In many ways, the plot of Raising Arizona illustrates Hi’s maturity from innocent child to responsible adult, from selfish individual to committed partner. (In this way it resembles the plots of many romantic comedies.) Hi spends Act I setting about acting responsibly, Act II finding himself tempted away from it, and Act III making his mind up to pursue responsibility or die trying.

Hi cannot stop himself from robbing convenience stores, in spite of being spectacularly ill-suited to the task. He blames his recidivism on Ronald Reagan, but it’s really just a symptom of his immaturity — he wants to get caught because he’s not ready to face the world and its responsibilities yet. He gets himself arrested by the police because he’s already arrested emotionally.

Prison, in this movie, is a place where men go to sort out issues of emotional development — in a way, it’s a womb for babies who aren’t yet ready to face the world. Some men in prison pine for their lost childhoods, some display stunted emotional lives, others insist that criminal enterprises are their “work,” — that is, that thing that men always say they have to do before they spend time with their families.

In Reagan’s America, the rich (Nathan Arizona) get richer (have more babies) while the poor (Hi and Ed)get poorer. (Hell, the rich even get longer names.) There seem to be two kinds of people in this world — powerful, white, (usually) bespectacled old people who sit behind desks, and the weak, poor people who supplicate before them. Hi and Ed must sit before a dozen different old white men behind desks in this movie, old white men who decide whether you go free or remain in prison, get married or have a child. This societal beat-down is so harsh that, by the end of the movie, Ed, who wanted this baby badly enough to steal it, becomes convinced that she is, in fact, unworthy of having a child at all.

Hi also wants to know if it’s possible to change his nature. The kidnapped baby is a kind of prayer for the ability to evolve. Is it possible to be good, Hi worries, or is he doomed to always be bad and to suffer the privations of the spiritually poor? The news for Hi ultimately seems to be that it’s possible to change, even if only in one’s dreams, but later on in the Coen canon Bernie Bernbaum in Miller’s Crossing casually blames his inability to “be good” on his immutable nature.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: As in the Texas of Blood Simple, in the Arizona of Raising Arizona you’re on your own. The police are plentiful, but they are buffoons. “If you want to find an outlaw, call an outlaw,” advises the Lone Biker. “If you want to find a Dunkin’ Donuts, call a cop.”

MAGIC: Raising Arizona represents the first real flowering of the Coens’ version of Magic Realism. Hi dreams of the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, and lo he appears. “I did not know if he was dream or vision,” says Hi, leaving out the possibility that he is, in fact, real.

It seems that the Biker starts in Hi’s imagination, but then takes on his own magic reality, complete with backstory. The Biker tells Nathan Arizona that he himself was a black-market baby (and he has the “Momma Never Loved Me” tattoo and bronzed baby shoes to prove it — the most pronounced case of arrested development in the movie), which suggests that he is, in fact, real, but then Hi discovers that he and the Biker share the same “roadrunner” tattoo, which suggests again that the Biker is a dream of Hi’s come to life.

Gale and Evelle, the two baby-faced convicts we see be literally born out of the mud outside the prison (one of them should have been named “Macduff,” from his mother’s womb untimely ripped) seem to be real enough people, but really they function as Hi’s subconscious come home to roost. No sooner has Hi committed to the responsibilities of parenthood do these two bozos show up to tempt Hi away from his family.

If Gale and Evelle are products of Hi’s subconscious past, Glen and Dot, the “decent” family Ed invites over for a picnic seem to be products of his subconscious future. This nightmare family of screeching, braying morons who spout racist humor, throw things at each other and swap spouses are what Hi worries he will one day become, and push his further away from attaining his goal.

The idea that Hi can make dreams come to life is terrifying, but it also, of course, brings us the most satisfying ending of all Coen movies — Hi’s dream at the end of the movie never fails to reduce this viewer to pools of salty tears, partly because I wish his dream to come true and partly because I’ve seen that Hi’s dreams do, in fact, have a tendency to come true.

IS THERE A GOD? In a way, the baby of Raising Arizona is a deity. He is seen as perfect and beautiful by absolutely everyone who beholds him and is pursued as a plug to fill a profound spiritual void in many of the characters’ lives. More significantly, he is often a reflection of whatever the viewer cares to see there. Nathan Arizona names him Nathan Junior, Hi and Ed tell people that they’re calling him both Hi Jr. and Ed Jr., Dot suggests several biblical names (and “Tab”) before settling on Glen, Jr., Gale and Evelle call him Gale Jr. Only the Lone Biker refrains from giving the baby a name — perhaps, as a personification of evil, he figures giving the deity a name isn’t in his best interests.

Raising Arizona ties childbirth to salvation with Hi and Ed’s character arcs as well. By the end of Act III, Ed becomes convinced that she is unworthy not just of motherhood but of salvation.

MUSIC: Bluegrass predominates. Banjo breakdowns accompany the crime scenes, recalling Bonnie and Clyde (another cockeyed family on the run from the law). But when Hi comes in from a night’s adventure, he finds Gale and Evelle up late watching opera (!) on TV (!!). The battle between bluegrass (lowbrow) and classical (highbrow) is combined in another theme, where Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy” is played on banjos.

THE MELTING POT: Hi and Ed are white, as are Gale and Evelle, as well as Dot and Glen. White trash, but still white. Smalls is harder to place, being a symbol of evil and all, but seems white enough. Nathan Arizona, it is implied, is a self-hating Jew, or at least a self-hating German — “Would you buy furniture from a store called Unpainted Huffheinz?” he barks to an FBI officer. Is it symbolic that the Holy Baby of Raising Arizona is the son of the only Jew in sight?

FAVORITE MOMENTS: Hi awakens from a nightmare to find that his newly-stolen baby has also just awoken from a nightmare. Ed ignores Hi’s distress but sings the baby back to sleep — with what the characters of O Brother Where Art Thou would call an “old timey” murder ballad.

THE COENS SEE THE FUTURE: Gale and Evelle get their insider information about potential bank scores from one Laurence Spivey, a Nixon-era political appointee who is in prison for “soliciting a state trooper.”

ECHOES: A deadly-serious echo of The Lone Biker is currently on display with Chigurh in No Country For Old Men. In case you didn’t think the Coens were aware of the parallels, they include a scene of Chigurh stopping on a Texas road to take a shot at an innocent small animal.

Like Ulysses Everett McGill in O Brother Where Art Thou, Gale and Neville’s first priority after busting out of prison is to see to their hair treatment. And like Ulysses, their empty pomade jar is a vital clue to the man tracking them.

Like Ulysses again, Hi awakes from a dream murmuring something. Ulysses murmurs “My hair!” while Hi murmurs “Merry Christmas.” I’m not sure what this means.

Evelle, Ulysses and Chigurh all stop in roadside convenience stores to have odd conversations with unhelpful old men.

Ed shares a name with Ed Crane in The Man Who Wasn’t There. I see nothing to connect the two characters, except that the Coens prefer short names for their main characters, to save on typing time.

Nathan Arizona yells at an employee named Miles over the telephone. It is improbable, but not impossible, that this is the same Miles who goes on to become a wildly successful divorce attorney in Intolerable Cruelty.

I read an essay recently that suggested that the Lone Biker symbolizes the nuclear anxiety of the 1980s. I find this a stretch, but there is a disturbing, inexplicable, undeniable reference to Dr. Strangelove in the movie: when Gale and Neville stop to pomade their hair, the graffiti on the men’s room door reads “O.P.E., P.O.E.”, a reference to the “callback code” in the Kubrick movie.

Marty, the angry Greek bar owner, is the protagonist in the classical sense of the word — he starts the events of the story into motion by hiring Visser to kill his wife and lover. But then Marty dies about half-way through the movie. Ray, the male half of the illicit-lover couple, makes another likely protagonist, but he is off-screen for most of the first half of the movie, says little while he is on screen, and then dies before the climactic shoot-out. Visser, by far the most memorable character, is in perhaps a third of the movie and is, if anything, the antagonist. Abby, Marty’s wife, spends most of the movie not having the slightest idea what, if anything, is going on.

(In fact, due to the jigsaw-nature of the narrative, no one character ever knows completely what is going on. Ray knows the most, for a brief period of time, before getting shot to death.)

(He also has the most “heroic” sequence of the movie, the sequence where he tries to get rid of what he thinks is Marty’s dead body. The Coen’s idea of heroism is showing a guy who doesn’t have the slightest idea how to mop up a simple spill [even though he works in a bar], and who considers running Marty over in the road and beating him to death with a shovel before cowardly deciding to bury him alive and screaming.)

In most movies in this genre, the young lovers would be the protagonists. But the Coens give us a couple of real losers at the center of their story. Ray is fatally taciturn, suspicious, hard-headed, weaselly and staggeringly dumb, whereas Abby is neurotic, chatty, spoiled and equally staggeringly dumb. The Coens refuse to give them any positive qualities. They sit resolutely outside their characters, putting them through their paces and silently bearing witness to their destinies with a coldness rivaled only by Kubrick.

THE LITTLE GUY: The Coens’ movies all have a subtext of social mobility. Here, “the rich guy” (let’s call him “Capital”) is Marty, the seething, greasy Greek bar owner. Marty rules his world with an iron fist, but is also short-sighted and too angry for his own good. He thinks his money and station will allow him to get away with murder.

He’s married to Abby, although one cannot think of a good reason why. Her youth suggests she was a trophy wife, but she’s rather plain, has no noticeable education or talents. It’s safe to assume she married young for the sake of security and has come to regret her decision, and is now looking for someone else to take care of her, even if that means a step down the social ladder. Abby, of course, finishes her arc believing she has killed Marty — triumphing over Capital. The final irony of the movie is that she hasn’t killed him at all — she’s only killed Visser, a character who is more or less her equal, a lower-class man trying to get along by taking money from Marty.

Ray, Abby’s lover, works for Marty, and is looking to “rob” him of one of his assets. This may or may not raise his social standing, but it at least gives him some measure of revenge on Capital. It’s also worth noting that when Ray comes to Marty’s bar, it’s not for revenge but for his back pay — what Marty “owes” him. Ray may or may not feel that his theft of Abby is adequate compensation (although it would explain the look on his facewhen he thinks she’s been playing him for a sap on her way somewhere else) but he certainly separates his love for her from Marty’s debt to him. (In fact, he takes pains not to take Abby for granted, even after they’ve slept together — much to his chagrin.)

Visser I don’t think seeks to raise his station — he’s happy being a snake — he just wants “a little bit of money” (as Marge puts it in Fargo). (The idea that Visser would say he’s willing to murder two people for $10,000, even in 1984 dollars, is startling — was life that bad in Texas?) Visser says in the opening narration that he doesn’t care if you’re “Man of the Year,” you’re all alone in this society. Ironically, his prized personalized lighter is engraved “ELKS MAN OF THE YEAR” on the side. (Later on, Jeffrey Lebowski, another paragon of wealthy hypocrisy and corruption, would have a Time “Man of the Year” mirror in his trophy room — an odd choice, given that it is a novelty gift and not a true award.) All this being said, Visser hates Marty more than anyone in the movie. He smiles and laughs and wheezes as beetles and flies crawl on his face in Marty’s presence, but once he has his money he shoots Marty cold dead and then snarls “Who looks stupid now?” implying that Marty’s pre-eminence as society kingpin is something Visser has had quite enough of in this lifetime, thank you very much.

Meurice, the African-American bartender, is the only character who seems happy where he is — he knows Marty is an asshole, but he respects him as a businessman and even defends him to Ray. He even takes time to explain to a customer what his game-plan is — as a man who doesn’t fit in his surroundings, he’s biding his time, taking advantage of whatever benefits his incongruity provides to make a life for himself. (Later on, we see evidence that he’s renovating his house — either he’s preparing to flip it for a profit or else he’s planning on settling down.)

MUSIC: The primary musical conflict in Blood Simple is between country and soul (by which I refer to popular musical genres, although that’s certainly an interesting thematic juxtaposition). Meurice interrupts Patsy Cline to play the Four Tops on the bar jukebox — “The Same Old Song” is used three times in the movie, suggesting that the fatal mistakes the characters make are all part of an unstoppable continuum. The Four Tops also are a symbol of Meurice’s ability to exist within a corrupt system — Marty may be an asshole, but he provides swell digs for Meurice to entertain lady friends.

Mexican songs drift in from the apartment below Abby’s, suggesting “the world outside,” the people blithely going on about their lives, unaware of the turmoil and strife going on in their building. (The notion of the main characters having some sort of secret, higher knowledge while the rest of the world stumbles on will be brought up again in The Man Who Wasn’t There.)

THE MELTING POT: Marty, the controlling force, is Greek-American. Visser, the scumbag, is a drawling native white-trash Texan (in a VW bug, just to throw us off the scent). Ray and Abby, it seems, are also white southerners, although Ray has spent time in the army, so it is presumed he’s spent time outside of Texas (although not necessarily). Meurice, the only well-adjusted character in the movie, is African-American and doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him. Abby rents her new apartment from Mexicans, underscoring her shift to a new life “outside” the system.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: As far as we can tell, there are no law-enforcement agencies in Texas. Visser and Ray both worry about “getting caught” for the murder of Marty, but we never see a single police car or uniform. Law is abstracted to the point of invisibility.

IS JUDGMENT AT HAND? In keeping with the “you’re on your own” philosophy of the movie, there is little reference to God in Blood Simple. However, it’s worth noting that, as Ray drives down the highway with Marty in his back seat, he listens to a radio commentator talk about “The Jupiter Effect,” the end-of-the-world scenario popular in the 80s, a kind of precursor to the Y2K bug. The free-floating world-ending anxiety of the Reagan era comes into sharper focus in Raising Arizona.

MAGIC: In all Coen movies (with the exception of Fargo), the plot cannot get by on literalism alone — magic must be introduced at some point. Here, they create a bunch of fake suspense by having Abby dream about Marty showing up in her new apartment. Her dreaming of Marty is one thing, but she dreams of details she shouldn’t really know anything about.

ECHOES: In addition to the already mentioned, Visser’s blue VW bug later turns up driven by Jon Polito in The Big Lebowski.

John Getz as Ray bears a strong resemblance to Billy Bob Thornton’s Ed Crane in The Man Who Wasn’t There, complete with laconic remoteness and dangling cigarette. (In Man, Ed is, of course, married to Frances McDormand, playing another version of Abby, a not-terribly-bright woman who feels stuck in a loveless marriage. In Man, of course, she’s on her way out of the marriage in order to raise her station, not lower it.)

Visser tells Marty a bawdy story about an acquaintance who broke both of his hands. This unfortunate man’s name is Creighton, a name that would later turn up as a major character in The Man Who Wasn’t There. There is no evidence to suggest they are the same person.

Like Tom Regan in Miller’s Crossing, Visser takes great pride in his hat, and seemingly cannot do his job without it. Even after getting stabbed through the hand, he takes time to pick up his hat and put it on before he goes to take care of Abby.

The 20-minute set-piece at the center of Blood Simple will be played out in shorter form in Fargo — the victim in the back seat of the car, the desolate roadside, the suspense beat of the killer almost being caught by an oncoming vehicle.

(Marty’s blood becomes an important symbol in Blood Simple — just as Marty tries to get rid of his problems only to have them get much larger as a result of his actions, Ray tries to get rid of Marty’s blood but the stain only gets bigger — it’s like the freakin’ bathtub ring in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Ray tries to mop up the blood off the office floor but only makes the stain bigger. Marty bleeds so much into Ray’s back seat that the blood is still seeping upwards a day later. He vomits blood onto Ray’s shoulder, and, in Abby’s dream, he vomits blood onto her floor. Marty, we would say, won’t stop bleeding.)