Travis Bickle and Holden Caulfield

Matthew Collins

Travis Bickle and Holden Caulfield

            The film Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, follows Travis Bickle a man that is haunted by loneliness and is driven into madness because of it. Throughout the movie one cannot help but realize the relationship it has to J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. The characters Travis Bickle and Holden Caulfield are truly analogous; Holden and Bickle both are plagued by self-inflicted loneliness and both see the world in a skewed way, Holden only sees phonies, Bickle only sees scum. Holden sees the world as corrupt and filled with fake people, he states “I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible” (25.18). Holden views the place he lives as a sad and awful place and no matter how hard you try you can never change it or preserve childhood innocence. Travis Bickle views his world in a very similar way, he exclaims “All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets”. Much like Caulfield, Bickle inhabits a world where he sees a vile and disgusting place and he detests it so much; he has make the streets clean. Each of these guys are haunted by their loneliness and it’s ironic that they are constantly surrounded by people in New York City yet they are still lonely. Each character is corrupted by their loneliness and ultimately they go crazy; Holden presumably ends up in a mental facility and Travis ends up ‘cleaning the streets’.