Red Harvest Reading Quiz: Top 10

Ten reading Questions from Chapter 1-16

1. Why does Noonan hate Thaler?

2. What does Mcswain say that is a game-changer?

3.Why doe Elihu want the gangsters gone, and why did he bring them in the first place?

4. Due to the "fixed" boxing match, what happens to the inhabitants of Poisonville?

5. What does the Op send Dick and Mickey to do, and is it important?

6. How does the shootout with Thaler, at Dinah's, end?

7. What was going on while the Op and Noonan were at Cedar Hill Inn?

8. What does the Op tell Mickey and Dick to do if they want to send deatils of the job to the Old Man?

9. What happens when the Op goes to talk to Thaler at his place?

10. How killed Donald?

Prediction for Red Harvest #2

Based off what we have learned that the Donald's case has been closed and the Op has not gone rouge yet, I believe the rest of the book will be less gruesome than first predicted. I believe that keeping Noonan and Thaler separated will not go as planned and Noonan will get whiff of Thaler's location. Then Noonan will somehow realize that the Op purposely kept it a secret and will try to kill him. Meanwhile, the Op is slowly pitting the gangsters against themselves and watching them fall one by one. As the money starts to get low, he will ask Elihu for more. His co-workers, Dick and Mickey, will start leaking information to the Agency and the Old Man either go to Poisonvlle himself or tell Dick and Mickey to take him out. Either option will result in the outcome of the the Op going rouge for his own life, even after the gangster are dead. Noonan and the Old Man might team up to take out the Op. Thaler will somehow have stayed alive and the Op and Thaler team up, against Noonan and the Agency. There will be several quick fights, but the main characters will eventually have a final fight where, Thaler, Noonan, and the Old Man all get killed. The Op, now realizing that even the agency is corrupt, resigns and moves on to be a man for hire.    

Red Harvest In Class Essay 1

Like every superhero movie and comic book, the hero goes on a quest against his arch enemy while at the same time cleaning up his city. Similarly in Red Harvest, the Continental Op (Op) cleans up Personville from its corruption. The Op has many reasons as to why he cleans up the city, which are: he wants to clean up the town from personal matters,he deeply despises the injustice, and it was part of his job.  

The first reason that drives the Op  for cleaning up the city is it is part of his job. He was hired by Donald Willsson, who was killed shortly after the Op arrived. By finding Donald’s murderer, the Op starts to clean up the town  by discovering how the town truly works and putting away one crook. After the Op goes to Elihu to tell him the job is done, Elihu asks to have his money back as the Op did not use it all. The Op replies with “I’ll give you nothing except a good job of city-cleaning. That’s what you bargained for, and that’s what you are going to get” (64). Here the Op forwardly states that he is going to clean up the town because that is what the job asked. Elihu’s job further asks that the town be restored by getting rid of all the gangsters, resulting in the newspaper being able to write freely. The Op demands money for the cleansing, reinforcing that his entire reasoning is just part of the job. “I’m not hiring out to help you kick them back in line...If you want a complete job gone you’ll plank down enough money to pay for a complete job” (44). The Op offers his services, and since Elihu wants it done, he pays the money, which is given to the Continental Agency as funding.  

Another aspect of how he drivenness to clean the city is part of the job is because he brings in extra agents. Since the Op realizes he needs help for this job, he brings in his own people, Mickey and Dick. If the Op was doing the purge own his own terms, he wouldn’t need to bring in his men. Instead, Elihu paid for the city to be cleaned up, meaning that the Op has to use his agency and his own men. Besides just finishing the job, the Op also the is driven personally.

After finding Donald’s killer, the Op has seen the true colors of several characters such as Noonan, Dinah,and some of Thaler. The Op despises these people because they are either corrupt, tried to kill him, or morally ill people. For example, Noonan and the Op go to Thaler’s joint. After a long-standoff, the Op goes to Thaler to talk to him. As soon as he does so, Noonan shoots at “the gang”, with the Op in direct crossfire. As the Op puts it, “Noonan had slipped me a pretty dose” (52). After surviving the incident, the Op then goes to Elihu and asks for the money to finish the job of cleaning up the city. Being shot at by your so-called allies would give anyone a good reason to clean up the town of backstabbers. The Op knows that this town clearly needs to be cleaned up from the beginning, as Donald’s wife tells him “You’ll find it a dreary place” (4). Perhaps the Op just wants to give the town justice as he comes to clean it up with full force and hidden guns. As Mickey and Dick leave, the Op says “don’t kid yourselves  that there’s any law in Poisonville except what you make yourself” (119). So there is definite hatred toward the town.

Much like a ourselves, the Op drives himself to clean up the town through personal matters and his job titles. Like every other man on earth, the Op is driven to do good from some form, resulting in a better outcome for Personville.      

Detective Book Cover and Back Cover

The Op, for he needs no further defining, guides you in his critically acclaimed book through the methods of his own outstanding detective work to show you how to be a super sleuth. He will show you how to use techniques such as deception, interrogation, and intrigue to your own advantage. For example, rigging an already rigged wrestling match to catch a crook and expose a crime boss. He will also tell you about how he used a corrupt political chief’s cash to bring down his own empire. The Op shows you how to get away with drinking and questioning criminals at the same time, rather than putting them in a small dark room. Have you considered working with a criminal to take down a villainous police chief to take down a criminal to dismantle an empire? While it may sound like an explosive method to take down crime, the modern detective knows this is how you get true justice. He will show you how the classic detective of clues and deduction is clueless compared to his method of to-the-point investigation of villains. Tearing apart towns with literal and metaphorical sticks of dynamite, you’ll find, is a much faster way of justice than what you learned in elementary.   

What will Happen in Red Harvest

I believe based of pages 41-48, that the Continental Op doesn't actually know who the murderer is despite his answer to Mr. Willsson. He is going to arrest Whisper and probably interrogate him “wrong” questions to expose the real culprit. He will either go down the civil path and keep interviewing people, especially the Noonan, and slowly piece together the puzzle. Or, which I hope happens, but probably won’t: the Continental Op keeps the ten thousand dollars for himself and becomes a self-employed hit man, who takes out the gangsters of Poinsonville, or brings them to prison. Either way, the Continental Op will go away from the Agency and do what he thinks as justice. Along the way as he is cleaning up the town, he will interrogate each gangster, either manipulatively or ruthlessly, and find the true killer from one of them squealing. He will then go into a state of shock, got drunk, and go on a man hunt for the killer. He will lose all sense of right and wrong, hunting down the killer. There will be an epic gun fight, as the killer hired protection. After eliminating the thugs, and maybe having a short chase, the Continental Op stares down the killer. Cornered, the killer goes into long detail as to why he/she did it. The Continental Op gets flooded with emotions and either winds up killing the killer or just arrests him/her, because he regained his felling of justice. The town is now cleaned up, and the Agency calls with another case he needs to go to. Then there are maybe a couple of pages at the end of the narrator reminiscing about the Poisonville case.