Travis, an honourably-discharged marine now working as a taxi driver, seems to tie himself down by getting addicted to the lowest pits of humanity, mentally separating himself from the world and encases himself in a taxi as a means to stay behind and ‘look down’ on the prostitutes and scum without even taking notice of the actual good areas that simply wouldn’t dare travel to the lower pits, he doesn’t realise this is the cause of his lowliness. The scum of New York is somewhat of an addiction, given his nightly trips to porn theatres to fuel his hatred of low new York in order to give himself the idea of him being a better man than he is, as he chooses to falsely look better than the scum than look even remotely acceptable to the better public without realising even the lowest people have a life with a purpose, good or bad, to fulfil whereas he’s doing nothing.
Betsy, the voluntary office employee, is presented as a good but bored worker, to whom the film presents, and even Travis claims, she is in a position of no mental connection to her colleagues and world of work but does seem to get on fine, completely contrasting to Travis. Travis even proves to sink so far into his separate little world of glooms far to not even acknowledging Betsy clearly talking to her colleague about him (apparently watching them from his taxi for a good half hour), as though he thinks he’s in his own universe, focusing only on the low-life and acting (and thinking) non-existent to it while being completely oblivious to the decent life that Betsy is part of.
He somewhat thinks himself the king of the world without realising he’s more of a ghost to it. Given Betsy’ teasy actions with Travis and her bored attitudes towards her job, with her vague dismissions of her colleague, it seems like she is a puzzle piece that fits in with Travis’ lower-place yet seemingly socially experienced, more adventurous character but she doesn’t know he lets himself get consumed by the elements of lower-society to the point where he treats a porn theatre as a normal place to take your partner. Despite being tied down with separation, Travis’ experience of the low world has given him an insight to people’s connections without realising his own.
He sees the whole separate world through the mirror of his taxi, never interfering, with him turning it away from himself at the end to show he still hasn’t accepted himself as a part of that world despite how much he ended up interfering for the greater good, suggesting he only feels part of it when his levels peak and unleashes his frustration in bursts of violence.
One scene where a passenger tells him to pull over and he talks of how he’s going to kill the woman in the nearby building for cheating on him shows an excellent contrast and example of how deep Travis’ inner-violence goes. Not only does he not speak to him and only look at him through the mirror, again, showing his separation from the world of reality, almost like a black angel watching down on the people, never intervening. This whole scene, however, could be a made-up conversation in Travis’ mind as it shows a scarily razor-thin contrast between expression of the same inner-demons and sheer hatred, as the passenger fully expresses every thought, every idea in full detail of what he’s considering to do, letting everything out whereas Travis consistently holds everything in throughout the film, never telling on his feeding off negativity or his enviousness of killing every scumbag in New York unless he’s reached breaking point. When you consider this concept, it’s almost overwhelming how gruesome the things Travis seems to think up the top of his head are, such as when the passenger rhetorically asks him if he knew what a .44 magnum could do to a woman’s face and ‘other parts’.
The film also captures just how deep and indescribable Travis’ ideas are for what he truly wants and what he’d like to see happen to this city which he’s clearly unhappy, yet obviously addicted to. This is shown 2 times, one where he describes what he wants out of life and his career when talking to one of his fellow taxi-driver friends and just ends up stammering and being completely unable to put his thoughts into words, the other where he’s talking to a politician as his passenger, and he simply sums up all his ideas on what he thinks powerful people should act on a city infected with the vile he sees everyday on ‘clean it all up’ while trying to put more meaning to it with body language but fails to do so.
Another example of hypocrisy shown by Travis is when he takes out all his earnings at a diner which surprises all his friends. The film makes it clear the reason he has so much is by spending all of his time driving through all the grotty streets packed with prostitutes, never travelling to any of the more pleasant areas to feed his addiction that inflates his shell of depression that restraints his violent monster of obscure anti-heroism. It’s shown that he has spent so much time bunching up money and never uses it to cut his hours or even improve his household or diet. It’s almost like his money is a metaphor for his sentimentality.
His power of never sticking his toe in the low-life of which he’s so addicted to while supressed is shown at it’s strongest when he refuses to break the cycle when he declines to drive a 13 year old prostitute to safety, not even giving the decency to look back, setting in stone that of which he sees the world as a reflection in his mirror, even the most extreme details, even accepting a crumpled note from the pimp who ends up dragging her off. He does end up expressing his feelings a little when he hands it to another pimp-worker out of bitterness of reminding him of Iris but only because it didn’t affect the cycle, it wouldn’t have made an actual difference if it was a brand-new fiver.
Travis eventually decides to stand up and take action, not due to fighting depression but to unleash his inner demons with pure bloodshed as he agrees to buy several pistols from a gun-dealer, including a magnum .44, taking inspiration from the passenger, showing how his hypocrisy spills out into actually being influenced by the crime he claims he wants to ‘clean up’. Travis then pulls off self-confidence moves in front of a mirror, spurting many cool, tough expressions while inventing several nifty ways to pull out his guns in an instant, however, when it comes down to the actual action where he unleashes all his frustration as a means to save Iris from the life of prostitution, he ends up only dishing a non-lethal shot with his .44, some more shots with his lesser-powerful guns, and ends up having to steal an opponent’s weapon to pull the final kill, showing his ego dangerously expanded when depression temperamentally lost its grip to anger, finding the hard reality of which he’s ignored for so long stab him in the back. His consistent habits of thinking and not acting led to brash overconfidence when he decided to lift the lid on his demons.
But despite all his outbursts of violence and amplification of disorganisation, his biggest example of change has to be when he picks up Betsy and she seems to feel like she’s willing to give Travis another chance, given the news’ coverage of his unusual heroic actions, but he now sees her, like everyone else in the separate world, through his mirror. This either signifies that he thinks himself unsafe for these people in the better world which he likely now acknowledges and he’s now truly aware and dedicated to this obsession of cleaning up the streets to give himself a credible purpose, or that he thinks that he simply cannot cope with the life of the better things that Betsy’s part of and the position that he’s brought himself down to is just inescapable.
This shows a remarkable change for when he first sees Betsy as a true angelic stand-out of the society Travis is used to, claiming ‘They cannot touch her.’, only to threaten her after she rejects him with ‘You’ll go to hell like the rest of them.’ After seemingly forming a more accurate picture with the experiences he’s had since then, possibly including the heartful letter he receives from Iris’ parents after returning her to them, he now acknowledges her as a typical member of an overall different, superior society too far above him, and should he step foot into trying to greatly change, his ticking bomb will eventually go off worse than ever before. So with no intentions of taking risks to benefit himself with the fear of unleashing his violent outbursts on the good society rather than the scum he claimed he wished to see flush out, Travis refuses Betsy’s offer and retakes the path of the taxi driver, like a man with the plague running from the unaffected city.
