People are born of the earth. While this has the ring of wind chimes, auras, and crystals, it is nevertheless true. But not quite right where Daniel Plainview is concerned. The protagonist of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is first encountered ‘about twenty feet’ below the surface, picking his way into a ‘glistening vein of silver ore’ in an extremely remote and unforgiving corner of New Mexico (Anderson 2009). Like a prototypical Adam, he is made flesh in medias res as a man without a childhood. Unlike Adam, his emergence appears autonomous. With self-determination as firm as the ground into which he picks, Plainview positions dynamite, lights the fuse, and starts to climb. His story begins in much the same way as the ill-fated captain of the Pequod.

In Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, the captain of the ship sailed several days below hatches, below the waterline, before one day, as the ship was ‘rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity,’ Ahab materialised ‘upon the quarter-deck’ (M-D). Like Plainview, we first encounter Ahab in his element, only the captain is surely born of the seas, not earth. Genesis 3:19 is absolutely true for Plainview; his excavations seeming subconscious attempts to hasten his return. But Ahab is certain he shall not return to dust. ‘“It feels like going down into one’s tomb,”’ Ahab mutters to himself, speaking of his ‘“grave-dug berth’” below the sea’s surface, clearly foreshadowing his watery end. Neither man tarries with trepidation but rather runs headlong. Plainview is a dry-land doppelganger for Ahab, right down to the ungainly gait.