anything, but the author clearly shows there are a few loose screws for Tom. He once dressed up in his friends Dickie's clothes, and pretended to act like him. (Later taking his whole identity.) He wants to be someone else. Some part of his brain is so rejected by him he manages to pretend he is someone else completely. Even though he is faking, and he is acting, he also believes himself. That he, Tom is his friend. He even makes an effort to talk like him, to move his face like him, this is something he is completely obsessed with.
Tom's job before he went to Italy was forging people's signatures to gain their money from checks, a path to ensure him to break the law. But the thought of killing another being did not come into his head at all. That's what scared me. He was a normal man, just sitting on the beach, when he had the idea he was going to kill his friend and he did. There was no plotting, no deciding whether this was right or not. This scared because you never know when he is going to attack, never going to snap. Some of the world's worst criminals are like that, which makes them the most dangerous. They will be normal one day, killers the next.
And he doesn't stop with his friend Dickie either. After assuming the identity of Dickie, he moves to Rome and pretends to live life as Dickie would. Sending letters to Dickie's girlfriend, wearing his clothes, his rings, leaving behind Tom Ripley as if he never existed. Tom ends up killing Freddie too, Dickie's friend, when Freddie finds out that he is just pretending to be Dickie. The thing is, throughout all these murders, Tom is so uncaring, he hardly seems to realize he is a murderer.
At the end of the book, he almost murders again too. He is staying with his girlfriend Marge and she is annoying him very much. And then out of nowhere he is imagining killing her. It is all so planned out in his head, what he would say to the police, what he would say to Marge's father. This stood out to be because it didn't show a change. Even at the end of the book, when Tom has been through countless police, he will still murder. The author tried to show that some characters might not change their ways, even having been through so much. In fact I think he did change, but not for the better, he became worse and worse.
And the funny thing is, he never got caught for any of the murders. He will probably live his life happily and free from the police. I think the author meant this to show that not everyone gets what they deserves, and not everyone gets punished.