The Genius of The Big Lebowski

The Dude

The Dude is the hero of the story. He doesn’t ask much of life; he just wants to enjoy it. He doesn’t want to save the world, or win the girl of his dreams, or even overcome his own weaknesses. Nope, the central conflict in the story revolves around The Dude’s efforts to get his rug back. 

Why does the rug matter so much? In his own words, because “it really ties the room together.”

The Dude is not just A Man for Our Time, he is in fact Everyman for All Ages.

The Dude’s two best friends are Walter Sobchuk and Donny Kerabatsos.

Walter Sobchak

Walter is a Polish Catholic Vietnam vet who converted to Judaism when he married. He is a man who is lost without strong ordering principles in his world. Perhaps this is why he did not abandon Judaism when he divorced.

Post-Vietnam and post-divorce, he runs a security business. He tries to keep Sabbath. He clings to the past – both his ex-wife and the war.

But the center of his life is bowling. He and The Dude are on the same bowling team.

Walter wears a very thin veneer of calm and assurance to cover his rage boiling just under the surface.

Why the rage?

Because the world does not conform to his ideals.

Walter’s identity is wrapped up in his brief but traumatic experience in Vietnam and in his ex-wife’s religion. Against all reason, he clings to both.

Walter Sobchak is the archetype of the objects of our faux security: religion and idealism.

Donny Kerabatsos

We know little about Theodore Donald “Donny” Kerabatsos aside from the fact that he used to surf, bowls well and has a weak heart.

His name provides us a clue, though: Kerabatsos is Greek. The Greek “Kera” means something like “dark cloud.” And indeed, there seems to be a dark cloud around Donny throughout the movie.

(I cannot find any reference to a meaning for “batsos”, so this will remain a mystery.)

Donny is the archetype of Greek philosophy, both Platonic and Aristotelian.

The Dude must mediate between Walter and Donny throughout the movie. Donny is the constant object of Walter’s anger, though the reasons are not clear.

Our lives in the West are largely an attempt to reconcile Greek thought with our Idealism and Religious heritage. And just as Donny has little power within the trio, Greek reason falls to the superior emotional firepower of our religions and ideals.

Donny does not survive the bowling team’s encounter with…

The Nihilists

The Nihilists are a “gang” of sorts. They are German emigres who claim, (falsely), to have kidnapped Bunny Lebowski. They are a bumbling, inept crew who are way more bark than bite. They demand a ransom payment of a million dollars from The Dude, but ultimately are willing to settle for less than $10, which is all The Dude is carrying.

Nihilism exerts a certain undeniable power on all of us at some point in life. It seems to demand as much out of life as it can get. Yet, when we confront it, we find that there’s nothing there. And in place of the gigantic appetite we expected from nihilism, we find that it settles for almost nothing. In the end, it is a mere pretender on the grand stage of life.

The Minor Characters

The Big Lebowski

Like Walter Sobchak, Jeffrey (The Big) Lebowski is a veteran and a cripple. Walter’s war was Vietnam and his crippling is intellectual. Lebowski’s war was Korea, and his crippling is physical.

(This is so close to reality that it is barely a metaphor.)

The Big Lebowski represent himself as something he is not. He claims to be a self-made man in spite of his handicap. He portrays himself as a great philanthropist when in fact, he married into his money, and is stealing from the charity he runs.

He is racked with insecurity, in spite of his facade of competence and accomplishment.

He’s an archetype of the ideal self-sufficient, self-made man lionized by the post-WWII generation.

He has a daughter, Maude and is married to a teen-age golddigger named…

Bunny Lebowski

While she isn’t quite as phony as her husband The Big Lebowski, Bunny Lebowski is clearly just a child playing the role of “rich trophy wife.”

She’s a bored little girl with a pseudo-rich husband whom she doesn’t love. What she does love is his money and the lifestyle it buys her.

Bunny’s out of control spending combined with confusion over The Dude’s real name, (also “Jeffrey Lebowski”), is the source of The Dude’s troubles.

Maude Lebowski

The name “Maude” is a form of the Old English name “Matilda”, which means “might in battle.” Maude is not impressed with her father, and has nothing but contempt for her trophy-wife step-mother.

But Maude is a complete fraud as well. She fancies herself an artist, yet is little more than a spoiled trust-fund baby lacking in talent or even taste.

She’s an archetype for the Baby Boomer Generation: contemptuous of her parents’ generation, yet lacking any accomplishments of her own to justify her lavish and decadent lifestyle.

Each of these minor characters is ultimately shown to be just slightly vapid, meaningless and absurd. The older Lebowski is pitiable, Maude is merely irritating, and Bunny – as the youngest of the trio – harbors the slightest promise of redemption.