The Story Archive

Cool Hand Luke

Stuart Rosenberg · 1967 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A decorated veteran picked up for cutting the heads off parking meters while drunk is put on a Florida road gang, where the captain recites the rules daily and a boss in mirrored glasses watches from the ditch. He wins a poker hand on nothing, eats fifty eggs on a bet, and keeps walking away from the camp. Its chain-gang Christ figure and one much-quoted line about failure to communicate fixed it in the anti-authority cycle.

Open Cool Hand Luke in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Genre
TragedyAllegory
Theme
Freedom vs FateIndividual vs SocietySuffering & EnduranceSacrificeFaith & Doubt
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Rebel / OutlawScapegoatAnti-Hero
Plot structure
EpisodicPassion PlayTragic Reversal
Symbol / motif
The PrisonThe Cross / AltarBlindness / The Eye
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
IronicTragicRealist
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues