Character Analysis
That's Munny, Honey
We don't get the best first impression of William Munny.
In fact, from the very beginning we know immediately that he's not a dude that people like their daughters marrying, to put it lightly. This is what the opening crawl lets us know:
She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. When she died, it was not at his hands as her mother might have expected but of smallpox. That was 1878.
Hmm. "Known thief and murderer"? "Notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition"? That's not exactly glowing praise. In fact, the best thing this crawl offers up is the fact that Will Munny didn't kill his wife. By this point we're expecting to meet a psycho with a twirly villain moustache.
And what we get is, instead, a…family man and a farmer.
Whoa.
Here's the thing, though: Will is clearly not cut out to be a farmer. In fact, he's horrible at farming. He keeps trying to herd his pigs, and keeps falling down in the process. His pigs are sickly. Will looks exhausted, muddy, depressed…and totally out of place.
Munny Is The Root Of All Evil
Luckily for Will, the Kid comes along and tells him about a $1,000 reward in Wyoming. The only catch? He has to stop playing with piggies and has to go back to killing men in cold blood.
You'd think this would be an easy choice for a "known thief and murderer" like Will Munny…but he actually struggles with it. His now-deceased wife cured him of his wicked ways and somehow got him to follow a different path. The only problem is that path led him straight to BrokePigFarmersVille.
But Will knows that he needs the cold, hard cash—if not for him, then at least for his kiddos. So he decides to do it—only this time, he says, it's just for the money and not for the thrill of being an outlaw. (Keep telling yourself that, Munny.)
WILL: […] I ain't like that no more. […] Claudia, she straightened me up. Cleared me of drinking whiskey and all. Just cause we're going on this killing, that don't mean I'm gonna go back to being the way I was. I just need the money.
While Will ultimately joins up with the Kid, he just can't seem to get back into the flow of outlaw-hood. He has trouble getting on his horse (a sign that he's now a farmer unused to the ways of the outlaw gun fighter), and something just seems…off. Will doesn't talk much, and whenever the Kid asks him to talk about his exploits, Will keeps his lips zipped.
Sure, Will is on his way to Wyoming to kill some cowboys, but we get the feeling that he's doing this out of pure necessity, that he's not the cold-blooded, evil man that everybody who's ever heard of him claims he is.
This doesn't excuse his actions, but it does give us the impression that Will is unable to— and doesn't want to—go back to his old ways, a fact symbolized by his refusal to drink whiskey (Munny used to get pretty fight-y when he drank).
Munny Makes The World Go Round
But then, halfway through the movie, the new-and-improved Munny dies and the bad ol' Munny comes back.
We're talking figuratively, but Munny really does have a near-death experience. He gets super-sick on the way to Big Whiskey, and then suffers a savage beating at the hands of Little Bill. Afterwards, he spends days in a feverish semi-coma. His buddies think he might not make it out alive, and Munny himself clearly thinks he's not long for the world.
While he's feverish, he starts ranting:
WILL: I seen him Ned. I seen the Angel of Death. I seen a river Ned. He's got snake eyes. It's the Angel of Death…I'm scared of dying. I seen Claudia too…Her face was all covered with worms. Oh Ned I'm scared. I'm dying….don't tell nobody. Don't tell my kids, none of the things I done.
But, Jesus-like, Will rises from "death" after three days. Somehow, he seems refreshed and ready to get back to work.
And get back to work he does. When Ned is unable to kill Davey, who's pitifully stranded with broken legs after Ned kills his horse, Will takes over the job without the slightest hint of guilt, hesitation, or anything that a normal person might display.
We sense that he's starting to get back to his old ways—that he has, in effect, been resurrected. Think of it as a kind of anti-resurrection—whereas Jesus came back to humanity, Munny seems to have left it. He seems to have regained his footing as a cold-blooded, soulless killer.
We start to catch glimpses of this old Will when he's talking to the Kid after the Kid kills Quick Mike (on the toilet, no less). The Kid is distraught. He can't believe what has just happened—he feels terrible about having killed someone. Will, who shows no emotion during this powerful scene, is only able to muster the following comment:
WILL: It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have.
What Will says is surgical, objective, anything but sympathetic or emotional. It lacks humanity.
Will's transformation—his anti-resurrection—is complete once he learns Ned has been killed. He returns to Big Whiskey and flatly states that he's going to do some damage:
WILL: That's right, I've killed women and children. Killed just about everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.
Then he goes on a rampage, shooting Skinny, several deputies, and Little Bill. And he does it all with the same detached, sociopathic demeanor.
And when after it's all over he goes over and has a drink of whiskey (read more about this fateful drink over on our Symbols page), a look of quiet unconcern on his face. He threatens Beauchamp and then calmly finishes off Little Bill. When he leaves he threatens anybody waiting for him in the street with the death of their family and friends before riding off.
But Munny doesn't ride off into the sunset like the moral, upstanding cowboys of the world. Nope. Munny ride off into a rainstorm that's as pitch-black as his soul.
William Munny's Timeline