Do you sympathize with The Joker?

I sympathize with The Joker to a great extent for he had a difficult past.

My first reason for sympathizing with The Joker is that he had a difficult past. The Joker was actually an unnamed laboratory assistant who quit his job at a chemical company to become a stand-up comedian, but was unsuccessful. “Desperate to support his pregnant wife” shows that he would do anything to get money to support his wife. He was so desperate that he even agreed to guide two criminals through the plant to rob the card company next door. During the planning, he was informed that his wife had unfortunately passed away. “Grief-stricken, the engineer tries to withdraw from the plan, but the criminals strong-arm him into keeping his commitment to them” shows that The Joker was not as cold-hearted as most people think he is for he was forced to continue to assist the criminals even after he wanted to back out.

My second reason for sympathizing with The Joker is that he has a disfigured face. In the attempt to guide two criminals through the plant to rob the card company next door, The Joker was confronted by Batman. The Joker panicked and jumped into the chemical plant's toxic waste catch-basin vat to escape Batman and is swept through a pipe leading to the outside. Once he was outside, he discovered that the chemicals have permanently bleached his skin chalk white, stained his lips ruby red and dyed his hair bright green. This unfortunate mishap “drives him completely insane and results in the birth of the Joker”. This shows that The Joker’s disfigured face has caused him to be greatly traumatized and has caused him to be mentally unstable.

I think that The Joker deserves my sympathy because he did not choose to be what he is now. He had a difficult past and back then, his intention was to just escape from Batman. Little did he know that his face would be disfigured and in turn caused him to be greatly traumatized and suffer from mental disorder. In conclusion, I feel that The Joker deserves my sympathy.

What have you learnt from this lesson?

I have learnt to look at people from different viewpoints and how impressions are formed through appearance, actions, speech, relationship with others and background. “Heroes may not be perfect; villains may have valuable traits.” Thus, we should not judge a book by its cover. We also should not judge a character by our first impression as characters often have more than one side to them. For example, Batman may be a hero, but he used evil and illegal ways to save the city. I have also learnt that even if we are smart, rich and have many positive traits, but we can do things to hurt others, that would not make us any better than a villain. Hence, we should always be conscious of our actions and very careful of what we say to our friends, as sometimes, simple actions and words can hurt others. We should be “an everyday hero”. (:

credits:
Miss Li and her powerpoint slides
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_The_Killing_Joke