United States Army

The United States Army appears in Travis Bickle’s story less as an institution with a described structure than as the force that divides his life into military service and an unsettled civilian return. Its influence persists in his depleted finances, his memories of hospitals and soldiers, and his belief that the country taught him both to kill and not to kill. The Army is therefore central to his self-understanding even though the narrative gives few particulars about his unit, duties, or combat experience.

Identity and Place in the Narrative

The Army enters the account within a retrospective frame. Travis recalls his first winter in New York City as having taken place about two years earlier, while a war was still underway. At that point he describes himself as alone, without love or anyone to love, and with little self-respect. His military past is part of the context for this arrival, but it does not provide him with a settled identity or a clear place in civilian life.

The account offers fragments rather than a service record. At an employment office, an interviewer notices Travis’s military insignia and asks whether he served in Vietnam and received a decoration. Travis answers with the date May 1971, identifying it as approximately when he was sent back to civilian life. The exchange establishes a date and his transition out of service, but it does not confirm that he was decorated or specify the circumstances of his military work.

Service and Civilian Transition

Travis places his Army service after his departure from Hedda Dugan. He says he remained in the military for so long that he came to know only career soldiers, describing his connections as temporary companions rather than lasting friendships. His account presents service as a prolonged interval in which his social world narrowed, not as a source of durable civilian relationships.

After leaving the Army, he had some money remaining from his service, but understood that it would not last. He went directly to a taxi depot to ask for a license and, a few days later, sought work at a Manhattan hiring office. That practical sequence links military separation to his decision to become a cabdriver: the remaining funds offered only a short buffer, and employment became an urgent means of supporting himself. His return was not narrated as a ceremonial homecoming or a reunion with a community. It was a move toward work in a city where he felt isolated.

The Army also remains present in the form of his physical condition. Travis refers to hospitals when discussing his past, and later describes injuries and scars that he wants to compensate for through intensive exercise. The text does not give a medical history or firmly identify the cause of each injury. It does show that he experiences his body as weakened and treats regaining strength as part of the preparation for a new purpose. His service history thus reaches into the present as both memory and bodily limitation.

War, Violence, and Moral Contradiction

Travis’s relationship to the Army is inseparable from his attempt to make sense of violence. In a conversation about weapons, he reacts to the prospect of returning by insisting that he would never go back alive. The outburst is followed by his recognition that he has said too much, suggesting that the thought is not a considered account of military policy but an exposed personal refusal. The narrative leaves the source and full meaning of that refusal unstated, while making clear that return to military life is something he rejects absolutely.

Later, he imagines the Army as having taught him to kill while also teaching the commandment against killing. The juxtaposition does not resolve into a stable moral position. Instead, it gives his thinking a divided structure: military instruction and religious prohibition coexist, and neither cancels the other. His recollection of a commander explaining that the military’s view of human life was different further sharpens the conflict. Travis compares that claimed distinction with the people he encounters in New York City and wonders why conduct tolerated in war seems to have no satisfactory explanation in civilian life.

This contradiction matters because Travis increasingly treats weapons and disciplined preparation as ways to make himself effective. He trains his body, practices shooting, and carries a pistol while working. The narrative does not present these actions as proof that the Army ordered or directed his later plans. Rather, his military past supplies a vocabulary and experience through which he organizes his own choices, while his rejection of returning to service coexists with his continuing reliance on violence.

Continuing Influence and Narrative Significance

The Army’s influence is also visible in the way Travis interprets himself to others. In a letter to his parents, he claims that the sensitive nature of his military work requires secrecy, and he invents an account of his health, income, and relationship with Betsy. The letter is not reliable evidence about his actual Army duties; it is evidence of the persona he constructs for his family. Military secrecy gives that self-presentation a plausible cover, allowing him to conceal the distance between his real circumstances and the reassuring life he describes.

His civilian routine offers a stark contrast to any simple idea of successful reintegration. He works through weeks of rain, returns to the taxi depot in the mornings, and describes cleaning bodily fluids and sometimes blood from the back seat. He compares the people he sees sleeping outdoors with his own need to get under a roof after work, recalling advice from a doctor he dismisses as a poor imitation of a military physician. These details do not establish that the Army caused his alienation; they show how his military reference points remain active as he measures hardship and tries to manage daily life.

The United States Army therefore functions as an enduring but incompletely explained presence. The narrative supplies a few firm markers—long service, a May 1971 return to civilian life, some remaining military money, and Travis’s refusal to go back—alongside gaps about his actual duties and experiences. Those gaps matter: the Army is known chiefly through what Travis carries away from it and how he uses its language to understand violence, bodily weakness, secrecy, and separation. It shapes the terms of his story without providing a straightforward explanation for what he becomes.