Marsellus Wallace, played by Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction, organises much of the work carried out by the other characters. Jules and Vincent retrieve a briefcase for him; Butch accepts his money to throw a fight; Mr Wolf answers a call from him. His position is seen in the obligations the others acknowledge even when he is absent.
The film first lets us hear his way of speaking and then the difficulties he runs into when he tries to impose his decisions. Marsellus can tell a man how he should act and has people available to carry out jobs. That ability is no longer enough when someone accepts an order intending to disobey it, or when an unexpected encounter places him under other people’s control.
His journey with Butch brings out that difference. The criminal businessman who pays for a defeat becomes a wounded pursuer and ends up needing help from the man he was after. The response he offers afterwards preserves his ability to negotiate, even though the relationship has already changed.
A voice that tries to define the other person’s options
Marsellus’s first conversation with Butch keeps the boss’s face out of shot and concentrates attention on his voice and on the person who has to listen to him. Rhames speaks calmly. The time he devotes to developing the argument shows that he can prolong the encounter until he gets the response he expects.
In the negotiation over the fixed fight, Marsellus presents defeat as a convenient decision for a boxer at the end of his career. He claims the ability to judge how much future he has left and how much pride ought to matter. The money accompanies an explanation that seeks to make obedience seem reasonable in the eyes of the man who is about to receive it.
The demand to repeat the bout in which he is supposed to go down turns acceptance into something audible. Marsellus wants to hear the order echoed back by Butch. The final continuity in Words in Pictures, from July 1994, preserves that closing exchange. The insistence marks someone who needs verbal confirmation of the agreement, even if that confirmation does not guarantee compliance.
What happens afterwards reveals a limit to his method. Butch can keep quiet about his own plan and respond in the expected way. Marsellus obtains a declaration of obedience, but misunderstands what that declaration allows him to know. The power to give instructions coexists with a dependence on the information that others choose to reveal to him.
Command continues through other people
Jules and Vincent’s arrival at the bar shows how access to the boss is managed. Paul greets them, comments on their clothes and tells them to wait while Marsellus finishes speaking to Butch. The wait organises a hierarchy without needing to state it: some matters must end before other employees can approach.
Recovering the briefcase belongs to that system of assignments. Marsellus does not need to accompany the men for his interest to determine the action. The characters talk about him, justify decisions in his name and treat breaches as a danger. His presence extends itself through expectations that the others have learned to take into account.
The Vincent and Mia episode makes it possible to observe that authority within a personal obligation. Vincent has to accompany the boss’s wife and tries to keep certain boundaries during the outing. The stories circulating about Marsellus increase his fear. Reputation thus shapes conduct, even when the information on which it rests comes from rumour.
When Jules needs help after Marvin’s death, Marsellus turns to Winston Wolfe. The professional relationship between Marsellus and Mr Wolf shows another way of exercising command: finding someone capable of solving a problem and entrusting them with the intervention. The boss has contacts, but he needs the other person’s specific expertise.
These relationships present a form of power sustained through co-operation, fear and self-interest. The associates do not all react in the same way, nor do they occupy identical positions. Marsellus can demand obedience from Butch and ask Wolf for help. The variation in treatment makes it possible to see how he adjusts his behaviour to the resource he needs to obtain.
The chase exposes the boss’s vulnerability
Butch’s victory turns a failed deal into a personal pursuit. When the two meet in the street, Marsellus stops being merely the name that organises a chase from the outside. He is hit by a car, gets up wounded and fires after the boxer. His body is subjected to the same accidents that threaten the man he is pursuing.
During that chase he hits an unrelated woman with a bullet. The episode shows the character’s violence in action outside a controlled conversation. His determination to catch Butch continues as the surroundings become chaotic and other people suffer the consequences of the gunfire.
In the pawn shop, Maynard and Zed manage to subdue both men. Marsellus suffers a sexual assault and is at the mercy of his captors. The position he held in his criminal circle does not protect him in that space. Help comes from Butch, who returns when he had the chance to escape.
Once freed, Marsellus resumes speaking to set out what will happen between them. He draws the conflict to a close in exchange for silence about what happened and for Butch to leave Los Angeles and not come back. The truce after the rescue preserves his need to set conditions, now within a relationship altered by the help he has received.
His reaction towards Zed keeps the intention to take revenge, while towards Butch it allows an agreed way out. That difference prevents the response being reduced to a single impulse. Marsellus can acknowledge a debt without giving up his language of threat. The final encounter lets newly suffered vulnerability coexist with the desire to regain control over his choices.
Rhames’s performance separates the volume of the voice from the authority it conveys. In his dealings with Butch, he can speak without haste because he expects the other man to keep listening. The rhythm of his sentences depends on that willingness to listen. Obedience seems to include the time that must be devoted to him.
When action catches up with him in the street, breathing, pain and movement alter that presence. The character has to react physically and can no longer manage the encounter through a prolonged explanation. The chase allows two ways of intervening to be compared: directing a situation from a safe position and confronting what has just overtaken it.
After the rescue, he once again sets out conditions while he is still injured. The recovery of verbal control happens before any complete physical recovery. That mismatch keeps the consequences of the attack within the final conversation and makes the truce occur between two men marked by what they have been through.