Cool Hand Luke

In Cool Hand Luke, the movie begins with

the word, VIOLATION, across the screen. The word is

from a parking meter and sets the tone for the entire movie.

Luke Jackson, the title character, is arrested for cutting off

the heads of the town’s parking meters while drunk, or in

legal terms, for destroying municipal property while under

the influence of alcohol. When asked why he cut the heads

off the parking meters, Luke answers, “You could say I

was settling an old score.” While it leaves the viewers

believing that he probably received a parking ticket at some

time in the past, no clues are given to what the old score

may have been. He is sentenced to two years in a road

prison, in a chain gang. His punishment did not fit the crime,

and today, such an act would probably result in time spent

in community service rather than a hard labor prison gang.

To further accentuate that his sentence is worse than his

crime, Luke Jackson dies at the end of his story. Luke is a

decorated veteran, yet left the military service just as he

went in, as a Private. This indicates that he had authority

problems while there. He received the Silver Star, Bronze

Star and a couple of Purple Hearts and that indicates that

he is brave and probably humanitarian, because the Silver

Star is usually given in recognition of a life-saving deed of

valor. That he was never promoted, or else promoted and

consequently demoted, (the story does not elaborate on the

details) indicates that his superiors, those who had the

authority to promote him, did not react well to his

achievements. For Luke, death represents ultimate

freedom. There is no doubt that he believes in God, in that

he talks to God several times throughout the movie, yet his

conversations are always more like arguments than prayers.

In one of the final scenes, the empty shell of a church

represents Luke’s relationship with God, and even the

emptiness in himself. Luke feels that God has never been

there for him. He tells God just before the end of the story

that God hasn’t ever dealt him a good hand. That military

authorities considered him a hero, decorating him with

medals, doesn’t make him a hero in his own eyes. Luke is a

tortured soul, in that he tells God that he doesn’t deserve

any good thing because he killed people in the war. Still,

Luke is a free spirit, true to himself, with no regard for the

rules and regulations of other human beings. The crime he is

arrested for is not one of violence toward any person, it is