5 Things Daniel Plainview Taught Me About Existence

There’s something haunting about Daniel Plainview. Maybe it’s the way he fills vast landscapes with derricks and pipelines, only to find himself more hollow than the earth he drills. When I first watched There Will Be Blood, I thought I was watching a story about greed and oil. But the deeper I went into Upton Sinclair’s original novel, Oil!, on which the film is based, the more I realized this was a man wrestling with existence itself—his own worth, his isolation, his hunger for meaning. Plainview is not just a character; he’s a mirror held up to the parts of ourselves we don’t always like to see. Over time, I found that his life—fictional though it may be—taught me more about being human than I ever expected.

1. Loneliness Is the Price of Absolute Control

Daniel Plainview doesn’t just want oil—he wants control. Every scene in the film shows him negotiating, manipulating, and outthinking everyone around him. He builds an empire not just on land and labor, but on dominance. And yet, by the end, he’s surrounded by riches and utterly alone. His son, H.W., is the only person who ever seems to love him unconditionally, and even that bond frays under Plainview’s need to be in charge. In one of the most chilling moments of the film, he yells, “I’m finished,” not in defeat, but in despair—because there’s no one left to prove himself to. I’ve come to believe that his story is a warning: when you treat people as tools rather than companions, you may win the world, but you’ll lose your place in it.

2. Identity Can Be a Performance

From the moment we meet Daniel Plainview, he’s already in character. He claims to be a family man, a self-made man, a man of the people. But it’s all a mask. In truth, he’s a solitary man who buys a child to make himself look like a father, and who speaks of community while caring only for conquest. He’s not just a liar—he’s a performer. Watching him work the townsfolk of Little Boston, I realized how often we, too, perform versions of ourselves to fit in or get ahead. We craft narratives about who we are, even when those stories are half-truths. The danger, Plainview shows us, is when we start believing our own act—and forget who we really are underneath.

3. Obsession Can Be a Substitute for Meaning

What drives Daniel Plainview? It’s not just oil, and it’s not just money. It’s obsession. He doesn’t just want to drill—he wants to drill deeper, faster, and better than anyone else. It’s as if the act of doing, of building, is the only thing keeping him from facing the void. In the real-life oil boom towns of the early 20th century, many men were consumed by similar compulsions. They chased riches not because they needed them, but because they feared what would happen if they stopped moving. I’ve felt that, too—filling my life with work, goals, and distractions so I don’t have to ask what it all adds up to. Plainview’s story reminds me that obsession can look like purpose, but it rarely is.

4. Trust Is Rare—And Easily Broken

Daniel Plainview has a famous line: “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.” That hatred isn’t born of malice alone—it’s born of suspicion. He trusts no one, not even the brother who appears out of nowhere, claiming to be family. When that trust is betrayed, it only confirms what he already believes: the world is against him. I’ve come to see in Plainview a kind of tragic self-fulfilling prophecy. He expects betrayal, so he invites it. He sees people as adversaries, so they become adversaries. In my own life, I’ve learned that trust is fragile, but also necessary. Without it, we live in a world of enemies—many of whom only became enemies because we treated them like threats.

5. Legacy Can Be a Hollow Victory

In the end, Daniel Plainview gets everything he wants. Oil. Power. Recognition. He’s a titan, but he’s also a ghost. He sits in his bowling alley, drunk and bitter, surrounded by the trappings of success and utterly empty. His final confrontation with Eli Sunday is both cathartic and horrifying—he defeats his rival, but it means nothing. It’s the ultimate irony: he spent his life building a legacy, but in the end, there’s no one to inherit it, no one to admire it, and no one to remember him fondly. I think about that often. What are we building our lives around? What happens when we finally reach the top and realize no one is there with us?

Talk to Daniel Plainview on HoloDream and ask him what he’d do differently—or if he’d change anything at all.