The Cave in “Iron Man”

Myth, symbolism, and psychology in Tony Stark’s cave

Tony pulls open a missile-housing and removes a glass ring from the inner workings of its guts.

We’ve met Tony Stark the man, the son, the billionaire, the playboy, and the weapons merchant.

His persona wraps even more ideas, including war and militarism, vain supremacy of intellect, materialism, and spiritual ignorance or nihilism.

He was handed a prize — his father’s weapons manufacturing conglomerate, along with a world in the grip of its talons. This prize is of little concern to him, however.

His father helped shape the previous world by building the ultimate symbol of destruction, the atom bomb, which would end the bloodshed of yet another world ruined by war. Alongside the bomb, Howard built Steve Roger’s shield. Now his sun has set, and Obadiah Stane has taken over.

The same devices that ended yesterday’s apocalypse contribute to today’s return to night.

A celestial turn, out of sync with Tony’s misguided self — one unwilling to recognize the nature of the circle’s shape and movement. Ignorance’s friction slows the turn but never stops it. When it moves again, it snaps, generating a spark that shatters the frozen temple.

He is haunted by this fate — a future he can’t control — so he shapes the world to ease his anxiety.

Behind his persona churns dark matter needing to be worked on with light.

Back to the Womb of Creation

Tony’s cave is Plato’s inverted. He’s been cast out of the day’s glamorous illusion and left in brooding darkness where he gathers and inspects the pieces of his former self.

His head is forced underwater by his captors, whose leader is named ‘Abu’ — meaning ‘father’. A new and crude center is embedded in his chest. It is connected to a car battery — a heavy, toxic stone he now carries to feed the beat of his new heart.

The number one is marked in blood on his right cheek when his face is unveiled under blinding light.

CAVE

Caverns symbolize the locale of identity formation, that is to say the process of psychological internalization through which the individual reaches maturity and achieves a fixed identity.

To do this, that person must absorb the collective world implanted in the self, at the risk of unbalancing it, and integrate those acquisitions with his or her own powers in such a way as to create a new personality adapted to the constantly changing world.¹

He is transitioning from maker of the weapons of the world into the maker of his new self. This self is not the complete “Self”, though; it is not the goal (of which he knows little about). The new identity forming is an upgraded version of his previous, now shattered self.

Joining him in the cave is a friendly gentleman named Yinsen, who guides Tony in reassembling himself.

The cave setting is charged with symbolism. References to circles, wheels, fire, and more, are scattered here and there.

After Tony is tasked with building a Jericho missile for Abu, he returns to the cave and “slumps into a wheelbarrow” (not depicted in the film).

The wheelbarrow holds meaning, as its single wheel permits freedom of movement, but requires the handler to be able to keep the barrow balanced enough to move forward.

As he begins work, he requests his workspace be “free of clutter, with good light… at 12 o’clock to the door.”

Remaking Himself and the World

Tony fashions his new self out of metal. He works on himself, and on the “spirit” buried in the Earth as a student of some mystic art.

In certain branches of alchemy, metals correspond to different planets:

• Gold ↔ Sun
• Silver ↔ Moon
• Mercury ↔ Mercury
• Iron ↔ Mars ( the Roman god of war )

A god of war is a dealer of death, whose good qualities can come only from discipline, art, and self-sacrifice — when the warlike quality is dominated by a defensive attribute.

Iron Man is fundamentally a villain, as are the rest of the Avengers, more or less (and least of all Steve, who carries the shield), only achieving their goodness in the unity of cooperation. Spider-Man is kept at a distance from the group of six because he is whole in himself and fundamentally good.

The metal worker is the mythical Blacksmith. He is Vulcan, Hephaestus, and Eitri the dwarf, who molded the hammer that channels Thor’s lightning. (Eitri presents an interesting image of the Demiurge as a deity, whose hands are “taken” from him by Thanos.)

BLACKSMITH

Because the smith is endowed with a semi-religious character, he arouses in others a degree of uncertainty and ambivalence towards him. He is at one and the same time despised and feared and reverenced, holding very different positions within the tribal hierarchy. He lives either at a distance from the village or in a specially reserved quarter, together with his wife, a potter, who makes the pipes for the bellows of his forge.¹

The love story in “Iron Man” seems secondary to the main plot of the film, but it is the heart of the symbolic interpretation of the franchise. Several scenes later in the film involve Tony “breaking the ice” with Pepper Pots, including a dance. He invites her into his ‘lair’, where he develops his world-saving and world-ending machines, and asks her to reach into his chest to correct a problem.

In order to dance with her and create life, he must first reconstitute himself. However, the final “fixed identity” he is seeking is not only within his reconstructed persona, but also exists outside of him as his future family. This is the paradox he is anxiously unfolding within his spiritual darkness. He begins to discover his Self by first rebuilding himself, but the Self he is looking for requires further self-sacrifice.

“Iron Man” as a Symbol

Many people can look at the same character and see different ideas attached to them.

These ideas are seldom wrong, but reflect something inside of the viewer’s own conscious stratum.

When they are “wrong”, it’s often easy to detect the discrepancy.

If I say Todo from “The Wizard of Oz” represents Europe's decline into fascism in the 1930s, the statement warrants a hefty explanation or should be discarded. If the ideas are, however, successfully tied together, the result cannot be called ‘true’. Rather, a new symbol has been formed. All of the necessary connections can be made by the observer alone, and none by the actual creators of the story — yet Todo’s new role as the living, breathing mustache of Adolf Hitler becomes a word recognized by whoever accepts the suggestion; by those who can relate to the pattern identified by the viewer. This gives the interpretation of symbols its dubious character. Meaning is easily (if not always) bent and manipulated by the viewer as he or she tries consciously to discover and relay it.

I hold the view that viewers shouldn’t look too long, and yet shouldn’t forever look away from the irrational aspects of fantasies and dreams. The most impactful “messages” seem to emerge from a pool of suggestions. In this somewhat nonsensical activity, the only certainty can come from the literal story. Philosophy, psychology, historic reference, and symbolic metaphor all linger outside of the literal drama between the characters and their stories in a kind of haze, which reaches from obviously true to the mere tickling of coincidence.

So, in observing, the haze must remain a haze, but kept close by as potential. Time will reveal whether the references and/or literal story return to the subtler suggestions.

Some may see Iron Man as a signifying a childish reliance on superhero fantasies and an escape from reality. This is not wrong.

Others might see him as a charismatic savior figure and welcome him as a component of his or her imagination — also not wrong (but perhaps dangerous, especially if it’s only Iron Man).

Another viewer recognizes these archetypes, but gives more weight to Tony’s futurist, utopian qualities, which are reinforced by his conflict with the simple, old-fashion nature of Steve Rogers. Again, not wrong at all. These characters are designed to easily accept many complex ideas simultaneously, and still leave room for much more.

Tony accepts the blacksmith archetype with ease. Now, we can expand on the qualities of the smith and see just how much more meaning the metal-man is capable of holding.

I’ll briefly point out a few symbols and archetypes that bind to the character quite well.

The Smithy’s Word

[The] symbolism of the smithy is often linked with words or songs which introduce us not only to the part which the craft plays in rites of initiation, but also to the creative action of the Word.¹

Language is repeatedly emphasized at various points in the MCU. The power behind the written and spoken word is the coercive power behind the casting of a spell. It relates to the human ‘demiurgic’ impulse (discussed in this Spider-Man post) to shape our social and political environment.

This is where I’d briefly like to make the connection between Tony Stark and Dr. Strange, who can be seen as essentially the same person. Stark’s craft is the work of a “wizard”. He is a witty and clever speaker, but the true power of his word emanates from his hands.

Strange’s hands were crippled, so he turned his fire into the creation of “spells”.

‘Words’ Made of Fire

Cosmogenic & creative; diabolical and destructive.

The blacksmith’s share in the work of creation carries with it the serious danger of negation… Furthermore, since metal is drawn from the bowels of the earth, the smithy relates to subterranean fire and smiths are sometimes monsters or identified with the guardians of buried treasure.¹

Tony is not the dragon. The fire-breathing beast lives within him. It must be confronted and trained before it releases its treasure.

Untrained, it wreaks havoc on the world with its fiery breath.

The dragon connection is solidified in “Iron Man 3”.

Returning to the Demiurge

[The] smith is regarded as the symbol of the Demiurge. However, while he may be able to forge the cosmos, he is not God. Endowed with superhuman power, he can use it against both gods and men and for this reason he inspires the same dread as a magus of the black arts.¹

The hero is becoming aware of the consequences of his impulses, and how they echo out into the world and return back to him by the hands of those he has impacted the most. The circular effect ripples through the world, affecting us in one way or another.

Tony’s “urge” to shape matter and mind later re-emerges on Earth as an army of A.I. robots, and again as the three Helicarriers in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’. These monsters are outward extensions of his anxious and still submerged spiritual being.

He must work on himself, developing his demiurge so as to confront its negative aspects.

He takes pieces of his missiles and hammers them out into a suit of armor — shifting from offensive to defensive;

From a wild, violent, untamed extroversion paired with a cold, sleeping introversion,

to a warmer, illuminated introversion paired with focused, laser-like extroversion. His creative power is moving away from death and towards the creation of new life.

Yinsen

YINSEN: When I get out of here, I am going to see [my family] again. Do you have family, Stark?

TONY: …no.

YINSEN: You’re a man who has everything and nothing.

Yinsen highlights the central driving force of the ten-year story arc, the largest circle Tony has to complete before arriving at his destination.

This is frozen water, or trapped potential of his life — marriage and a child.

Tony has reformed a missile into a suit and a rudimentary heart with the help of Yinsen.

In the screenplay, Yinsen concentrates on “building a backgammon board”. In the film, he’s not seen building it, but he and Tony do play together, much in the same way Tony plays with Nebula at the beginning of “Avengers: Endgame”. Yinsen is preoccupied with the game — the peaceful resolution of conflict.

They are both working on the same thing because they are both a part of Tony’s complete psyche. Yinsen is a visitor, friend, and also a “higher form” of Tony’s Self.

He is Tony’s savior, and dies in the cave while covered in rice. In the non-literal narrative, Yinsen was never really alive during his time with the hero. He served, rather, as a guiding spirit — a subtle conscience helping the hero reassemble himself in the dark.

He sacrifices himself so Tony will have a second chance at becoming life-affirming rather than death-dealing.

Sources:

1. The Dictionary of Symbols

*Uncited quotes are pulled from the screenplay.

Images:

• All images are from movie-screencaps.com and belong to Marvel Studios