Shoulders of Giants
Sir Isaac Newton wrote that if he had seen further, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants. When it comes to Pulp Fiction, the large folk are those denizens of the internet who, as reported in Snopes on July 10, 1997, theorised that Marsellus Wallace had sold his soul to the devil and that the briefcase contained said soul. Now we can see further than that. We see that actually the briefcase contains what Marsellus sold his soul for. In fact we can now confidently say that it contains a time machine.
But this later theorising stems from the crucial insight that Marsellus had ventured a deal with Old Nick. And what made that insight far from obvious is that for all Quentin Tarantino being a virtuoso recycler, the film is brutally original. There is no precedent for a gangster film featuring such out-of-this-world hocus-pocus mixed in with the sort of off-the-wall banter Jules and Vincent exchange.
And conscious maybe of the demands he’s placing on viewers, Tarantino throws in a few more clues than just the triple-six combination lock (which after all could be just gangster bravado) or the briefcase’s golden glow (which might be radioactivity). Or rather in this latter instance he adds details, such as the shot of heroin cooking in a spoon, to bolster the briefcase/alchemy link. While here too, the pouch containing Vincent’s drug gear is another of the film’s significant rectangles, and is shown being unzipped, its contents ‘discovered’, as an additional briefcase-friendly feature.
There is also the taxi driver Esmerelda, exuding (not in a gangster sense) underworldliness. She interrogates Butch about his state of mind with a persistence which suggests she might be trying to ascertain if he can be claimed for her side. And when she assures Butch that she will tell anyone who wants to know that the fare was for ‘three well-dressed slightly toasted Mexicans’ she does so in a manner which suggests she has some familiarity with (not in an inebriated sense) toasted human beings.
Then there is the key figure of the Wolf. While Jules and Vincent are thugs who wear suits, the Wolf brings to mind the line ‘the prince of darkness is a gentleman’. He might not be Satan himself, but is surely one of the ranking Beelzebubs. And there’s his name, especially since he’s always addressed as ‘Mr Wolf’, giving him a folkloric aura by association with the children’s game and its cry of ‘What’s the time, Mr Wolf’, Or there’s his preference for oak-themed manchester, conjuring up images of druids performing blood-splattered ceremonies. His advice to the dog at Monster Joe’s to get out of the way, reinforced by leg action, suggests he might have been present as an actual wolf at such ceremonies.
And does all this amount to proof that Marsellus sold his soul to the devil? ‘Proof’ probably isn’t the right word. But it does look to be a theory resoundingly in accordance with the facts on the screen. As of course does the theory that what he sold his soul for, and what is in the briefcase, is a time machine.
November 25, 2025
