Taxi Driver Themes

Travis Bickle says that he's "God's Lonely Man." However, instead of using his solitude the way a medieval hermit might've (to empathize more with the suffering of humanity), isolation plunges him...

Violence is in the atmosphere in Taxi Driver—the whole city pulses with the threat. Travis says that he has to clean blood off the backseat of his cab some nights, and encounters a crazy passenge...

Travis Bickle sits in judgment over all of humanity, but he's not able to glimpse his own mental processes with any accuracy throughout Taxi Driver. If he were capable of doing so, he probably woul...

Travis Bickle sees Betsy as an angel-goddess—but takes her to a porn movie. When she (wisely) rejects him after this, he says he thinks she's cold and unforgiving along with all other women. He a...

Travis' dissatisfaction results from his isolation, his loveless state, and his lack of purpose. The natural solution, of course, would be human connection—something Betsy's looking for too, and...