Bruce Wayne’s origin story is well-known: his parents were murdered before his very own eyes in his adolescence, leaving him with nothing but a butler for a surrogate father and a fortune most people can only dream of. Following his parents’ murder, Wayne’s primary mission in life was vengeance. In the process, he became a vigilante— a vigilante that despite having no superpowers, repeatedly risks himself against foes that do possess superpowers, and somehow survives these quests.
Wayne is a billionaire raised in a mansion that he’s never had to do a chore inside of. The majority of Gotham’s population is so poverty-ridden and poorly educated that a lot of people within the community have to commit crimes just to get by. The parallel? There is none. Bruce Wayne doesn’t really care about the citizens of Gotham. He’s not concerned with the faults of its education system as there’s only one private school in all of Gotham, or the poverty its people are subjected to. He’s only ever cared about justice for his parents, and when he got that, the moniker of Batman was nothing more than something to fill a void in Wayne’s life.
Considering Batman is worth $11.6 billion (a fictional net worth, granted), financially, Bruce Wayne is superior to that of Donald Trump. Meaning, he could make a LeBron James-esque
move and open up a school in his hometown of Gotham.
Witnessing the murder of your parents is possibly the most traumatic scenario a person could experience and is exactly what happened to Batman. A scenario like this can determine your life choices, your outlook on life and even your personality. But for Wayne, it catalyzed an obsession for revenge that he was determined to obtain even if it took him decades to do so. He didn’t become a vigilante to protect others— he used it as a medium for coping with the most traumatic event of his life. In the 1939 comic “Batman Wars against the Dirigible of Doom,” Wayne stated the following:
“I swear by the spirits of my parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals.”
This quote in no way suggests that Batman became a vigilante to protect others. But what it does prove is that Wayne picked up the mask and cape for personal reasons only, and one of those reasons was avenging his parents.
Batman is egocentric, which is evident in the way he leads his teams, and is why Gotham doesn’t have a true protector.
Obviously, if Batman really wanted to lift the city of Gotham onto its feet, it wouldn’t be the hardest task. Considering Batman is worth $11.6 billion (a fictional net worth, granted), financially, Bruce Wayne is superior to that of Donald Trump. Meaning, he could make a LeBron James-esque move and open up a school in his hometown of Gotham. Even better, he could fund prison education programs within the incarceration systems of Gotham and reduce the recidivism rate— something proven to work in real life. He’s rich enough to do it. But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t do it because he doesn’t care.
Bruce Wayne fights for himself and himself only. The state of the citizens of Gotham is of little concern to him as the cycle of poverty in Gotham will always exist. The no-kill policy he enforces on himself and the teams and sidekicks he leads is rooted in the death of his parents.
Three of his several Robin sidekicks— Dick Grayson, Jason Todd and Tim Drake— all either lost one parent or both or have a lack of parental supervision in their lives, meaning Batman sees a reflection of himself in them, which is why he chose them as sidekicks. Batman is egocentric, which is evident in the way he leads his teams, and is why Gotham doesn’t have a true protector.
Photo courtesy of Screen Rant
