Gelsomina recognizes this, if not intellectually then emotionally, and feels she belongs with Zampano. The Fool realizes this, as well, and drives her to the jail where Zampano will be released in the morning, and leaves her, but not before giving her a necklace to remember him by. What makes the scenes between The Fool and Gelsomina special is not because it is so philosophically deep, but it’s a poor man’s version of philosophy borne out of a need for simple human kindness that The Fool is loath to show, but does anyway, even if it aids his foe.

After Zampano is released, the pair stay at a convent, with kindly nuns, for a night, where Zampano is unable to even hold a conversation, and tries to steal some gold pieces, while Gelsomina ponders life at the convent. The two hit the road again, and encounter The Fool’s car, with a flat tire on the side of a road. Zampano attacks him, and accidentally kills The Fool. He dumps the body in a ravine, and also pushes the car over the side. While never mentioned, it is likely that the antagonism between the two men resulted from a similar ending for Gelsomina’s sister, Rosa, at the hands of Zampano, who like Lennie Small from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, also does not realize his own strength, for his shock at The Fool’s death seems genuine. He even later states to Gelsomina that he only hit him twice, although clearly he is rationalizing, for three or more punches are seen onscreen. In many ways, this film is much like Steinbeck’s other Great Depression era classic, The Grapes Of Wrath, in that a poor life on the road seems to always lead to death.

Not only has Zampano literally killed his enemy, but Gelsomina’s sprit, as she slips into a depression that lasts weeks, for winter arrives, and the descent into coldness is a good metaphor for Gelsomina’s emotional anomie. She recovers a bit, as spring arrives, and Zampano even expresses regret for killing The Fool. But, seeing that there has been something irreparably wronged in her, he offers to take her back to her mother. She refuses, so he abandons her as she sleeps, and pushes his caravan silently away. We are not sure whether this is merely the cad in him, or his trying to spare her more of his own uncontrollable fury, but we suspect it’s the latter, as he covers her up with a blanket, leaves her some food and money, and even leaves her the trumpet she has desired playing throughout the whole film.

The final scenes take place at least four or five years later, for we see Zampano is part of another circus, with another female helper, but he is older, has more gray in his hair, and seems more ragged and tired. At the town the circus stops in, he overhears a woman singing a song while out hanging her wash. It is the famed theme song from the film, that started out as The Fool’s theme, became Gelsomina’s, and now has made it to the washerwoman. He asks her where she learned that tune, and she tells him a strange woman with a trumpet, who was there several years ago and died, used to play it. She was ill, simply withered away, and was buried by the town. Hearing this, we see Quinn act wonderfully without words, still the unemotive brute, yet trying to feel. He wanders away, goes through the motions of his tired old act of popping a chain with his chest’s expansion, and gets into a drunken brawl at a bar. The last scene of the film is silent, save for the theme song, now all Zampano’s, as he weeps helplessly on a beach at night.