How does Raymond Chandler use imagery in The Big Sleep?

The bulk of Chandler's novel is objective description. Marlowe spends a long time describing the physical settings of individual scenes, thus making a kind of character out of place. This strategy creates vivid images in readers' minds, helps to develop characterization, and prepares readers for the ensuing action. Marlowe's elaborate description of Geiger's house as a virtual palace of tackiness, for example, emphasizes Geiger's sordid behavior as a pornographer and (to Marlowe) as a homosexual. Chandler was heavily influenced by Ernest Hemingway's use of description in his novels of the 1920s.