1. As we will see when we view the film, the ending of the novel is quite different from the movie.  Discuss the appropriateness of the novel’s conclusion.  Do you feel that the ending is satisfying, or do you feel that Walter and Phyllis should receive different treatment?  Why do you think that the screenwriters Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder changed Cain’s ending?

 Well I thought that the novel was going to end with Phyllis and Walter going to jail for the murder of her husband. But to have it all turn around with Walter deciding that the world wasn't big enough for him and Phyllis and wants to kill her because he doesn't want to deal with her having the murder of her husband over his head. And because he thought Phyllis was seeing Schetti and they were lovers he wanted him dead because Walter felt like he must been in  on it too. But to find out that Schetti was really trying to get close to Phyllis over the murders in his family he felt like she had something to do with. But when Walter had Phyllis meet up with him to kill her and she ends up shooting him, and keys visits him in the hospital it all comes out. In the film Walter goes into the office on the recorder and confesses s what he had done and what his involvement was in the murder for the insurance money.  In the novel Walter tells keys everything about what happen and instead of Keys turning him in, tires to get Walter to set up Phyllis now everybody is corrupt. And Keys doesn't want his company to have this kind of negative attention with his company insurance agent being involved in a murder plot for the insurance money. In the novel Keys is much nicer to Walter and acts more of a friend then in the film.

In the novel it come out to be how much of a femme fatale Phyllis is and how easy it is for her to commit murder and play that innocent role. In the film she made it seem that her husband was mean to her and how he didn't show her any attention and when he gets drunk her slap her around. In the novel it came out that she had killed his wife when the wife and her went away for the weekend and the first  Mrs. Nirdlinger  dies from Pneumonia and so does three other's in the novel that cross Phyllis path. In the novel Phyllis has no remorse for all the murders she has committed and is only concern with herself.  In the film and the novel the fatalism relationship between Walter and Phyllis is about the same. But Walter felt like he was doing this for her and to get her, and for Phyllis her attraction for Walter was all in her plan.   

At the end of the novel Walter is on a ship passing the coast of Mexico and Phyllis end up right next to him. After all that happen with Phyllis shooting Walter now she's on the ship talking about getting  married. But Walter does let her know that there's nothing ahead of them. 

 I like the end of the novel because I didn't want Walter to die or get in trouble for what he had did. I believe Phyllis should have went to jail or died. for all her evilness and doings. I believed the ending was changed because in the novel it wanted to give Walter a chance to redemption.