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Quote 4

Wizard:   " . . . you do a thing and that's what you are . . . Get drunk, you know, do anything. 'Cause you got no choice anyway."

This quotation is part of Wizard's response to Travis when Travis tells Wizard he's down and has been getting bad ideas in his head. Betsy has rejected him, and he has just heard the unnamed passenger's homicidal speech, so he comes to Wizard, who is older and more experienced, for advice. Wizard can offer only this rambling speech, in which he claims a man is what he does. The speech refers to Wizard's own sense of failure for having never moved up in the world. Travis, however, is not feeling down about being a taxi driver, but about being rejected by Betsy and about his burgeoning violent fantasies. Wizard's speech does not speak to Travis's problems, and Travis replies, "That's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard," which puts Wizard on the defensive. Travis in part thinks that the speech is dumb because he doesn't believe his destiny is to be a taxi driver. He wants to rise up above his everyday existence and be heroic. This exchange with Wizard is another of Travis's failed attempts at personal connection.

Wizard's speech, though personal, is also prophetic, since Travis will not be able to escape his fate as a taxi driver. He is praised as a hero after saving Iris, but the newspaper articles all label him as a taxi driver. Travis planned to be a martyr and an important assassin, but since he failed at killing himself, he must return to his old profession, and he seems doomed to be a taxi driver. Although both Wizard and Travis believe the future is determined, they have different ideas about what Travis's fate will be.

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