𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚕 (𝚊𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚗 𝚛𝚞𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚕)

an analysis of arvin russell

before i begin the story, i'd like to add in my own analysis of arvin's character. as a disclaimer, arvin is a very complicated character, and he's been through horrors that we can't even imagine and likely experiences emotions we can't hope to understand. his life has been plagued with so much death and suffering that it's simply hard to wrap our head around his character traits and mannerisms. i'm not the author or the director, and i haven't read the book. this is by no means the only interpretation of him, it's just the one i'm using for this particular story. that being said, i've done some analyzation of his character and i think i've began to explore the impacts of the events that took place in his early life. arvin is a good person whose childhood trauma has given him a disdain towards religion, extreme protectiveness to those he cares about, and a tendency to solve problems with violence, and these traits are a huge part of who he is as a person and why he makes the choices he does. 

first and foremost, willard's actions when charlotte was diagnosed with cancer almost certainly turned arvin against, or at the very least deterred him from being an adamant follower of, christianity. upon charlotte's diagnosis, willard placed all faith of recovery in fervent prayers and intensified devotion to god and expected arvin to do the same. arvin was only nine years old at the time. he was likely too young to truly understand religion, and as a result didn't really believe in its ability to cure his mother. it's also possible that he didn't fully understand the severity of his mother's sickness (relatively little was known about cancer in the 1950s). whatever the reason, it's clear that while willard coped with the news by praying, arvin coped differently, though his coping mechanisms aren't given much screen time. nine year olds simply aren't emotionally mature enough to process that kind of pain in a clear or organized way, so i think arvin simply drew into himself and used his dog, jack, as a sort of therapy animal. at any rate, when willard saw that arvin wasn't putting as much effort into prayers as he was, he became physically abusive by slapping arvin and yelling at him, which he never was in the past. as the sickness became more serious, so too did willard's prayers. at the height of his madness, he sacrificed arvin's dog, jack, destroying a crucial part of arvin's coping mechanism. after charlotte dies, willard kills himself as one last desperate bid to be with her. this series of events warped arvin's perception of religion. in the aftermath of charlotte's death, arvin likely viewed religion as useless or fake due to its ineffectiveness in saving his mother. he probably also saw it as the catalyst for willard's abuse and mental deterioration, as well as the cause of jack's death at the hands of his father. in some odd way, his nine-year-old brain may even have associated religion with being the reason of charlotte's death, instead of or combined with the cancer that actually killed her. one thing is certain: arvin's apathy towards religion, while engrained in him as the result of traumatic events at a young age, almost certainly helps him survive the events of the movie. 

another result of arvin's traumatic childhood was a strong sense of loyalty and protectiveness. the age-old psychological debate of nature vs. nurture, born vs. made, genetics vs. environment, whatever you want to call it, plays into this, but this quality in arvin is so strong that they're not by any means mutually exclusive, likely working together to create that fierce protective instinct that motivates his killing spree as two sides of the same coin. on one side, it's likely that arvin simply inherited the protective gene from his parents. children have been known to inherit personality traits from their parents. whether this is from genetics and other biological means or simply the way they're brought up and behaved around is a moot point in this case. charlotte isn't given enough screen time to develop any solid personality, but one can infer from her treatment of arvin that she's unusually maternal, which likely goes hand-in-hand with being uncommonly loyal (protectiveness stems from loyalty). it's also a safe bet that he could've inherited it from his father. willard's loyalty to charlotte, whose name he didn't even know when he fell in love with her, was proven when he moved from coal creek to knockemstiff to be with her instead of marrying helen laferty (née hatton), an easier option by far since she lived in his hometown and his mother had all but arranged a marriage between them, again when he beat up two poachers for an insulting remark they made about charlotte, and again when he was offered a room with a sex worker at a bar while charlotte had cancer. in a more extreme situation, he sacrificed arvin's dog jack, whom they'd all loved, in a futile attempt to save her, spent his days and nights praying violently, and even killed himself in a last-ditch effort to stay with her. for these reasons, it's conceivable that arvin inherited his protectiveness from one or both of his parents. on the flip side, he could've gotten it as a result of the three deaths in close succession that he experienced in his early years. he lost everyone important to him in a matter of days, which probably led him to believe that everyone that he loves will leave him in some way, shape, or form at some point. the result of this paranoia is that he wants to keep his loved ones as safe as possible to prevent this from happening. he's seen one too many people die, and he doesn't want it to happen again. arvin's protectiveness, however he acquired it, is a key feature in the movie.

the last, and most obvious, point i'd like to discuss is arvin's habit of solving problems with violence. for whatever reason, willard was a violent person, though it was always calculated. he never raised a hand against anyone in his family until his mental deterioration began (here, again, his loyalty shows itself) and would always wait until he had a good chance of winning whatever fight he was starting or finishing. his violence was perhaps as a result of repressed trauma from the war and the crucified marine, perhaps because of some other experience. or maybe it was just in his nature. when arvin comes home with a black eye from some bullies on the school bus, willard immediately advised him to beat the bullies harder. when they're praying that afternoon and two poachers come insult them and threaten to rape charlotte, willard saw a teachable moment. he picked the time that he'd have the least resistance beating up the two men, and took arvin along with him. arvin watched from the front seat of willard's truck as he beat the poachers, and when willard gets back he delivers the motto that arvin will use for the rest of the movie: "there's a lot of no-good sons of bitches out there." he tells arvin that this is what he means when he tells arvin to finish the bullies' shit, and buys him a candy bar. the narrator says that arvin would look back on this as the best day he'd ever spent with his father, suggesting that he genetically inherited his father's love for violence. in addition, arvin looking back on this day and putting it on a pedestal likely elevated the impact of willard's lesson. at any rate, it resonated with arvin, and he put willard's teachings to good use when he beat up a few boys who were picking on his adopted step-sister lenora. however, it probably also gave arvin a skewed sense of justice. a normal person knows that beating someone into the ground and nearly suffocating them in the mud while your son watches from your truck isn't a proportional response to a few lewd comments about your wife, and that hitting someone with a crowbar within an inch of death because they bullied your sister (although if they ever actually molested her, it's a different story) goes a bit beyond an eye for an eye. even uncle earskell says that arvin could've held back on gene dinwoodie, one of the boys he'd beaten for bullying lenora.  but to arvin, whose fondest memory of his dead father is watching him pummel someone, these reactions seem perfectly balanced. it's also entirely possible that he has anger issues from all the pent-up emotions and suppression of his childhood trauma. this is demonstrated again when he murders pastor teagarden (the only murder he actually intended to commit, as opposed to a murder in self-defense like the others), he says that he doesn't want to, he has to, which shows just how deep his rage and flawed sense of justice runs within him.

in conclusion, arvin russell is a deeply complex character who operates in a moral grey area and  makes some questionable decisions that we struggle to fully understand. however, once we examine the qualities he's gotten from childhood trauma he cannot control, he's an overall good person who's just had a rough go at it. all arvin really wants is to settle down and live a normal life, and the only bad things he does are either as revenge for a loved one or in self-defense. however you view him, his character raises some good questions about justice and trauma that might be worth examining in a wider context than just crooked lawmen and twisted preachers.