Structure

Pulp Fiction is divided into six distinct and yet interrelated stories. As is common in Tarantino's films, they are not arranged in chronological order. At certain moments where the tales intersect, the theme of the uncanny and destiny arises, for example, where Butch and Vincent pass each other at Marsellus's bar. They exchange hostile glances and comments for no apparent reason. The sequence is mysterious, and the reaction of Vincent—whom the scene proceeds to focus on—goes unexplained. Later on, in the story concerned with Butch and his escape from the L.A. mob, he comes across Vincent and kills him. The narrative structure as a whole is nearly circular, the final scene continuing from and concluding the interrupted first scene.

Essentially a black comedy directed in a highly stylized manner and employing many pop culture touches, Pulp Fiction weaves through the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles gangsters, fringe characters, petty thieves, and a mysterious attaché case. In keeping with Quentin Tarantino's directorial trademark of nonlinear story telling, Pulp Fiction is written out of sequence, telling several stories concurrently that intersect as the film progresses. Characters are introduced and killed, only to later return as the film's narrative jumps back and forth in time.

Pulp Fiction is strongly character driven, with considerable screen time devoted to conversations and monologues, often remarkably eloquent, that reveal the characters' sense of humor, philosophical perspectives, and poignant secret histories. The film starts out with a hold-up in a restaurant with armed entrepreneurs "Pumpkin" and "Honey Bunny," then picks up the stories of mob hitmen Vincent Vega and Jules, Mia and Marcellus Wallace, prizefighter Butch Coolidge, and finally returns to where it began, in the restaurant, where Vincent and Jules stop for a bite, foil the hold-up, and set the robbers on a more righteous path.

Story elements

Homage as style

Like Tarantino's other works, Pulp Fiction is full of homages to other films and television shows, particular in the gangster genre, as well as many other pop culture artifacts. The movie has been described as a pastiche of "popular culture since 1950." In the sole overt example of literary pulp fiction in the movie, Vincent Vega is seen in several scenes reading the first Modesty Blaise novel while sitting on the toilet. The edition Vincent reads has a mock-up cover that Tarantino had the prop department make, based upon the cover of an early edition of the novel. The cereal that Lance is eating when Vincent comes to his house with Mia is called Fruit Brute, which was discontinued in 1983. Fruit Brute also shows up in Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill. The majority of clocks in the movie, especially in the pawnshop, are set to 4:20, a subtle drug culture reference. The movie itself was originally going to be titled Black Mask, the name of the magazine largely responsible for popularizing hardboiled detective fiction in the 1930s. Butch's double cross of Marsellus is possibly an homage to the 1929 Dashiell Hammett crime novel Red Harvest, whose protagonist challenges an organized crime operation by blackmailing a boxer into "unfixing" a fixed fight.

Tarantino has also created his own pop artifacts, partly to establish recurrent motifs in his films and partly to avoid showing actual commercial products in certain scenes. Big Kahuna Burger is featured not only in the Pulp Fiction apartment scene, but also in From Dusk Till Dawn and Reservoir Dogs. The Red Apple cigarettes that Butch buys inside Marsellus's bar also appear in various ways in Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Volume 1, and Four Rooms. (A Red Apple billboard also appears in the background of a scene in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. Tarantino was dating Mira Sorvino, one of the film's stars, at the time.) Iconic items of Tarantino's also appear: Jules uses a STAR model B 9mm-caliber pistol, and Vincent uses an Auto-Ordnance Colt 1911A1 model .45 ACP-caliber pistol. Both weapons—each chrome plated with a custom mother-of-pearl grip—are owned by the director.

In a suitable twist, Pulp Fiction has itself become something of a pop culture icon. Several films, TV shows, and video games have referenced the movie, most memorably an episode of The Simpsons that parodies the "dungeon scene".

The mysterious briefcase

The only indisputable observations about the stolen attaché case recovered by Jules and Vincent are that its latch lock combination is "666", the "Number of the Beast", and that the contents of the case either glow orange or are highly reflective. ("Fox Force Five" may also be a play on the 666 phenomenon as "F" is the 6th letter of the English alphabet.) The only acknowledgments of its contents are the captivated stares of Vincent and Pumpkin and their exclamations "Is that what I think it is?" and "It's beautiful."

Whenever asked, director Tarantino has replied that there is no explanation for the case's contents: it is simply a MacGuffin. Originally, the case was to contain the diamonds stolen in Reservoir Dogs, but this was seen as too mundane. For filming purposes, the briefcase contained an orange light bulb, silver foil, and a battery. Despite Tarantino's explanation, many theories have been proposed for the contents of the briefcase, for instance that it contains Marsellus' soul.

The glowing briefcase is an unintentional echo of the 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly, in which a briefcase glows from its nuclear contents. When Tarantino learned of the similarity, he said it was purely accidental but that he liked the idea.

Jules's Bible passage

In the final diner scene, Jules explains that he recites a Biblical passage, Ezekiel 25:17, each time he kills someone. Jules's version of the passage reads as follows:

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

In the last scene of the movie, Jules repeats the passage to Pumpkin, phrasing the last sentence differently: "And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."

This is, in fact, not an actual passage from the Bible, but a collage of several passages. Ezekiel 25:17 in the King James Version reads:

And I will execute great vengeance upon thee with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

Jules's pronouncement is a typically obscure Tarantino reference to Karate Kiba/Chiba the Bodyguard, a 1976 film starring Sonny Chiba, whom the director would later cast in Kill Bill. Karate Kiba opens with a nearly identical misquote, likewise attributed to Ezekiel 25:17:

The path of the righteous man and defender is beset on all sides by the iniquity of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious anger, who poison and destroy my brothers; and they shall know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard when I lay my love upon them! (Ezekiel 25:17)

Redemption and Conversion

When Jules experiences a miracle, he undergoes a transformation by which the film culminates with him paying the price to save another man's life. The melodramatic quote from Ezekiel with which he accompanied his executions, with little other reason than it sounded cool, suddenly took a twist, as he became the shepherd instead of the vengeance. On the other hand, Vincent, his partner, who did not believe in the miracle, putting it down to mere coincidence, consequently finds himself, through another series of coincidences, at the wrong end of another shooting - this time fatal. He learnt neither from his previous mistakes (this was his 3rd time in the bathroom as something major happened), nor the enlightenment of others, and finally paid for it with his life.

The other common theme is that of forgiveness. Pulp's central story, The Gold Watch, sees Butch returning to save Marsellus, from two sado-masochistic rapists even after double-crossing him. The fact that half-an-hour previously each was ready to kill the other is temporarily set aside as Butch steps in to deliver his personal enemy from a common enemy. Butch's choice of a samurai sword as the weapon of vengeance is more than just another of Tarantino's little post-modern film-maker in-jokes. Tarantino is strongly influenced by the moral code of many of the Japanese samurai classics and by forsaking the door to Tennessee to save his enemy he not only receives forgiveness from Marsellus, who would have previously tracked him to the ends of the earth, but also finally earns the right to wear his father's gold watch.