"It's a hell of a thing killin' a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."
The most famous line from Unforgiven is said by a former gunslinger grudgingly pulled back into a life he thought he had turned his back on forever many years before. The observation is directed toward a young man who calls himself the Schofield Kid. A pretty dumb name, sure, but every wannabe Shane has to start somewhere. Fortunately, for the Kid, he starts by aligning himself with a man who knows more about the life he seeks than he himself will ever learn. There is within Munny’s observation a deeper level, as well: there are many ways of killing a man besides brutal death. There is the death of those he loves which also the power to take away what’s got. So, Munny is not just being reflective here; he is also being self-reflective on a certain level.
"We all got it coming, kid."
The Kid’s response to Munny’s observation about killing a man is, at this point, uninformed and ignorant: “he had it coming.” Munny has been around enough killing and seen enough death to be far wiser than the Kid. His response is Old Testament, wrath of God kind of stuff that speaks to the harshness and times and the title of the film.
"You'd be William Munny out of Missouri. Killer of women and children."
Like reprehensible people are often fond of doing when they are called upon to answer for their own actions by someone equally reprehensible, Little Bill tries to distract from the reality of his own repulsive character by refusing to shoulder the burden of his immorality. Instead, he attempts to shift the weight of evil in the room onto the broad shoulders of his more infamous opponent.
"That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned."
Munny’s response to Daggett’s maneuver is to accept guilt and not ask for forgiveness. He has achieved, over time, an almost Zen-like acceptance of his destiny and fate and the inherent evil within. An evil that has nothing whatever to do with taking care of business at hand. Not redemption for himself, but judgment for what Bill has done.
"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."
Munny has his gun trained on Little Bill and Daggett is about to eat mortality. Having not lived long enough or been philosophical enough to attain the level of self-understanding and cosmic awareness which Munny has reached, Little Bill can only pathetically cry out that he does not deserve to die in this way.
"Yeah."
Munny finally does reach a certain level of redemption with his ultimate expression of stoic acceptance that—for him at least—some people do deserve what they got coming. This one word philosophical encapsulation of Munny’s realization that even a redemptive second act cannot make up for a first act characterized by pure evil comes in response to yet another manifestation of Little Bill’s continuing failure to “get it.” Munny’s positive affirmation is his retort to Little Bill’s final attempt at an assertive claim to dominance in their duet of moralistic one-upmanship: “I’ll see you in hell, William Munny.”
