joseph schuller's List: cite

• Taxi Driver is an extended close-up of Travis  Bickle, its protagonist, and our proximity to him reveals his loneliness.
• We're so close to him that we can feel his embarrassments, paranoia,  infatuations, and, most important, his loneliness, as if they were our own
• Travis views himself as "God's lonely man," yet the point of "God's Lonely Man,"  an essay by Thomas Wolfe from which Schrader took this phrase, is that  loneliness is a trait that all men possess, even if each man believes his  feelings are original and unique. Travis's loneliness, combined with his  charisma, makes him fascinating.

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• Travis is never part of the normal world.
• Though he initially wants to fit in and to be like other people, he is too  mentally ill to act normally.
• After Betsy rejects him, Travis becomes hysterical, violent, and obsessive, and  from here descends into madness
• Travis has also been influenced by his parents and his upbringing,

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