Who is the Master's master?
If, according to Dodd's words, everyone must serve a master, I'm left with the question: What master does Dodd serve? Any thoughts?
shareHis wife.
shareYour hairy-legged mother.
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MovieChat Forums > The Master (2012) Discussion > Who is the Master's master?
He serves not a human, but an idea. The idea of the cause. The idea that all humans can be made perfect. There's a lot of humans out there. That's a lot of service that needs doing.
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I did think about that for a minute or two... I think the implication can be made that his master was "The Cause" or his "service" to humanity or at least the character thought that... of course I could be wrong...
shareI would say it would be a combination between his wife and The Cause. During his daughter's wedding, he jokes about marriage being an unpleasant experience, until he found "the one" i.e. Peggy, his current wife.
I get the feeling Dodd MAY have ended up in a similar fashion to Freddy - an addict and a drunk, homeless, and shifting - if he hadn't had The Cause to keep him on track. And Peggy was his manager, the person who made sure he stayed on track and stayed true to The Cause.
If can try to turn this into an analogy:
The Cause is a road. Dodd is the horse pulling a carriage. Peggy is the driver of the carriage, cracking the whip over the horse's (Dodd's) head to made sure he stays on the road instead of veering off.
And who or what was Peggy's master? I would say The Cause, but even more than The Cause, her master was order and stability and feeling like she was in control of her life, and power. She knew that The Cause allowed this order, power, and stability in her life. Thanks to The Cause, she lived in comfort, she had a family who was loyal to her, she had a husband who stuck by her and provided for her, and she had the status of the Leader's wife and was admired by all the followers. The Cause gave her the status, power, and wealth that were her true masters, and the only way The Cause would continue to give her those things was if she kept Dodd on a short leash.
I get the feeling Dodd MAY have ended up in a similar fashion to Freddy - an addict and a drunk, homeless, and shifting - if he hadn't had The Cause to keep him on track.
That's quite right. Real-life Ron L. Hubbard was a war veteran without a sense of purpose or direction, heavy boozer and a scoundrel. He kind of founded the Dianetics/Scientology thing to find a purpose for himself and he happened to succeed, at least in some way. So I was all along thinking that Dodd must have originally (before the war, before The Cause) been like Freddy (and Hubbard), he must have been without a purpose until he founded The Cause. But just as Freddy, he is still always on the edge, snapping at people, having trouble controlling himself and having affinity to drink.
Until the end of the film, The Cause had been his master (or he had, temporarily, mastered to be his own master), enabling him to be at peace and in control. But I believe that in the end, Freddy had sort of become his master and he had become dependent on him and that's why he tried to persuade him back. When Freddy leaves, we can speculate that Dodd went downhill, just like Hubbard later in his life went.
Of course, I have to admit that his wife was probably partly his master too, as she intervened a lot and limited his drinking and other excesses. share
In my view, Dodd's master was his animal nature which he was trying to pound into submission. What you fight only grows larger and the fact that, on a few occasions, he loses his composure and control over his 'animal' self tells us that it's always lurking in the shadows, waiting to latch back on and pull him down into his own terrifying depths.
His wife wasn't truly controling him, though some scenes allude to that. She's just the other side of the coin, the personality that's directly opposed the animal nature that he's fighting inside. If you'd put Dodd in the middle, then Freddie and Peggy would be on opposite sides of his 'animal' axis. His wife is more like his own civilized guiding principle. Her own master isn't truly important, but it's probably stability.
That's a good one. It's gonna make me think. I think, for starters, that he probably believes in a sense of responsibility toward those he wants to help, that he believes himself to be an altruist. So his master would be the human race, which he wants to serve.
That's why this movie succeeds. I don't believe any of the stuff he professes, but I really believe that he believes. They could have made him a cardboard cutout, but they didn't. They could have made him a villain, but what for? Freddie would get drunk til he, his dad, his mom, passed out. Some home life! Then he meets someone genuinely interested in him, in everything... as he says when meeting him... "above all, curious," which is true.
Without his sincerity, genuine warmth, and Freddie's need for acceptance... a kind of fatherly acceptance, the movie wouldn't have gone anywhere.
But your question's gonna make the gears spin. I've seen it 5 times and just began to ask it.