Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Ignorance
Many of the people in Chinatown claim
ignorance of the corruption that surrounds them, often with tragic
results. Throughout the movie, Jake remains stubbornly incapable
of putting the pieces of the case together properly. Evelyn pretends
to know nothing about the woman her husband is seeing, in the process
keeping information from Jake that may have saved her life. Ida
Sessions professes her ignorance to the full scope of the crime
she helped commit and therefore cannot see that she is in deep enough
to be murdered. At the end of the movie, Jake naïvely tells Evelyn
to “[l]et the police handle” it, only to discover that the way they
handle it is to kill Evelyn. As Polanski demonstrates, being ignorant
of the crime that surrounds you offers no protection from its ravages.
Misidentification
Jake makes several key misidentifications throughout the
movie. This inability to see the truth beneath the surface of things
serves only to drag him further into the conspiracy. First, he believes
Ida Sessions to be Evelyn Mulwray and accepts the case to follow
her husband, a decision that leads to his disastrous involvement
with Cross and the land conspiracy. Later, he is unable to recognize Detective
Loach as the man who tells him to go to Ida Sessions’ house, a mistake
that leads to Evelyn’s death. Most important, though, he is unable
to see Evelyn as the victim she truly is rather than the murderer
he believes her to be, a waste of his attention and resources that
leaves him unable to solve the case in time.
Haunted Pasts
Most of the characters in the movie have some dark shame
or secret haunting their past, a situation that on a larger scale
echoes the hidden corruption of the world in which they live. When
people live too long in a city with deep-rooted darkness, they will
naturally end up with a bit of it in themselves. Some past misfortunes,
like the dam Hollis Mulwray built that later collapsed and killed
people, show that even innocent mistakes bring about deadly consequences.
Others, like Hollis’s former partnership with Cross, show that even good
people are capable of being involved with corruption, while Evelyn
Mulwray’s rape and resulting child show how innocent people can
be dragged into helping cover up such corruption. Jake’s past and
his inability to protect the nameless woman in Chinatown repeats
itself to show how impossible it is to escape the evil nature, or
tendency toward evil, inherent in many people.
