it's a living
To explain myself a little — so if the Englishman is the Devil, or a devil, in this scenario, I think we can be reasonably sure the Irishman represents an angel or possibly God, and thus the discussion at the end over whose room the body is going to stay in is about whether the man will go to hell or heaven. I might have said that was possibly too vague to know for sure in another movie, but given the other hints the story drops and the fact that it's the Coens, that doesn't seem likely to be an accident. They don't really do accidents.
Edited by Unsung Hide / Show Replies
Well the Irishman calls the Englishman "boss," and the Englishman says that they're both "reapers" and "harvesters of souls," so I think it's pretty clear that (if it really is a journey to the afterlife) that they're both on the same "side" and are the same type of entity. Honestly, the only thing that is particularly "demonic" about the Englishman is his facial hair, and that's the weakest trope connection listed in the page.
So I don't think that there's really an established theme of one bounty hunter being evil and the other being good, which means I don't think it follows that the discussion of where the corpse resides is about whether it goes to heaven or hell. In fact they both seem perfectly indifferent to morality and have no reaction to the Lady's talk of grace and sin.
Edited by CaptainCrawdad
Removed:
On the contrary, I recall Arthur announcing openly (and rather unnecessarily) what he was looking for in his saddlebags. The subtext of the scene is that Arthur is pointedly refusing to acknowledge Billy talking about quitting and marrying Miss Longabaugh.
I think it's also rather unlikely that Arthur would loot his employers' corpses, which would either end his life or destroy his livelihood if he ever got caught. At any rate, Arthur is never established to have low morals in any other scene.