Mad Max 2 The Road Warrior Essay

In Miller’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, we find a post-apocalyptic world that is plagued with miserable living conditions and riddled with an unquenchable thirst for gasoline. This strange world’s currency is not based on a monetary system, but instead, it is based on deals and contracts. This kind of contract based world leads to discrepancies between characters and most of all these deals give us a look into how trustworthy each character is. Usually, if a character makes a deal that he knows he is not willing to keep, then that character is one of the least trustworthy characters in the story, and if a character follows through with his deal, then that character is usually a trustworthy person who will be noble throughout the story. As we delve into the bowels of this

post-apocalyptic wasteland, let us examine the delicate and volatile nature of the survivors’ deal based economy.
To start, we must examine one of the first deals that was made between the protagonist, Mad Max, and a man whom he saved, an unnamed, mortally wounded survivor.

As Max drives through the desert, he finds a man who is a lone survivor out of a group of defenders who were from the compound that has an excess of gasoline. As Max decides to save this dying man, he decides to grant his dying wish of returning him home to the compound. Max gladly complies with this wish; however, he decides to make a deal with this dying man. This deal is: in trade for Max “Just [taking him] back there” max would get gasoline, “As much as [he] would like”(Miller). As max soon finds out from Pappagallo after returning the dying man, “If you [Max] had a contract, it was with him. And it died with him”(Miller). This kind of volatile nature that comes with these contracts appears throughout the story. Max fulfilled his end of the contract, but since the other party was dead: the contract was null and void. This shows the cut-throat and contract-based nature of this world. The kind of world in which no one is to be trusted and everyone has to earn his or her place through a display of either nobility or

savagery.
One would think that since the leader of the compound, Pappagallo, did not follow through with Max’s contract for gas, he is not a man to be trusted; however as we later find out, Pappagallo is an honest leader who has every intention to follow through with a deal, as long as he knows both sides of the deal are legitimate. Max makes a new contract with the council of the compound in which Max specifies, “l deliver a rig big enough to haul that tanker” and “you give me back my vehicle and as much juice as l can carry” (Miller). The council agrees with Max and says, “What else do we have to lose?”. Later after max nearly loses his life, he returns with the tanker; however, Pappagallo says, “let’s make a new deal” that deal being “I want you [Max] drive the tanker”(Miller). Max initially says no to the offer after a struggle with Pappagallo. At this point, we are not sure if Pappagallo is a noble man who is going to fulfill his end of the bargain or not. Fortunately, Pappagallo’s nobility shines through and after much arguing with Max Pappagallo states, “He fulfilled his contract. He's an honorable man”(Miller). Now, this is not the end of the story, but this is a key scene to determine whether or not the people at the compound are noble or not. Pappagallo keeps his promise and lets Max leave with his vehicle and all the gas he can carry. This is a defining moment in the movie. The moment in which we finally find out that the people of the compound are trustworthy and haven’t reverted to savagery.
In Miller’s The Road Warrior, we find honesty and dishonesty throughout the story. It is difficult to tell who is to be trusted and who is not to be trusted. Luckily for Max, he finds the compound and the compound is filled with trustworthy, noble people who hold up to their end of the bargain. Although the story goes on, and even more deals are made, we can see that through these few examples -Max knows who he can trust. We can only hope that if our world ever reverts to a wasteland of savages and scavengers, that we are fortunate enough to find noble people like the ones in the compound. These kind of people are those who will fulfill their end of the bargain - regardless of how volatile and delicate the nature of post-apocalyptic contracts seem to be.