The Cowl

by Luca DeLucia ’28 on October 23, 2025

I own two separate t-shirts with the phrase “the world is yours” stamped on the back of them. One of these shirts is a reference to the song “The World Is Yours” by Nas from his 1994 album Illmatic. The back of the shirt displays three crudely drawn images of the Earth, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Statue of Liberty, with the phrase itself written as if it were etched into uneven pavement with chalk. Despite how crass the images look, the song itself is quite powerful. Growing up in Queens, Nas wrote “The World Is Yours” to be a mantra for self-empowerment and ambition. It didn’t matter to Nas that he grew up in an area of heavy crime and poverty, because he believed that no matter where he came from, he could live a successful and fulfilling life. My other shirt gives off quite a different spirit. On the back of it is a picture of Al Pacino in a suit, smoking a cigarette and wearing a sling on his left arm. Behind him are palm trees and hills, and the phrase “the world is yours” is written out in cursive at the bottom. This shirt exudes class, image, and power, but rather ironically, just like the Nas shirt, the story this shirt is based on could not be farther from the tone it gives off.

The phrase comes from the movie Scarface (1983); Nas is referencing the movie in his song. Scarface is directed by Brian De Palma, who is also known for directing the first Mission: Impossible (1996). The movie is an adaptation of the 1932 movie of the same name, which itself is an adaptation of the book Scarface by Armitage Trail about Al Capone. De Palma, along with screenwriter Oliver Stone, attempted to adapt the original film to fit contemporary issues of the 1980s. The story follows Pacino as Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant sent to the United States by Fidel Castro, along with 25,000 others with criminal records. Unsatisfied with his life, Montana joins the drug trade in Miami, and through countless murders, backwards deals, and deception, he begins to work his way up to the top of the trade. His goal in this movie is an allusion to the American Dream– the idea that anyone has the opportunity to live an improved life in America. Slowly but surely, it looks as if Tony will get to accomplish everything he wants.

 The movie’s most famous scene occurs at the one-hour and 34-minute minute mark. Montana has just killed his boss, Frank Lopez, played by Robert Loggia. With Lopez gone, Montana steps into his shoes, both as the head of the drug trade and because he gets to be with Lopez’s girlfriend, Elvira Hancock, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, whom he has been in love with since he met her. Standing in his former boss’s lavish home, he looks up at a passing zeppelin with the iconic phrase scrolling along: “The world is yours…”. Montana looks at the zeppelin in awe, realizing at that moment he just got everything he wanted; his American Dream has been fulfilled. But there’s a hidden message behind this scene, and it’s in those ellipses. It marks the moment when Montana’s ambition exceeds anything he could have ever imagined. 

Montana builds up his own estate, but becomes so paranoid that everyone around him is out to get him that he starts making hasty decisions that ultimately lead to his downfall. He is emotionally abusive towards Hancock to the point where she leaves him, he begins to get addicted to the drugs he sells (something he was warned about in the beginning of the movie but he never took to heart), and he shoots his right-hand man, Manny Ribera, played by Steven Bauer, because he found out Ribera was sleeping with his sister, Gina Montana, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. With everyone in his inner circle gone, sitting alone with his drugs and money, he contemplates everything he has done before getting ambushed by assassins hired by Aljeandro Sosa, played by Paul Shenar, the head of the Colombian drug cartel, whom Montana previously crossed. 

Montana wanted to live a better life in America, but Montana’s life was not in fact “better.” He lived the same life he lived in Cuba; it’s just that he was more successful in his criminal pursuits in America. One could argue that success, no matter how it is attained, is indeed living a better life than one of failure, but Scarface aims to show how this is not the case. Montana succeeds many times in this movie. There’s a famous montage after Lopez’s death that plays alongside the song “Push It To The Limit” that shows how luxurious Tony’s life has become. If the value of success, by any means necessary, was the intended message of this movie, then the movie would’ve ended at that montage. Rather, Montana’s ambition gets the best of him; he dies chasing something that could never be fulfilled. Montana’s life was “better” in America by measure of material gains and an ego boost, when really his life would’ve only gotten “better” by changing his worldview. So while my Scarface shirt portrays Tony as a sophisticated, powerful person, his story could not be further from it. Where Nas’s song exemplifies how a confident self-image and a passion for creativity can lead to an ambition that is measurable and attainable, Montana’s story is a cautionary tale about how greed and selfishness ends in disaster. The stories both shirts tell go beyond what they look like, but in how this phrase conveys different values. The world is yours…be careful what that leads you to.