Financial History Issue 129 (Spring 2019) | Page 13

EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE and smacked the sidewalk alongside him.” A piece of the sidewalk chipped off, flew up and hit his chin. The shock of nearly being struck and killed by the beam made Flitcraft question what he had assumed was a stable life. He made good money, had a wife and children, and he was able to play a round of golf once or twice a week. Now a random beam falling from the sky changed his outlook. Hammett writes: Flitcraft drifted around for a while and eventually settled in Spokane where he lived a life that was oddly similar to his old life in Tacoma. “I don’t think he even knew he had settled back into the same groove he had jumped out of in Tacoma” Spade remarks, “But that’s the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams fall- ing, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.” The Flitcraft Parable continues to be one of the most analyzed pieces of Ham- mett’s writings, and it has been the subject of endless speculation. Nevertheless, there is near universal agreement that the par- able, which ironically never made it into any of the movie versions of the book, is key to understanding The Maltese Falcon. Desai points out two lessons that can be learned from the parable: (1) Chance dom- inates our lives 3 , and (2) “as important as chance is, we just can’t seem to escape our own patterns.” He notes that “finance is, at its core, a way to understand the role of risk and randomness in our lives and a way to use the dominance of patterns to our advantage.” The financial aspects of the parable lead to some pertinent questions about risk. How should those inevitable random events that threaten goals and aspirations be handled? Once a person understands his or her own propensity for risk, will that person be less likely to take on too much risk? The Flitcraft Parable teaches that Maltese Falcon-type goals can often be avoided by taking risk into account and utilizing risk management techniques when appropriate to mitigate risk. Some risks can be dealt with via insurance or options, but what What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step, not into step, with life. He said he knew before he had gone twenty feet from the fallen beam that he would never know peace again until he adjusted himself to this new glimpse of life. By the time he had eaten his luncheon he had found his means of adjustment. Life could be ended for him at random by a falling beam: he would change his life at ran- dom by simply going away. Puck illustration titled “The Bosses of the Senate,” January 23, 1889. Lithograph by J. Ottmann after drawing by J. Keppler. www.MoAF.org  |  Spring 2019  |  FINANCIAL HISTORY  11