The Dude Testament

14. The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.

The story moves forward here when Walter unexpectedly joins the Dude in making the million-dollar hand-off to the kidnappers. As a direct result of Walter’s naked greed and militaristic mode of operation, it all goes horribly wrong. This, despite his assertion that “the beauty of this plan is its simplicity. When a plan gets too complex, everything can go wrong. If there’s one thing I learned in ’Nam…”

This is a line that would be funny if it weren’t so eerily prescient. For decades after the Vietnam War, the United States knew better than to embroil itself in unnecessary overseas combat. That, in fact, was the one thing we supposedly learned in ’Nam—that modern warfare is the very definition of complexity. And everything that can go wrong probably will. When it involves human beings and their conflicting desires, there is no such thing as a simple plan.

Of course, that doesn’t stop us from looking for ways to make life simpler. Each of the characters in The Big Lebowski boasts his own methods of fashioning the cosmic In-n-Out Burger so that it’s easier to swallow: 1) We can buy into a fascist ideology, jamming all the loose laces into little cubbyholes in a giant shoe cabinet that reaches up to the sky (Elder Lebowski, Saddam Hussein, Bush Sr.); 2) we can give up and just cast everything aside as meaningless (the nihilists); 3) we can just follow someone else’s dictates and piss on the problem (Treehorn’s thugs); 4) we can see every problem as a heroic imperative to attack and rectify at all costs (Walter); 5) we can just avoid the big questions and spend our lives passing the time having fun (Donny, Bunny); or… 6) if we’re truly ready to embrace life in its psychedelic, ludicrous, and laughable totality, we can follow the Dude Way.