The Talented Mr. Ripley: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

A letter arrives for Dickie, “urgently” requesting that he come to Rome to answer some questions concerning Tom Ripley. Tom plans to return to Italy as himself, buy a secondhand car somewhere far from Rome, and tell the authorities that he’s been roaming Italy for several months, unaware of the search for Tom Ripley. He “hates” becoming Tom Ripley again, and hates to have to abandon all of Dickie’s fine possessions.

The next morning, Tom wakes seized by the an idea: he will check all of Dickie’s belongings at the American Express under a different name once he returns to Italy, and claim them at some time in the future. He packs up Dickie’s trunks, scrapes the initials off, and sends them ahead to Venice. The only thing he keeps of Dickie’s are his rings.

Tom takes a train through Italy to a small town, Trento, and buys a car. There is nothing in the papers about Tom Ripley, Freddie Miles, or the discovery of the boat in San Remo. He marks up a guidebook and breaks it in in order to help corroborate his own story, and he spends a night sleeping in his car before heading to Venice and booking a room in a nondescript hotel.

Tom goes out to dinner, purchasing the evening news on his way. On the second page of one of the papers, a headline describes the search for Dickie Greenleaf, who is missing after a “Sicilian holiday.” Tom considers “playing himself up a little more” when he presents himself to the authorities, just in case the policemen he speaks to are the same ones who’d interrogated him as Dickie. He decides to bide his time and wait until a few more items related to Dickie’s disappearance appear in the newspaper, so as not to appear suspicious.