I have to disagree. Travis was enraged alright, he was livid, but he was doing more than telling it like it is. His response to her was not merely harsh but vitriolic, and the words and expressions he used were designed and intended to objectify, dehumanize and annihilate.
Vitriol like that cannot be taken out of context; its very source is toxic; its voice betrays someone very at home, learned, and practised with the language of hatred and abuse. It has a second-nature quality--it flows. This kind of abuse may need a trigger, but it is not a one-off, born-full-grown kind of thing.
I tend to disagree, too, that he intended, at the moment of his abusive tirade, to get her out of his life once and for all. He was dismissing her as a human being and, at the same time, paradoxically and actively engaging her. Neither of them were just going to walk away.
