This Is Your Brain on Crime The movie Miller’s Crossing and the novel Legs by William Kennedy have two characters that have a special quality, which adds dramatically to their characterization. The main character of Miller’s Crossing, Tom Reagan, and the main character from Legs; Jack Diamond shares many similar traits and symbolic equivalence. In particular they had an item that they wore or carried, and this item had the ability to show what is going on inside the character’s mind. Not only did the items have the ability to tell what was on their mind; it also has the ability to foreshadow. At times in the novel where their mind/conscience was tested, the use of their items determined the outcome. The body can not live without the mind, so it is important for the characters to remain close to these items that symbolize their mind or they will surly die.Tom Reagan had a dream in which his hat fell off his head and the wind blew it away. He did not run after the hat in the dream. However in reality he kept the hat close to him at all costs. The dream is the opening to the movie and is explained during a conversation with Verna. During the movie he is seen with the hat and without. The trend his hat wearing follows with when engaging in sex it is off, and actually gets its own scene of being thrown on to a chair or something of that nature. For the most part, it is also seen without his hat when something bad is happening to him. According to Cirlot, “The hat, since it covers the head, generally takes on the significance of what goes on inside of it” (Cirlot 140). When the hat is off, he becomes mindless and driven by evil. From this the viewer can derive that Tom Reagan has a moral conscience which it brought out by the hat, but besides that he has no heart. To change one’s hat is equivalent to changing one’s mind. At the climatic point of the movie where Bernie begs for his lif...
