Pulp Fiction: Redemption

Pulp Fiction: Redemption

The word redemption has multiple meanings in the dictionary, but theologically speaking it is the act of delivering one from sin or saving one from evil. In Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, redemption exists as a means of preserving one’s life in order to symbolize how people should behave in situations where a decision must be made between right and wrong. The main characters, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, are redeemed because they call off their restaurant holdup. Jules is redeemed after he believes he has seen the miracle of the bullets missing him. Vincent witnesses the same "miracle", refuses to believe it, and dies the next day. Butch is redeemed by going back to help Marcellus against the greater evil. Marcellus lives because he sends Jules and Vincent after his "soul,” and is redeemed when he decides he needs his soul back.
Possibly the most prominent display of a character redeeming himself in the film can be seen with Jules. Through an “act of God” Tarantino shows Jules’ path to righteousness and redemption to save his life. Jules takes this “act of God” as a message to him that the life he is leading is one that is going to get him killed and isn’t a life Jules wants to be living anymore. Jules’ first act of redemption then comes in the end of the movie when instead of killing Pumpkin and Honey Bunny for robbing the diner, he lets them leave with the money that they have stolen, but he lets them go with their lives. By Jules allowing them this is the first act we see of Jules changing his life around and redeeming himself for the lives he has taken in his life as a gangster. Jules uses the Bible as justification for his violent ways. Jules recites:
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost...

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