Self-Narrative Sympathy in Taxi Driver

I find Taxi Driver a stunningly simple portrait of the psychological process one must go through to live in New York City without growing up there. I imagine it’s not terribly different to grow up there, but at least you have some time to get things down if you start there. New York City has a way of forcing the definition of self in the simplest of terms. At least this was what I was thinking when I stayed to work in New York City this past summer. I remember waking up one morning where I was staying in the Bowery, and walking the seven blocks uptown to St. Marks. I had gone to a movie the night before with a friend from Milwaukee who was also living and working in New York for the summer. There was a moment when we both noticed that we were each dressed quite a bit different than when we were in Wisconsin, and we were both wearing watches. On my way to St. Marks, I remember thinking to myself that Taxi Driver was not really about the violence, or crime or Travis Bickle being crazy, but more about the city itself and its powerful drive to make one define oneself.. Like a silent force, it is all around you. My sympathy for Travis Bickle was deepened by my time spent in my tiny room in a hostel in the Bowery. My work, as a local truck driver delivering art, was not unlike the taxi office, and it was my workplace and my $35 a night closet-sized space in the Bowery that demanded a new self-definition to get along in the city. At this point in my stay, I had some routines, a few friends, and I had begun to feel like I lived there. In Taxi Driver, it is through where he lives and where he works that Travis defines himself. It is the real world of work and home that defines Travis Bickle’s process of self-narrative through the movie. Travis does not get the girl, a new apartment, money, or any other benefit from his search to define himself. All he achieves is the end of his search for identity in the work-a-day world. In the opening dialog and form, Travis Bickle's endpoint is set, and is reflected throughout this story of the search for identity, the development of a stable self-narrative.

What do you want to Hack for?


Travis’s lack of identity in the city is clear from the opening scene where he applies for work. Immediately he has to answer the question of self. “What do you want to hack for?” Travis’s answer is awkward though. “Eh, can’t sleep nights…”

In a film where mirrors play a large part in Travis’s soul searching, here we have what at first glance appears as a mirror over the personnel officer’s head. Travis here is reflected in color and style of dress by the smiling woman in the background. This is the world, framed off in the behind the personnel officer’s head. It is the world that Travis is still separate from. He doesn’t speak the language: “What’s moonlighting?”. He doesn’t understand.

At the moment he defines himself in a recognizable way- “Marines,” he answers, The camera cranes up, the personnel officer relaxes, and everyone in the world he is separate from responds to him. This opening secures the tone of Travis’s need to be identifiable in New York, to be recognizable. At the same time, the scene set’s the tone with its suspicion of him and his unclear identity. The opening false mirror of the space inside the garage foreshadows his destination as one of them, but here, as in the rest of the movie there is a separation of glass and authority.

. . . And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. -The Idea of Order at Key West , by Wallace Stevens

Travis Bickle is desperately seeking to define himself, and it is through his twisted misunderstanding desperation that he finds violence along the way. Truly though, throughout the film we are reminded of this opening moment as Travis stands only slightly apart from his goal, which is to just be a taxi driver, like the ones who reflect him at the desk. From this scene forward it is Travis’s voice that sings his self into being, and as the poem here goes to say, at the end we know that there is no world for him but for the one he sang and, singing, made.

Here’s Travis, He’s a ladies’ man.



This progression of Travis’s self-identity is marked by him closing in on the world he has joined. While they still misidentify him- this time “ladies’ man,” he is less separated from his fellow taxi drivers than before. We may not yet understand Travis Bickle, but we understand intuitively his own process of self-narrative, of becoming. While he has stepped into the space behind the glass, he is still separated from his co-workers by space and misidentification. Stylistically he is still separated in the scene. It is no surprise, really, because Travis Bickle has failed to identify himself as well.

From Berger, P. L., & Luckman, T. (1963). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge- "identity is formed by social processes. Once crystallized, it is maintained, modified, or even reshaped by social relations... "

We may not yet understand Travis Bickle. That ambiguity in identity in his occupation binds our sympathy to him in a way that neither his voice over nor his personal habits can. The viewer may not understand his journaling, or his frequenting of porn theaters, but all viewers understand the narrative of being the new employee. It is the personal narrative psychological connection which we must make with Travis as he moves through his workplace. Our own personal narrative, while constructed differently than his, still shares experience with his (assuming of course that you’ve taken a working class job with a group of people who you don’t know).

I want to Volunteer over here.


Echoing the opening, we see Travis attempt to repeat his first success, using what he has gained from his new environment. After successfully entering the previous world behind the glass of the opening scene, he reaches towards a similar reflection, this time emulating the boldness described in the coffee shop scene by his co-worker. Travis though is out of place. There is no reflection of him this time, only a media picture claiming “We are the people.” Travis is on a quest to be a “person like other people”; he has already spelled it out for us in the first voice over, the first act of his self-narrative. There is no truth here though; there are no people like the “other people” Travis is already connected with. These are not working people, they are volunteers, and they don’t follow other working people, they follow a media image and a saying.

Here is a man…

Travis’s ensuing rejection sends him into a period of self-reflection (literally at some moments) and a program of self-definition. Again, even as we fear and pity him, there are elements in our own self-narrative that resonate with such rejection. Rejection and loss always result in a renewal of self-definition, and naturally Travis embarks on that search like any other person would. “Here is a man…” his notebook trails off. His dark passage though disturbing is a true catharsis in the philosophical sense. It is an event that is achetypical and identifiable in our own personal narratives. It is the tragic catharsis, the “dark night,” the “trial by fire.”


In this final scene with his co-workers, Travis has crossed the framing in every sense. He is regarded by his co-workers, in what amounts to the job site with acceptance. Although his passage was misguided and his motives really madness, in the end Travis’s personal narrative resolves and he is a man. He no longer needs a constructed self-narrative. His is crystallized by his catharsis, and his place is reinforced by the social structure around him. The final scenes all have a visual and temporal clarity that transcends the clutter of the New York cityscape. He is a taxi driver finally, and everyone else is a fare. It is this simple narrative identity, without any overt reward, that carries through Taxi Driver to underpin the story itself. Travis’s personal, successful search for identity maintains the viewer’s allegiance to him despite our extreme narrative access to his thoughts and motives.

The closing scenes with the credits, as we watch the thousands of lights on New York streets always remind me of the TV series line “The are 6 million stories in the Naked city and this is one of them.” Travis’s place as a working man is it’s own reward, and Taxi Driver is a simple story about one man’s fantastic search for identity in the city of New York.