Femme Fatale

Phyllis Dietrichson is what I picture as the classic “femme fatale”. Throughout the movie, she uses her feminine ways to seduce Walter Neff into helping her kill her husband. In the scene where the two first meet, Dietrichson is standing above Neff on the second floor with nothing but a towel on. Standing above him symbolized that she was superior to him from the start. And she used her charming personality to talk Neff into helping her kill Mr. Dietrichson.
I believe that Phyllis was the smartest person in the film. She knew how to work with what she had. Walter Neff quickly falls for Dietrichson. The way she came to him in his apartment and swooned over him in the short amount of time they had known each other should have been a tip-off to Neff that she was a little crazy. He had been working in the insurance business long enough to know how to kill Mr. Dietrichson properly and he should have spotted what Phyllis was trying to do. He was too quick to trust her and her intentions.

Fate, Football & Free Will

At the beginning of this section Harvey plays football and baseball with great drive to be the best. But by the end, he has quit all sports and is now spending his free time in his parent’s shop. Harvey exercises his free will in choosing to quit all of these sports. He could have stuck with them and worked harder at becoming better, but chose to quit the minute it got hard. In choosing to quit sports, he took a road that in the end he may not enjoy as much because he now has to spend all of his time at the dreaded store. He said it himself on page 14 that “if [he] didn’t think [he] could get praise from participating in a sport [he’d] refuse to play.” He quit the baseball team in 5th grade because the pitcher could pitch faster than he could hit. He “figured” he wouldn’t be a star so he decided to give up the sport. Quitting for Harvey would be a million times easier than working hard to get what he wanted. If the sport didn’t come easy to him, he was done with it. In eighth grade he decided to go out for the football team, but found that the year he took off because of his bar mitzvah may have caused him to fall behind in ability. That year in Harvey’s mind he felt that the coach didn’t like him and didn’t play him so he quit. In the ninth grade, Harvey switched positions from fullback to guard deciding that guard was a simpler position for him to play. He had an acceptable year. The following year, he tried out for a starting guard position. Another boy who Harvey thought was not as good as him was put in the starting position. Harvey’s anger got the best of him here because the other player got the position Harvey coveted. This time Harvey was actually trying to be part of a team; he worked harder but found little reward when he was benched again. When he wasn’t in the starting position, he quit, but this time for good. This shows his ambivalence with regard to commitment. But Harvey thinks that wrestling might be a good sport for him, but before he even gives it a chance he psyches himself out because he claims to “expect so much from himself.” Does he really expect that much from himself? Or does he know that he will eventually just quit in the end. Does he use fate to excuse his quitting.