BATMAN IS CRAZY

This is an essay I wrote for some class or another. About Batman.

Batmaniac on the Loose

Bruce Wayne is crazy, simple as that. At the tender young age of ten, billionaire Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents murdered by a mugger. He has never gotten over this and became obsessed with crime and crime-fighting. He feels guilty for his parents death as they were killed walking out of a movie he wanted to see and because his mother was wearing the pearl necklace he wanted her to wear. He decided to emulate his childhood hero, Zorro, and became a cunning, masked vigilante. He became a true super hero, a man rising to the occasion to fight crime and injustice. The only problem is, he is unstable.

With that kind of history under his belt, not to mention the fact he is battling criminals who are often crazy themselves, it only makes sense that Batman has mental problems. In fact, it is thought by fans (and often confirmed by the writers) that Bruce Wayne left his personality and fully became Batman, only using the Bruce Wayne personality as a cover for Batman. Sometimes though the Bruce Wayne personality splits off from Batman and the two war for control over the body, as seen in Batman: Ego. Batman has also created the ever popular Batmite, a character supposedly from another dimension that turns out to be part of his imagination, and Batman Hmann Zurr, a strangely clad Batman who is Batman’s “back-up” personality to be used when he loses his grip on reality. His mask is symbolic. The bottom half a man symbolizing the actions of a man, top half a hero symbolizing the mind of a hero. It allows for him to maintain some sort of hold onto both worlds, unlike Twoface whose face is divided into half the other way, his mind split between man and monster. Batman has a loose hold on reality and can only focus on crime. Anything else makes him sloppy, irregular, and at times, incoherent. His paranoia doesn’t help. The only person he trusts completely is his father-figure of a butler, Alfred. Batman has no loves in his life. He distrusts women. Whether this is because they always leave him because he cannot reveal his secret or because the women he meets most are villains.

Batman is egotistical and a jerk at the best times. He saves people all the while bemoaning their stupidity and lack of common sense that got them into that mess. He fights the villains to save them, trying to bring them back from the edge of sanity. Maybe he does this to show that he too can one day be saved, thus giving him hope. Or maybe he does it because he is violent and misplacing the anger at himself onto those that society (and his childhood hero) deems acceptable to attack, Batman has at many times admitted he enjoys the violent aspect of crime fighting. Through these fights and the single mindedness that Batman is famous for, he has created his own villains. The Joker was created by Batman himself as he accidentally knocked a mostly innocent man who got caught up in a mob plot into a vat of acid and chemicals. This created a scarred man who swore to destroy Batman any way possible, though he often attacks Batman’s fragile mind. The Riddler appeared when Batman boasted he could solve any crime, beat any riddle, Edward Nigma was already a small-time crook with an ego the size of Gotham, Batman gave him the perfect enemy. Twoface came about when Batman failed to protect his friend and ally Harvey Dent from a horrible accident. Poison Ivy was a woman disgusted at the pollution Wayne Enterprises puts out. So Batman actually created his own villains, which suits him as he apparently needs to fight.

In recent times, however, Batman has lost it completely. His whole life has been built on the fact that his parents were righteous and upstanding citizens and were murdered for no real reason other than monetary gain of a common crook. When a group called the Black Glove shows up and starts attacking Batman, he realizes the leader of the group looks a lot like his father. It turns out, that it is in fact Thomas Wayne. He hired the crook to kill his wife and child and a lookalike and escaped with billions of dollars. Why did he kill his wife? She had an affair with Alfred and fathered a son. Batman upon learning this completely broke down and reverted to his “back-up” personality for a while. When he began putting everything together and the Black Glove began attacking Batman’s allies, Batman finally crossed the line he swore he never would. He started killing. He killed several people before he confronted his father in a helicopter. He killed the pilot and crashed the helicopter straight into the ground, killing both himself and his father in one fell swoop. Batman is dead now and people are finally learning exactly how crazy Batman was. Both of the Robins commented they apparently never understood their mentor and how much he deserved to be in Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

There you have it. Childhood hero to millions, Batman, is crazy. He always was and just went a little further off the deep end at the end of his life. With paranoia, schizophrenia, and forced psychosis, not to mention many guilt and anger issues, he climbed to the top of the world, figuratively, and crashed most spectacularly, both figuratively and literally, into the ground, leaving us to pick up the pieces and feel pity for this man.