Taxi Driver Themes

In the script, there are multiple scenes when Travis is alone in his apartment. These scenes really set off the hysterical side of the character. When he cannot sleep, that he keeps on writing diary and talking to himself, these trivia disclose the frantic Travis Bickle to the audience in contrast to the gentle and the placid look of his appearance, and they add on to the depth of the characteristics of him. In here, Taxi Driver takes out what is a classic Film-noir element from those Hollywood crime dramas, and adds more of a modern individual consciousness to the old-school cynical attitudes. One of the conventions in a Film-noir picture is that the mind of the doomed protagonist is constantly shifting between what is morally right, and what is morally wrong.

Take Walter Neff in Double Indemnity as an example: he loves Mrs.

Dietrichson, which is not a crime, and in a way audience empathize with him. But in order for them to be together, a murder takes place, which is both legally and morally wrong, and the crooked character eventually pays the price of the crime. In Taxi Driver, Travis beholds the rot in the city, and he believes that the violent execution done by himself is going to clean up the filthiness. He has strong emotion inside him, but he cannot find an exit to let it out and to be normal. The girl Betsy who he has a crush on shows that he wants to get involve in what is generally

normal. But the gap between Betsy and him is too wide, just like he is too far from normality of the society. The setting of daytime and nighttime is another aspect that shows this point: during the day, he looks like no difference from other people, but when the night comes, he would eventually turn into who he really is. Here, the Film-noir style of this moral struggle comes out with the vigilante element, in addition, there is the psychotic episode on him, originated from the post-war emptiness in that particular time period. The conflict on Travis is clear and dramatic, and throughout the film, there is a clear incremental transformation of that struggle: from the shooting incident at the convenience store, to the planning of the assassination on Senator Palantine, and finally the rescue of Iris. He steps on a “destructive path” that takes him from a normal, innocuous cabbie to the ferocious, deranged man who carries a gun everyday in calling for justice. Violence swallows his emptiness from chronic insomnia. The ironic thing is at the end, not only did he not get arrested from the maniacal shooting, but he is commended by the society and people, and even on the newspaper.