Is Pulp Fiction really about redemption in the religio-moral sense, as online commentary suggests?
I just watched the film for a second time (the first time was a few years ago), and although I did notice details pretty obviously hinting at a theme of redemption that I’d missed the first time around (such as the ‘Grace’ decal on the Harley-Davidson), I still couldn’t see the film as making any kind of moral point.
Butch decides to save Marsellus, but surely the decision comes from both a moral place as well as a self-serving one. It is hard to believe that a man who, by his own admission, feels no remorse for having beaten his boxing opponent to death, and who has just murdered Vincent (although out of necessity) and attempted to run over Marsellus (again, out of necessity), turns over a new leaf in an instant. I think it’s valid to assume that his brief moment of indecision at the door of the pawn shop involves some consideration of the idea of being able to erase his debt to Marsellus by rescuing him. Plus, choosing to save a person from an ongoing rape despite future danger to oneself has to be the bare minimum to be expected from anyone with a semblance of a conscience. It’s hardly indicative of an abiding choice to change oneself. I thought ‘Grace’ was a clever and funny way of describing what has just occurred to Butch, because it is Marsellus the gangster, who has just vowed to “go medieval on” his assaulter, who is positioned as the grace-giving God here.
Another character who is said to have redeemed himself by leaving the evil world of crime is Jules. Vincent, conversely, is shot soon after he dismisses and ridicules Jules’ religious awakening. The essays I read on the film years ago agreed that the character’s fate revealed the film’s message, which is… redeem yourself while you have the chance! Don’t take signs for granted! Is that really the point someone like Tarantino and a film like Pulp Fiction that revels in violence would want to make? Once again, I thought there was a hint of amusing irony in the fact that this incredibly irreverent and subversive film ostensibly confirms a religious narrative. I thought it was just another one of the many ways in which the film subverts expectations. Plus, you must consider that Jules deliberates on divine intervention and on doing the “right thing” as he petulantly cleans up a young associate’s blood, without any real remorse for the life lost. The effect is comic.
I think redemption most definitely is an obvious and important thread in the film, but not in a didactic, “see, choices are important!” kind of way, but in an ironic, funny, strictly narrative-serving way.
I would love to know what established film critics have said about this theme in the film, as well as what the community here has to say.
