The Dark Knight Trilogy as a Parable of Not Giving in to Fear
Christopher Nolan’s Saga Shows that Heroism Means Rejecting Fear and Accepting Truth
“All creatures feel fear — especially the scary ones.” This is what Thomas Wayne tells his young son Bruce after his terrifying ordeal falling into a derelict well swarming with bats early in Batman Begins (2005). Fear is one of the primary themes in Christopher Nolan’s seminal Dark Knight Trilogy. Begins is generally considered the installment most associated with the theme, featuring the fear-inducing Scarecrow, Thomas Wayne’s dying wish that his son not be afraid, and Bruce Wayne’s journey to master his fear the crux of his training under Ra’s al Ghul. While The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) do not delve as deeply into philosophical analysis of fear as their predecessor, they in some ways better illustrate its destructive power with a series of fateful fear-based decisions made by the protagonists in the final minutes of the second film, and the lingering consequences of those decisions and what it takes to remedy them in the third.
At the end of The Dark Knight, the protagonists are in an unwinnable situation. The Joker has succeeded in terrorizing Gotham and corrupting the incorruptible District Attorney Harvey Dent, disfiguring him, destroying his faith in justice, and setting him loose on a vengeful killing spree. Rachel Dawes, the woman both Harvey and Bruce loved, is annihilated in one of the Joker’s bombings. Jim Gordon is the new Police Commissioner, despite the facts that he never desired the job and was unable to prevent the Joker’s anarchic terrorism or Harvey Dent’s corruption and death; his marriage and home life are also irreparably destroyed. The characters have all forsaken their values in some way, and at the end of the film, Batman and Gordon face the problem of preserving Harvey Dent’s inspirational image in light of what has happened. So much has gone so wrong that they do not know what they should or can do. Convinced that there is nothing left for himself to lose, Batman volunteers to take the blame for Dent’s crimes in order to preserve the name of Gotham’s White Knight.
Bruce thinks he is being selfless when he vows to take on the burden of Harvey Dent’s crimes as Two-Face. In truth, Batman utterly gives in to his fear in making this decision — Bruce has just endured his first indisputable failure as Gotham’s avowed protector and is barely hanging on mentally following Rachel’s death, and we can read the subtext that his selfless act is really one that will allow him to withdraw and stew in his pain. As ever, Alfred is the voice of wisdom when he explains to Bruce after Rachel’s death that he could never have expected repercussions not to follow his work as Batman, regardless of how much good he also inspired. It is an agonizing lesson that Bruce must learn, and in the end, he is simply too afraid of what horror his crusade will lead to next to keep going. Regardless of how he tries to justify the choice to shoulder Dent’s blame, there is nothing noble in it — Batman chickens out.
So does the Commissioner. By the end of the film, Gordon is exhausted and played out. Like Bruce, Gordon does not feel strong enough to carry on in light of all that has happened, and is quickly persuaded to go along with Batman’s plan to assume Dent’s blame. Gordon knows this is wrong — he knows Batman does not deserve it, and looks hesitant and guilty when he takes a fire-axe to the Bat-Signal in the film’s closing moments. Throughout the trilogy, we see time and again that Gordon is a rare honest cop, one who will not “take a taste” of protection money or tolerate corruption in his department. At the end of The Dark Knight, however, he suddenly finds himself complicit in a lie that will shape the rest of his career, as well as the future of Gotham. Like Batman, Gordon is afraid of what else will go wrong if the truth outs. When he describes Batman as “not a hero” in his closing monologue, we know that he thinks the same of himself.
The Dark Knight’s final fateful lie is perhaps the most painful to watch, as it comes from the character who has so far been the eternal voice of truth and the wisdom of years: Bruce’s lifelong mentor and confidant, Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred has never lied to Bruce, has been the person he could count on to never do so, no matter how painful the truth may be. But when Alfred finds himself in possession of a letter written by the late Rachel and intended for Bruce, in which she tells him in no uncertain terms that she will not be with him, Alfred commits his own fatal lie. Had she lived, Bruce is adamant that Rachel would have left Harvey and been with him — this belief seems to be one of the only things Bruce has to cling to by the end of the film, and Rachel’s letter disproves it. The last we see of Alfred is him setting fire to the letter — we understand his reason for doing so, but also know that, once again, little good is likely to come from a deception.
Indeed, in The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce and Alfred have an inevitable falling-out when Alfred is finally forced to confront Bruce and tell him about Rachel’s letter, how he burned it to spare him pain, but cannot lie to him any longer. Although Alfred acted with good intentions, concealing the truth about Rachel from Bruce allowed him to stagnate and continue pining for her memory in solitude for eight years that he could have spent healing and progressing. He lives a lie, both with regard to Rachel and his choice to take Harvey’s blame. As Alfred says, it is time for the truth to have its day — probably long past time.
At the beginning of Rises, it is clear that neither lie has done anything good for Bruce. He has not operated as Batman since the night of Dent’s death, but rather lived in self-imposed exile in a wing of his manor. He is a recluse, his body frail, his leg never properly healed from his fall at the end of the last film. He is reduced to walking with a cane, has unkempt hair and beard, and evidently only wears his robe. Gotham knows the narrative of how Batman killed Harvey’s victims, as well as Harvey himself — in the public eye, Harvey Dent’s good name remains intact in death, although he does not deserve it. Though Bruce Wayne lives and deserves gratitude from the city he devoted his life to protecting, the public hates Batman as a murderous thug. All the while, Bruce sits in his drawing room, meditating on the photo of a dead woman who did not want to be with him. He is a shell of a man, all because of the various lies he refuses to free himself from. Alfred knows this, which is why he ultimately cannot go on lying to Bruce.
Alfred is right. What would have been so wrong with the people of Gotham knowing the truth of what happened to Harvey Dent? He became a murderer, yes, but as Dent himself says at the end of The Dark Knight, he and his allies were decent men living in an indecent time. Harvey was not an evil man, but rather the victim of one — the same vile psychopath who held Gotham hostage with terror and chaos. Harvey Dent lived long enough to see himself become a villain, but the truth is that it was something done to him, not something that he truly was. Would this information really have been too much for the world to handle or understand? Could Gotham not have comprehended how Harvey Dent was as much a victim of the Joker’s evil as the rest of the city was?
For that matter, did Batman in any way deserve the self-imposed punishment of the lie he and Gordon conspired to tell? At the end of Rachel’s letter, she implores Bruce to not lose his faith in people, regardless of whatever else happens. It is unfortunate that Bruce is not able to read and heed her message, because by lying to the world — by not allowing Gotham a chance to know the truth — he is not placing any faith in people, but is instead living in fear. This is not the action of the hero Gotham needs, nor the one it deserves.
If Batman Begins is the story of a young man’s lesson that fear is an enemy to be overcome, The Dark Knight shows what happens when he forgets that lesson, and The Dark Knight Rises how he must relearn it as an older man in order to do what must be done. In The Dark Knight, the protagonists harm themselves by lying out of fear — things are better by the end of Rises, but only after the cast faces fear to live in the light of truth. Alfred tells Bruce the truth about Rachel; Gordon’s truth about Dent finally outs, albeit by Bane and not Gordon himself. In both cases, telling the truth is a frightening proposition — damning fear and accepting the truth often is, but it is also usually the best thing we can do. Bruce must accept the truths he fears before he can return to defend his city in its hour of need — if he did not liberate himself from his denial of years, it seems unlikely that he would have been able to climb from Bane’s Pit and liberate Gotham. But by facing his fears instead of trying to bury them, Batman is finally able to rise and do what Ra’s al Ghul told him was possible: cease being merely a man and become a legend. By damning fear, Bruce Wayne does right by his father’s dying wish for him, by Ra’s’ belief in his potential, and, most importantly, by his own heart and conscience.
