Traumatic Personal Experiences In The Dark Knight

As demonstrated in Christopher Nolan’s film, The Dark Knight, traumatic personal experiences will alter an individual’s perspective on the duality of good and evil. Often when an individual has a negative experience in his or her life they find peace in evil actions, whereas a positive experience may have reverse effects and the individual will relate more closely with good. Ethics will be shifted and changed when there is a change of perspective within an individual. In the film, Harvey Dent’s unfortunate circumstances make him perceive evil as being justified. Harvey Dent is Gotham’s District Attorney and has managed to put every known money launderer behind bars. He has succeeded in cleaning up the streets of Gotham, creating a heroic

The Law is important when it comes to the ethics of Dent. He believes that an individual's actions should be impacted by rules and regulations. Harvey’s ethics are one way he has acquired the attention of his girlfriend, Rachel. Harvey and Rachel have a clear connection throughout the film, however Bruce Wayne has been in love with Rachel for a long time. This creates conflict between Harvey and Bruce in the sense that Bruce longs for Rachel to be his which restrains his happiness. However, Harvey doesn’t know about the two of them, leaving himself free to be happy with Rachel. Though there is conflict in Bruce Wayne’s eyes between himself and Harvey, he is looking up to Harvey hoping that he will be the savior of Gotham. Bruce Wayne decides that “Gotham needs a hero with a face” (TDK 48) and proceeds to throw a party for Dent in order to get his name out. With Harvey Dent being the big picture, Batman would no longer be needed, meaning that Bruce Wayne could go back to only having one identity. More often than not, Bruce struggles with paying an equal amount of attention to both Batman and Bruce Wayne. A year prior, Rachel Dawes had promised to wait until “the day Gotham no longer needs Batman” (TDK 48) to be with Bruce Wayne. This is yet another major drive for Bruce Wayne to put the full weight of heroism on somebody else's shoulders, with the hope that Rachel was true to her promise. Ultimately

Most recently the Joker has began to kill political and authoritative figures, and it is discovered after a few deaths that the Joker wants Batman to reveal his true identity. Not only does the Joker murder these innocent civilians but leaves hints as to who he is after next. He is a strong believer in chaos, and evil and values nothing but the two. The Joker displays virtue ethics believing that what he is doing is right, and that chaos is entertaining and good for the people of Gotham. The Joker finally captures the attention he wants when he shoots the mayor of Gotham in broad daylight while disguised as part of the Honor Guard during a ceremony on a street downtown. After the chaos of the shooting, it is made clear that the Joker will go after Rachel Dawes next. Harvey discovers this when one of the Joker's thugs has a name tag reading Rachel Dawes on his stolen uniform, another one of Joker's theatrical hints. After finding the thug with Rachel’s name tag on, Harvey begins to crack which proves how much Rachel means to him. He brings the thug into an abandoned street and begins to torment him in attempt to acquire details about the Joker, when the thugs proves to be of no help to Harvey he uncharacteristically pulls out a handgun. Harvey decides to leave the man's life up to chance by flipping his father's lucky coin while sticking a gun to the thugs head. At this point Batman stopped him since Batman’s