Mind Candy. Lawrence Watt-Evans

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ openly meant to make up for his failure to save his uncle, one step toward making amends, and that’s being Spider-Man. Tracking down criminals, defending the weak and helpless, making the streets of New York a little safer—that’s what he knows he should be doing, so that no other Uncle Bens will die through his failure to act.

      And that means that when he’s Spider-Man, the guilt goes away! Because he’s out there doing what he should have done all along. When he’s swinging on a webline, that huge burden is lifted from his shoulders. When he punches a mugger it’s a relief—it’s one more bad guy who won’t kill anyone’s uncle, who won’t threaten Aunt May or Mary Jane. He’s making it right with Uncle Ben.

      Of course he feels good when he’s Spider-Man! It’s the only time he’s out from under that crushing weight of guilt. He makes jokes as he fights villains not to disconcert them, but because he is feeling no pain. He feels good. How can he be grim when he knows he’s doing the right thing?

      When he’s Spider-Man he’s the fun-loving, happy-go-lucky guy that Uncle Ben wanted him to be.

      When he’s Peter Parker he’s the loser who let Uncle Ben die, and who has been suffering for it ever since.

      It’s the guilt that makes the difference. Bruce Wayne knows it wasn’t his fault that Thomas and Martha Wayne were murdered; he’s fighting crime not out of guilt, but out of a determination not to see other innocents suffer as he did. It’s obsessive altruism. He’s turned his whole life into a battle against the external evil that destroyed his happy life.

      For Peter Parker, though, it is guilt. He let Uncle Ben die, and he’s turned his whole life into penance for that personal failure that destroyed his happy life—and he’s making absolutely sure that he never gets that happy life back. It’s all neurotic compensation for that one careless moment when he let a criminal go free.

      Oh, there are times he slips up and enjoys life even when he’s not swinging around New York in his tights. Aunt May and Mary Jane have worked hard to cheer him up, and sometimes it even works for awhile—or at least, he pretends it does, so as not to upset them. But he hasn’t continued his education. He hasn’t looked for work in the sciences. He hasn’t told J. Jonah Jameson to get stuffed, even though he knows perfectly well that Jameson is guilty of attempted murder and other crimes.

      (Yes, Jameson has tried to kill Spider-Man, and that’s attempted murder. He’s let his newspaper be used in various possibly-criminal conspiracies. Mr. Jameson, however well-intentioned he may think himself, is not a nice man—and Peter knows it, but continues to work for him.)

      Ordinarily, someone as guilt-ridden and self-destructive as Peter might well have wound up dead, in prison, or in therapy by now, or might have simply gotten over it. Mourning is all very well, survivor guilt is a powerful thing, but there comes a time when one should move on, if at all possible.

      Peter Parker hasn’t let himself move on. He hasn’t dared serious therapy for fear of revealing his secret identity and endangering those he loves.

      Instead, he goes out to play in his tights.

      Being Spider-Man has become his escape from guilt, but it’s also how he can keep feeling guilty, and not move on. It gives him a way out when his life becomes unbearable, a way to avoid breaking under the strain. It gives him something other than himself that he can blame for his failures—it’s all because he has to be Spider-Man, so he doesn’t have time to improve his life. The world needs Spider-Man. He can’t attend night school or get an online degree because he has to go fight Doctor Octopus or the Kingpin, and there just isn’t time to do both.

      So he tells himself.

      But what it really is, is that he can’t let go. Spider-Man is, in a very real sense, all he has left of Uncle Ben. Aunt May has moved on, and Peter could—but deep down, he doesn’t want to.

      Because being Spider-Man is fun.

      And if he lets go of the guilt, if he admits to himself that his life is a mess and maybe Spider-Man should have a slightly lower priority, if he acknowledges that he’s done what he could to make up for letting Uncle Ben die—in short, if he grows up—then he’ll be letting Uncle Ben go, and he’ll be losing his excuse for spending so much of his time out there reveling in the sheer physical delight of swinging on his web, dodging danger, and punching out thugs.

      If he admits that he’s being Spider-Man for fun, rather than out of duty, then he can’t justify letting it ruin his life. The whole emotional structure he’s built up for so long will collapse.

      He’s not ready to face that. And with the system so wonderfully balanced, so perfectly self-sustaining, he probably never will be.

      For which all those New Yorkers whose purses might be snatched, who might be accosted in dark alleys, who might be injured or killed in the collateral damage of some super-villain’s attacks, can be very, very grateful.

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