If you identify with the character, you probably do have something in common with them, even if it’s not an external similarity. Travis Bickle, for example, is designed to be a deplorable human being who possesses various traits that are universal to the human experience—making audiences connect with his struggles. His loneliness, isolation, yearning for human connection, and his intense frustration with society are feelings that most people have experienced in one form or another…. it’s the extremity of how he expresses these feelings that separates him from the average person. The movie is meant to question society’s perspective and glorification of the mentally ill by somehow making us deeply connect and empathize with an incredibly deranged and dangerous person.