There Will Be Blood: H.W. and Daniel

Noella Robb

3/9/14

The Oscar-winning film, There Will Be Blood, by Paul Thomas Anderson, depicts the life of a 19th century oil man working his way to wealth in southern California. Starring the acclaimed Daniel Day-Lewis, it shows the dirty work that goes into becoming an oil tycoon, as well as the sacrifices that goes along with it. In this particular film the relationship between Daniel and his adopted son, H.W. is something to be closely examined. At the final scene involving H.W,'s presence, the question of whether H.W. was truly loved comes into question. Daniel says that H.W.'s presence as a child was only for the purpose of conning landowners into trusting the pair with their property. He continues to berate him, begins to see him as another business rival, and is exceptionally cruel in his attitude towards H.W.'s deafness as a grown man, but this discussion takes place when H.W. is a grown, married man, and ready to make his own fortune away from his father. By this point, Daniel is already somewhat crazy, considering that after he built up his wealth, he created a giant home to distance himself from others in. How much of what Daniel says to H.W. is even true? If he didn't really care about H.W., why would he bother educating the boy on how to properly carry about running an oil business? But if he really did love his son, why would Daniel be so quick to ship the boy off somewhere as soon as he became deaf, instead of simply bringing a sign-language tutor there sooner? In fact, at the time when his deafness was still undetermined, Daniel seemed more interested in striking oil than about his son's well-being. But in the few days afterwards, he seemed genuinely concerned over H.W. and his deafness, before shipping him away. The relationship between H.W. and Daniel are the most complex in this film, because you can never truly tell what was genuine, and what was not.  It could have been that Daniel had revealed to H.W. was genuine, judging by some of his past actions, or it could be that he lashed out at H.W. as a defense mechanism for feeling abandoned as his son started a new life in Mexico. After all, he was the only person, besides Henry impostor, that had relatively positive interactions with Daniel throughout the movie.