Barry Lyndon is a film about social mobility. But more than that it is a journey of self. Redmond Barry is a young man full of fight and hope. He believes that love and passion are real and that they are enough to win the love of a woman. But he soon discovers his heart is trampled on by Norah, his cousin who he is in love with when she chooses a man for his place in society. She tells him that he is merely a lapdog and a boy because he has no money, property nor social standing.
All that Redmond has left is his pride, and he chooses to duel rather than accept defeat. Believing that he has won he sets off for Dublin and joins an English regiment. But he soon finds out that the duel was fake, and was only a cover to get him to leave so that Norah could marry Quinn. And right after this knowledge is given to him he experiences battle and watches his friend die before him. He becomes a runaway, is beaten and forced to fight for the Prussians; when given an opportunity to get out of this hell, he takes it.
Redmond has experienced a life that he never could have imagined, but for the worse. So when a father figure appears in the form of the Chevalier he immediately is drawn to him and takes on his ways. Redmond loses his sense of self and begins to believe that it is his right to have wealth and a reputation and lands. It seems that he is continuing to prove to Norah who has long since moved on that he is a man. And what it means to be a man to him is to have land, wealth and a place in society of high rank. But by this belief he loses himself as he loses his belief in love and passion for a single woman and instead seeks lust and things over creating real value in relationships with his wife, stepson or friends. In putting all of his value into material things he loses his ability to gain status in society which is represented in him losing his left leg. And he is banned from ever returning to the Lyndon estate which represents his ban from ever achieving a higher rank in life. That he must return to where he came. Thus he ends in the same position he began, alone, without love and fatherless.
