Editing Patricia Highsmith (section)

=== Themes ===
Highsmith's themes were influenced by Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kafka, and the existentialism of Sartre and Camus.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=4–5}} Wilson argues that her work presents an amoral world view in which murderers go unpunished or are only punished by chance. In 1966, Highsmith wrote: "neither life nor nature cares whether justice is ever done or not."<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=221–23}}

Irrational behavior, abnormal psychology and extreme emotional states are recurrent themes. Bradford writes, "Issues such as guilt, hatred, self-loathing and unfulfilled longing which Highsmith endlessly contemplated without resolution became the cocktail for her fictional narratives and characters."<ref name="Bradford2021" />{{Rp|page=49}} Critic Russell Harrison states that Highsmith's protagonists often act irrationally because of self-imposed emotional constraints.<ref name="Harrison1997">{{cite book|last1=Harrison |first1=Russell |url=https://archive.org/details/patriciahighsmit00russ/page/n5/mode/2up |title=Patricia Highsmith (Twayne's United States Authors Series, No. 683) |date=1997 |publisher=[[Twayne Publishers]] |isbn=0-8057-4566-1 |edition=1st |location=New York |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{Rp|page=6}} According to Graham Greene, "Her characters are irrational and they leap to life in the very lack of reason; suddenly we realize how unbelievably rational most fictional characters are."<ref name="Harrison1997" />{{Rp|page=5}}

Highsmith explored issues of double, splintered and shifting identities. Wilson states that many of her novels involve a struggle between two men who search out an opposite but defining doppelgänger.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=7, 89, 132}} Critic Fiona Peters points out that ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'' and ''This Sweet Sickness'' involve protagonists who create false identities.<ref name="Peters2011">{{Cite book|last=Peters |first=Fiona |title=Anxiety and Evil in the Writings of Patricia Highsmith |date=2011 |publisher=Ashgate Publishing |isbn=978-1-4094-2334-8}}</ref>{{Rp|pages=81–83}} Harrison argues: "the theme of an individual transforming himself or herself, of the willed construction of a personality, once again suggest[s] existentialism's emphasis on individual choice free of any hint of determinism through history or genetics."<ref name="Harrison1997" />{{Rp|page=20}}

Critic David Cochran sees Highsmith's work as a critique of suburban America: "According to the dominant vision, a family, house in the suburbs and successful job equalled mental health and happiness, whereas the absence of these things led to sickness. But Highsmith consistently worked to break down these oppositions too. Especially in her view of American men, Highsmith subverted many of the ideological bases of the suburban ideal."<ref name="Peters2011" />{{Rp|page=45}}

Male homosexual desire was a subtext of many of Highsmith's early works. Biographer Joan Schenkar states that the typical Highsmith situation is "two men bound together psychologically by the stalker-like fixation of one upon the other, a fixation that always involves a disturbing, implicitly homoerotic fantasy."<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|page=xiv}} Highsmith explored lesbian relationships in ''The Price of Salt''. Homosexuality was an important theme in later novels such as ''Found in the Street'' (1986) and ''Small g: a Summer Idyll'' (1995).<ref name="Harrison1997" />{{Rp|page=97}}