The concern for his adopted child, H.W., is also evident throughout. When H.W. is injured, Plainview does what is necessary and sends him off to receive aid for his disability. The fact that he doesn't stay with his child as a well burns, or that he doesn't accompany him on the train trip, delegating that task instead to an assistant in a heartbreaking scene, speaks loudly to a man of limited emotional capacity but certainly not a monster. Plus, for Plainview, there are always the wells to tend to and the care that H.W. now requires will be quite expensive. Plainview continues to work and, when approached by the young faith healing minister, Paul Sunday, about moneys owed, responds with furious venom. Plainview beats Sunday like an unwanted mutt and challenges him as only a grieving father can:

DANIEL: "Aren't you a healer and a vessel for the holy spirit? When are you coming over and make my son hear again? CAN'T YOU DO THAT?"

Returning from his medical treatment and schooling, H.W. lashes out at Plainview and Plainview does the only thing he can, he tells his son, "I love you," but only when H.W. is turned and unable to register the caring familial statement. The question this scene brings up is why, if he were such a monster, would he have said it when no one is around to register the statement? Wouldn't he show concern for H.W. only when he could use it to his advantage as a business gimmick?

Now, due to the accident that befalls H.W. who is now deaf, Daniel Plainview has lost the ability to communicate with his son. He is paying for a nurse/translator to work with H.W. who is being taught to speak and converse with his hands rather than use his voice. In essence, his son H.W. has lost his voice as well as his hearing, and for Daniel Plainview, the spoken word is a very important tool. The only ability more important to Plainview may well be his mental faculties, but make no mistake, for a man channeling the critically precise voice of John Huston, the need to have his son hear him and communicate with him is more than a handicap, it is a maddeningly broken umbilical cord.

For Plainview, the connection to his son is one of his few anchors to society, another being his newfound brother. This tragedy of family for Plainview is what eventually breaks him and drives him further from society and finally, into madness.

The false relationship he forms with the man who claims to be his brother is a devastating development. Over the course of the film a drifter arrives and produces Plainview family letters proving, he claims, that he is the long lost half brother to Daniel Plainview. Brothers, he says, by the same wandering father. Plainview takes the man in, treats him as blood, opens up to him emotionally, and begins to teach him the family business. Later, Plainview finds that he's been deceived, lied to, that this man is not his brother, but a charlatan.

At the time this is discovered the two men are camping alone in the far western outback. Plainview, with a gun to the man's head, pulls the trigger, firing a bullet through this newfound stranger's brain, and quickly buries him in a shallow grave. The act is brutal but understandable and something that would not seem out of place in a novel by Larry McMurtry. This type of deceit is worse than that of a horse thief, and at the time it is discovered, possibly the only right thing to do. This "brother," this criminal, could have just as easily been planning to kill Plainview and to return to camp alone to claim the Plainview fortune as his own. It is not an easy thing, but in the situation, it could be argued that this was the cold, rational thing to do.

Having lost all ties to family, Plainview spirals downward and, finally, walls himself up inside a mansion, haunting the corridors with a rifle he uses as a popgun, plinking away at trinkets he stacks as if his house were a county fair carnival game. In the last meeting between Plainview and H.W., Plainview lashes out verbally, acting as a child, rather than the adult we have come to know throughout the film. The ownership of rational thought, the crown of the parent, has now been passed from father to son.

Plainview is hurt by H.W., who wants to start his own drilling company, and attempts to return the level of pain and emotional disloyalty he feels H.W. is showing. The only thing Plainview has available to use against H.W. is the knowledge that they are not family by blood and unfortunately, for Plainview, that important fact is his downfall. His all too common focus on blood, rather than family, is what eventually tears open his soul, as is evidenced during the instantly classic scene of his baptism with Plainview thundering, "I've abandoned my boy! I've abandoned my boy!"

Another quick example of Plainview showing kindness is his response to a competitor, Gene Blaize, at the train station. Plainview already has the land he intends to drill and seems willing to give free advice with the rationale that he personally likes Gene, and better Gene work the neighboring land than someone else. Though they are competitors, it appears there is respect between the two men. For Plainview, operating and succeeding in a society he perceives to be sour and untrustworthy is a balancing act that he can only do so long as he, like any normal, rational, human being, has personal ties. The two things most adults value is fulfilling work and fulfilling relationships. For Plainview, the work comes easily, the relationships do not, and that fault is what finally cuts him deep.

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