In Akira Kurosawa’s *Rashomon* (1950), the assessment of who ends "better" or "worse" depends on whether you define success by material gain, moral redemption, or physical survival. Because the film is a meditation on the subjectivity of truth, "better" and "worse" are often internal states.
### **Who ends up BETTER?**
**1. The Priest (The Monk)**
* **At the start:** He is in a state of profound spiritual crisis. Having witnessed the trial and the blatant lying of all parties, he is on the verge of losing his faith in humanity entirely. He describes the events as more horrifying than war or famine because they signal the death of the human soul.
* **At the end:** He is the primary beneficiary of the film’s "hopeful" ending. When the Woodcutter decides to adopt the abandoned baby, the Priest’s faith is restored. He ends the film with a renewed sense of hope, famously telling the Woodcutter, "I think I can keep my faith in men."
**2. The Woodcutter**
* **At the start:** He is a hypocrite burdened by guilt. He claims to be a simple witness who found the body, but he is actually a thief who stole the wife’s valuable pearl-handled dagger and lied to the police to avoid involvement.
* **At the end:** Though he is poorer (now responsible for seven children instead of six) and his reputation has been tarnished in the eyes of the Priest and the Commoner, he achieves **moral redemption**. By confessing his "soul's" confusion and taking in the abandoned infant, he moves from a state of selfish concealment to one of selfless action. He leaves the gate as the sun comes out, symbolizing a "cleansing" of his character.
**3. The Abandoned Baby**
* **At the start:** Left alone in the ruins of the Rashomon gate during a torrential downpour, the baby is nearly a victim of exposure and theft.
* **At the end:** The baby is saved from certain death or a life of neglect. It is rescued by the Woodcutter, who promises to raise it as his own.
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### **Who ends up WORSE?**
**1. The Samurai (Kanazawa no Takehiro)**
* **At the start:** He is a nobleman traveling with his wife, possessing status, honor, and life.
* **At the end:** He is **physically worse off** (dead) and **spiritually disgraced**. In every version of the story—including his own testimony through a medium—he is stripped of his dignity. In the Woodcutter’s "objective" version, he is depicted not as a noble warrior but as a trembling coward who dies in a pathetic, clumsy scuffle.
**2. The Wife (Masako)**
* **At the start:** She is a protected noblewoman.
* **At the end:** She is a victim of multiple traumas. Regardless of which story is true, she has been raped, abandoned or scorned by her husband, and has lost her social standing. In the Woodcutter’s final version, she is shown as a desperate, hysterical woman who realizes both the Bandit and her Husband are pathetic men. She ends the narrative fleeing into the woods, her future entirely uncertain but undoubtedly ruined by 12th-century social standards.
**3. Tajōmaru (The Bandit)**
* **At the start:** He is a notorious, larger-than-life bandit with a fierce reputation.
* **At the end:** He is captured and facing execution. More importantly, his **legend is destroyed**. While he tells a story of a grand, 23-stroke duel to preserve his image as a master swordsman, the Woodcutter’s version reveals him to be a bumbling, terrified criminal who won the fight only by accident.
**4. The Commoner (The Beggar)**
* **At the start:** He is a cynical drifter looking for shelter from the rain.
* **At the end:** While he is "better off" in a strictly material sense—having stolen the baby’s silk kimono and amulet to sell—he ends the film as the **moral loser**. He represents the "dead end" of humanity: a man who believes everyone is inherently evil and uses that to justify his own cruelty. He exits into the rain, remaining in the "darkness" while the other two characters step into the light.
(Note: This summary was generated by Gemini 3.0 Flash + Search)