Pulp Fiction discussion

In _Angels_, The Houston brothers, Bill and Burris, pull a bank holdup that goes horribly wrong. Bill kills a bank guard. The brothers flee. Burris hides out in a theater, watching a movie about Jesse James. He sees the situation from the Jessie James-Younger gang’s perspective. They were decimated by townspeople risking their lives to destroy the James family. Jessie killed the cashier after he stated he could not open a safe rather than betray his employers. Why was the response of Northfield’s lawful citizens so intensely vicious? Burris compared this dutiful, apparently redemptive violence to those who confronted the Houstons, like the bank guard. Instead of simply obeying the armed robbers, “he responded by “rip[ing] apart poor James Houston with a gunshot wound, throwing himself away forever in the effort.” This may seem to be addled thinking: the guard was doing his sworn duty, just as the Northfield MN citizens were protecting their bank. The wealth of this growing community (two colleges, a railroad station), individually and collectively, was in their bank.
This is Burris, thinking of his own family: “The James Brothers did not know anything about sorrow, grief, or fear, . . . as they risked everything, absolutely everything they could, to take their brothers home.” That is the case in the Houston brothers’ robbery. After gut-shooting James Houston, the guard does not know what to do next. He is an easy target. Another family destroyed. And, eventually, Bill Houston—who killed the guard because brother Burris told him to--is executed.
Denis Johnson is asking the readers to think about the point when duty to law and order and to family can be a kind of straight jacket. Duty prevents one from thinking about an enemy’s needs and obligations, as well as (in the case of the cashier at Northfield), how they are bound to one’s own.
A major reason for attacking Northfield’s bank was that a reconstructionist (i.e. Union) governor and a relative had a large amount invested there. Jesse James, as a Confederate soldier and sympathizer, wanted to end the post-war economic and political power of liberated slaves. The bank cashier’s reluctance, with a gun to his head, helped buy the citizens time to shoot the James gang “all to hell.”
But Southern refusal to obey reconstruction persisted, and increased regional pride. In fact, in the disputed aftermath of the 1976 election, R B Hayes assumed office after agreeing to remove Union enablers of Reconstruction. African American integration in the South ended. Many former slaves had to work the land as sharecroppers.
Just maybe, the historical background is essential to see the full picture of the individual caught in the web of his time. The sweep of events catches people in a whirlwind they can’t control, “wasting”—or ennobling-- themselves forever! One thing the James and the Houston boys, the cashier and the bank guard, have in common is that they evoke the power of the individual and his/her obligations over against the power of the nation -state and its obligations.