Tools of Characterization
Characterization in The Big Lebowski
Actions
The Dude chills out, drinks White Russians, and rolls joints. Walter pulls guns on innocent people. Donny drinks Orange Slice and asks too many questions. Maude Lebowski flies over a giant canvas in a harness and sprays the canvas with paint. The Big Lebowski steals money from his wife's charity to keep for himself. Bunny Lebowski runs away from home and marries an aging multimillionaire.
In this film, people's actions say a lot about who they are, perhaps more than their words. Analyzing the actions in the above paragraph, we can draw some pretty clear conclusions about all of these characters. The Dude is a peaceful (read: lazy) guy who's got some chemical vices. Walter is a trigger-happy veteran with PTSD. Donny is a child in an adult's body. Maude Lebowski is nontraditional and bold. The Big Lebowski is a liar and a sociopath. Bunny Lebowski is a naïve farm girl who's struggling to find herself. Characters behave pretty consistently in the film, so it's not hard to interpret their actions.
Clothing
Clothes make the man (and woman) in The Big Lebowski. The Dude dresses like a slob, in bathrobes and ripped t-shirts (which he wears in public), because he is a slob. And, okay, if you want to be really generous, you could also say he doesn't really care about how the world sees him, which is part of The Dude's Zen mentality about everything.
Even though Walter has returned to civilian status, he still wears camouflage vests and night vision-enhancing aviators, both relics from his time in combat. He's still operating in war mode, which explains all of his unexpected violent outbursts. Although Bunny Lebowski is a married woman, she's barely old enough to drive a car: she dresses in girlishly revealing outfits, which signals her childishness to the audience.
And Maude Lebowski, whose frankness about female sexuality is basically written in bold Sharpie all over her artwork, frequently wears nothing at all.
Occupation
The finest example of occupation as a means of characterization is the fact that The Dude is unemployed. You can't get more straightforward than that. Although The Dude could certainly get a job if he wanted one, he's lazy—excuse us, we believe "laid-back" is the preferred term—preferring to spend his time bowling and relaxing than turning cranks for The Man.
Walter owns and operates Sobchak Security, a small business that sells all kinds of whimsical implements designed to "safeguard your home." This is evocative of Walter's warrior-hero mentality: he wants to protect himself and his loved ones from any perceived enemy threats. It's actually a pretty good way of working out his post-combat issues.
Maude's avant-garde artwork clues us into the fact that she's kind of "out there" when it comes to socially conventional behavior. If you make paintings by flying through the air partially clothed, it's a good bet that anything goes in the rest of your life.
Speech and Dialogue
A reviewer from The New Yorker magazine wrote that "by far the best thing about 'Lebowski' is the way it assigns each character a style of rhetoric— grandiose, obsequious, druggy—that can be played off against the others." Each character in the film has a very exaggerated and consistent way of speaking that defines him.
We can guess whose speech is "druggy." Walter speaks in high-minded terms about his God-given rights; Brandt is totally ingratiating; the Big Lebowski is a pretentious blowhard. There's the down-home cowboy with his amused drawl; Maude with her clipped and condescending lectures; Donny with his … well, Donny doesn't say much at all.
Cursing is a huge element of characterization in the movie. Characters who curse are identified by characters who don't curse as "rogue" and "counterculture." Between the two of them, Walter and The Dude drop the F-bomb nearly 300 times in the movie, truly a Tarantino-level of profanity, right up there with Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. Not all of the F-bombs are done in anger; a lot are just bewilderment or for emphasis or just to show the way these guys talk. It suggests a lack of precision in their thinking, unlike Maude or Brandt, who are articulate and focused.