Daredevil: The Complex Spectrum of Heroism

Daredevil, The Dark Hero

Daredevil is not the typical hero. He is dark, realistic, and in agony. He is not the average “good guy” hero that is normally portrayed. Daredevil, aka, Matt Murdock, is much more complex and the TV show and graphic novels about him express how he balances between the gray area of good and evil. He shows how human behavior is not simple and has many conflicts. Daredevil himself is conflicted by wanting to uphold the law as a lawyer. However, at night as a vigilante, he beats up the people who he feels have escaped the law. This is a constant struggle he has and these are some of the main reasons I respect this character. Daredevil feels real, endures a great deal of pain, and-unlike most comic book characters-overcomes

To most this would be torturous and it is one of the causes of his sadness. Daredevil’s story is gritty; Campbell supports this when saying that a perfect happy ending should not always be expected and it definitely is not with Daredevil. There is an abundance of suffering within Daredevil from the conflicts he faces that makes him a truly tragic hero.

Joseph Campbell has created many interpretations and definitions of a hero. In The Hero of A Thousand Faces, he explains, realistically, that in a hero’s life, “The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world” he instead suggests that there is “one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the

He sees people who murder or cause disorder in the neighborhoods of Hell’s Kitchen, beats them, then turns them into the police. He uses a Utilitarian approach to justify him going outside of law since he wants to do what is best for the community with his struggle with his “Inner devil” and “his desire to bring justice to his city by any means necessary except killing”(Reichle, 7:43). Matt seems to make his choices based on what he feels he should do. He was raised in a Catholic orphanage and was raised on knowing killing is wrong, but on his own he has thought about and attempted to kill the antagonist, Wilson Fisk. Joseph Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand Faces, a goes to describe a tragic hero with a bit of an uplift by saying,“Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination”(Campbell). Matt has yet to actually find his permanent ‘soul’s destination’, but as he takes down criminal organizations and killers, he is giving others their peace and doing this does help him sleep better at night. On the website, IMDb, the encyclopedia of movies and television, Daredevil is summed up as a Vigilante who lost his eyesight as a child and fights to bring justice to the citizens of Hell’s Kitchen(IMDb). Matt’s story does have more depth to it since it provokes the question of whether or not