Essay Questions

What is the importance of Walter Huff being an insurance agent?

Without Huff playing the role of insurance agent, the novel would not have much of a plot. Huff falls in love with the woman Phyllis Nirdlinger, and, after doing so, is seduced by her to commit a murder of her husband. Being an insurance agent, Huff likely lives boring days in the office, so to him, this murder is an unexpected adventure. Once the murder is committed, the two receive insurance money from the office that Walter Huff works for, an example of outstanding irony.

What is the purpose of the book title being "Double Indemnity"?

In insurance terms, double indemnity is when an insurance company agrees to pay the family of the victim of death multiple times the face value of the insurance policy if the death happens by accident. Of course, this is just another motivation for people to kill, but, in the long run, insurance companies have a skilled team of employees, like Barton Keyes in the novel, that will find out that the murder wasn't really "an accident". By the end of the novel, we also see that both Phyllis and Walter kill themselves due to the guilt of their crimes, which shows a sort of "double indemnity", or multiple deaths in this case, when only one (Phyllis' husband) was intended.

Why do both Phyllis and Walter kill themselves at the end of the novel?

A major theme of the novel is guilt. Although committing a crime may seem like a good idea at first, many people are unable to live with the guilt that is has caused them. Not only is the detective Barton Keyes looking to arrest both of them for falsified insurance claims and murder, but the two have to live with each other knowing what the other has done. This guilt comes to a point that each consider killing their other so that they won't have anyone else that truly knows what happened, but this attempt ultimately fails. When both of them commit suicide by jumping off a ship, they both get the punishment that their victim got.