Captain America, Hero, or Criminal?

Once again, spoilers from the third captain america movie will be featured.  You have been warned.

Steve Rogers was born on July 4th, 1918.  Imagine that!  He was born on independence day.  This is ironic because the frail child that was born on that day would grow up to inspire thousands as the great Captain America.  "From small and simple things proceedeth that which is great."  The Lord chooses the weak things in the world to thrash the nations by the power of his Spirit.  The similarities are uncanny with Captain Rogers even though the writers likely never knew it.  

His parents died.  His father in the first world war, and his mother died of tuberculosis soon after.  Orphaned and alone, he felt weaker than ever before, but rather than breaking under the crushing weight of all that was crashing on top of him, he decided that he was strong enough to deal with anything that came his way.  He just willed himself to never give in to the darkness.  So he attempted to close himself off to the world, believing that he didn't need anyone's help.  Pride is one of his only undesirable qualities, though he is far from alone in that.  Some measure of it is embedded in every red blooded American.

Steve of course, wasn't alone.  Bucky Barnes was with him every step of the way.  He wouldn't let Steve do the lone gunslinger act.  He let him know that he didn't have to.  "I'm with you till the end of the line pal." he would say.

It was a friendship that would grow to define the both of them.  A brotherhood that would shake the very foundations of the world, through no intention of their own.  He found in Bucky someone he could count on.  

I say that Steve was a frail child not because of the condition that all infants find themselves in when they are born, but because he was a sickly child, and he never got better.  He was always frail, at least on the outside.  But his parents left behind an example and a legacy that Steve felt he had a duty to fulfill.  He felt he had a duty to his country.  He likely felt that his life wasn't worth much, but if he could just do this thing, saving his country, or more likely one of his fellow soldiers, that his life would be worth it.  

He was always reckless.  He would not stand for bullying, belittling or anything similar.  He would not run away.  It didn't matter to him how much he got beat up.  He would always get back up.  Is it any surprise that Bucky was so protective of him.  This guy would pick fights with people twice his size, fights he was doomed to lose.  In his first movie, Steve relates the many places he had been beaten up.  When asked about it he would say, "If you start running they will never let you stop."

He tried over and over to get into the army, but his country would not let him serve.  He even lied on his enlistment form over and over.  He isn't an idiot.  He knows that he is probably not coming back from such a fight.  But he wants it desperately.  Especially when his friend gets sent to the front lines.

A scientist saw goodness in the man and gave him the chance that he needed.  He became a super soldier, the first super hero.  Hearing his friend was in danger, he went alone behind enemy lines to rescue him and hundreds of prisoners of war.

After the loss of Bucky Barnes, and believing it was his fault, Steve led a reckless attack against the heart of the Nazi's science division, Hydra.  Fighting with their leader on a ship ready to destroy the eastern seaboard, Captain America destabilized the core of the ship, an ancient artifact of infinite energy, which killed the leader of Hydra in the process.  

Cap being defrosted after being found in the ice.

Steve Rogers was left with a choice.  There he was in mid flight in a death machine that could kill millions if it were allowed to reach it's destination.  He chose to die with the ship.  He pointed it towards the ground in the arctic.  He could have landed it safely.  There was time to avert such a disaster.  He decided his war was over, that he had defeated Hydra, that the only lose end he had was the woman he had left behind.  He was okay with ending it here.  He told himself he couldn't risk any kind of safe landing with this ship.  So he dived.  

The Captain was frozen in ice when he was found seventy years later.  He was not found in a sitting position.  He was found lying peacefully on his back.  One could infer that he was awake after the crash and just decided to lay down in this water.  He welcomed death.

What he didn't count on was opening his eyes and seeing the inside of a room in New York.  He knew everything was wrong so quickly because he chose to die.  He didn't intend to be found.  Yet here he was awake.  He charged out and found he was a man out of time.

He struggled to find something to live for.  This is a man who doesn't want to live, but will not take his life.  This leaves him as a man who can't live without a war.  He craves a heroic end.  He wakes up only to find that in every way, his sacrifice was in vain.  He had just neutralized the problem of the power source called the Tesseract, only to find that it is once again a problem and with his own country this time.  Is it any wonder that he comes across as a grumpy old man in the Avengers?

He watched as his own nation ordered a nuclear strike against New York City.  He discovered that the Nazi death cult lived on in a system he had been working for for a couple years.  He lost faith in people giving him orders.  He found that his enemies were in the very country that he wore the colors of on his chest.

However, he found a reason to live.  Bucky Barnes was alive.  Broken, yes, but alive.  He fought to destroy his enemies from the past, but his best friend, controlled, stood in his way.  Cap did what he had to to secure freedom for his country, but after that.  Captain Rogers did something he had never done before.  He refused to fight.  He dropped his shield into the Patomic.  He would not fight Bucky.  And this was enough to help his friend win the fight for his mind.

Once again Steve was willing to die, Bucky saved his life, dragging his lifeless body from the wreckage.

Now we come to Civil War.  We come to the reason why Captain America is still a hero after the events of that movie.  The world is fed up with these Avengers leaving wreckage in their wake after they save the world.  The UN wants to tell them what to do, where to go, and when.  Captain America has seen what becomes of trusting in his elected officials who are so mired in corruption that it isn't the America he grew up with.  And more veterans of that war would turn their back on what the country has become than you might realize.  But he doesn't.  He just decided that he will do what he knows is right.  No listening to the whims of politicians.  He had his share of being treated like a dancing monkey.  So he will not sign on.

Then the UN tries to make Bucky their scapegoat.  If they wanted Captain America to stand against them, that was the way to do it.  It was perhaps the most inflammatory act of his life to stand between the world and his friend.  But ask yourself, would he be a hero if he didn't? Would he be a hero if he took the easy path and let them kill his friend?  Is that the kind of justice that we stand for in America?  So he did what many saw as stupid and off the reservation.  But no matter who was giving the orders.  It was wrong.  So Steve, being every bit the legend he is made out to be will not move.  Not even if the order comes from his friends.

By the end, he even has the support of Iron Man who had been hunting him from the beginning of the accords.  

But Steve made a mistake.  He knew information that implicated his friend in the deaths of Tony Stark's parents.  He didn't share it.  It was really Hydra that did it, but Steve feared that it would send Tony on a war path if he told him, and he couldn't risk Bucky's safety, not now that he is the only thing left of his past, and a man who had given his life to save him.

This of course, did send Tony on a completely understandable warpath when he found out.  It fractured the Avengers, and two friends at the core.  After defending Bucky, and neutralizing the great Iron Man, Tony began saying that Steve was not worthy to be Captain America, that the shield didn't belong to him.  And Steve had the strength of character, not only to give up the heroic mantel for Tony, but also was big enough to apologize over a letter for hurting him.

Is there any selfishness there?  He gives everything he has. Can anything more be asked of anyone?

So I leave you to decide.  A man who values his life as nothing and always thinks of others, never asking to be thanked, and always choosing what he believes to be right, no matter who is ordering against him.  A man who admits when he is wrong.  

Steven Rogers, hero, or villain?

Redeeming Seargent Barnes

Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War will be in this character study.  You have been warned.

The Winter Soldier, alias James Buchanan Barnes.

The Winter Soldier in this story was responsible for the deaths of hundreds in the seventy years between his death and the return of Captain America.  Most of them were good people.  He served as the murderous arm of a Nazi death cult called Hydra.  He followed their orders without question, without mercy, and without remorse for decades.  It is easy to see why governments all over would want him to suffer.

What they fail to realize is that he has, and continues to suffer more than they could ever imagine.

Let's turn the clocks back to the early forties.  Bucky Barnes was a capable young men who defended those that couldn't defend themselves, particularly his best friend Steve Rogers.  He was content to go on dates and visit science fairs at home.  But his country was at war, and the only thing that his best friend wanted was to be a part of defending the country.  Perhaps he wanted to stay because he wanted to make sure Steve was defended.  Perhaps he was afraid of going off to die in a country he didn't know, and who could blame him.  Whatever his reasons, he waited until he was drafted and dragged into the fighting to make his heroic entrance.  Of course he told Steve that he enlisted.  How could you say anything else to someone who would give anything to go?

While fighting on the front lines his entire regiment was captured as prisoners of war.  Assigned to hard labor to build hydra's super weapon, Bucky was hand picked to be experimented on by the red skull's second in command, Dr. Zola.  Trying to replicate the formula that created the hero known as Captain America, Sargent Barnes endured torturous procedures.  How he was hand picked is left a mystery.  It could be that he was being made an example of for the other prisoners.  Perhaps he was again defending the weak, and was now paying the price.  Whatever the reasons for being singled out, the experiments performed on him allowed him to survive certain death.

Rescued by Steve Rogers, Bucky must have thought he was dead for a moment.  The shock and happiness he must have felt seeing his best friend as strong and whole must have felt like heaven for a moment.  Then he realizes that he is indeed alive, and he finds himself in a role he is not comfortable with.  He is the little guy, and Steve has to save him from trouble.

He remained Steve's strongest supporter, even getting in over his head trying to protect him.  It was such an urge to defend his friend which landed him on the side of a train about to fall to his "death."

And so, Bucky Barnes died a hero.  The loss broke Captain Rogers.  But he survived the fall.  He was taken in secret and through torture and psychological deconstruction.  He was unmade.  His thoughts were clawed out, and he was reduced to a mindless drone of destruction.  He was brainwashed.  But he was awake.  They froze him between missions to make sure Bucky Barnes didn't return.

It has been said that the worst thing that could ever happen to a good man is to force him to hurt the ones he cares about.  To see through their eyes that they were the source of destruction and pain.

Bucky Barnes woke up during the fall of Hydra.  He wouldn't kill Steve Rogers.  That is what finally short circuited his programming.  Horrified at what he had become, Bucky ran.  The boy who didn't want to go to war returned.  He remembered.

Now we come to the events in Civil War.  After one too many incidents, the governments of the world are out for the blood of the Winter Soldier.  Captain America isn't about to abandon his friend now, no matter who is against him.  When he finds him, it is hardly the reunion that Steve hoped.  Bucky tries to pretend that he doesn't remember Steve.  But of course, Steve knows when his friend is lying.  Why he lied is anyone's guess, but I believe that the most likely reason is that he feels like he doesn't deserve Steve's friendship.  After all of the things that he has done, he doesn't feel like he is worth saving.  But Steve still sees his worth.

Sacrificing everything, Steve saves his friend once again.  In the final scenes of the movie, it is revealed that two of the many people murdered by the Winter Soldier are Tony Stark's parents.  Tony is understandably furious and is ready to kill this man.  What shows Bucky's character is that he is almost reluctant to flee.  Perhaps he doesn't want to leave his friend with an murderous Iron Man, or perhaps a part of him wants Tony to succeed.  He feels that he deserves it.  There is so much anger in Tony's voice when he demands of Bucky, "Do you even remember them?!?"  And there is so much pain behind his reply of, "I remember all of them!"

This is a tortured man.  This is a good man who has to live with the fact that his hands choked out a boy's mother.  His fist beat a boy's father to death, and he felt every stroke, powerless to stop it.  And hundreds more.  It's no wonder he doesn't think he is worth the friendship that Cap so freely gives.  But that alone gives him hope.  His friend is so stubborn, so unyielding in his belief that Bucky can be saved.  It gives Bucky something to live for.  It gives him the strength to hold on for a cure.

One day when Steve Rogers can no longer hold the shield it may be this broken individual who will wield it.  So, one could ask, "was it all worth it?"  I believe I know what Cap's answer would be.  And one day Bucky will get the chance to show the world what he is made of.  I look forward to that day.

If He Be Worthy...

The sword in the stone.

It is the ultimate test, and it is one of the soul.  Who would be willing to try to wield a weapon that can come down in judgement upon you?  It is a weapon that can only be used by those who are pure in heart, by those who have more than self assured authority, in short, by those who are worthy.  Such is the case with that of a certain hammer in the movie, "Thor."

This is a lesson of a space prince, desperate to prove himself in all of the wrong places for a father's love.  Blinded by his hubris and his strength, he loses respect for the power that he holds and acts out in violence, not for honor, or self defense, but for the adrenaline rush of bludgeoning the very souls, if his racism would see passed their blue skin, that he had just sworn to protect.  Described by his father as a "vain, greedy, cruel, boy," he is cast out of his presence to live as a mortal man.  Stripped of his grand halls, of his friends, and of his power, he is left as a broken shell of a god, and barely a man.

His father, wise in judgement, trusted in mercy for his son by sending the only means of help that would change his wayward heir, a chance to earn all of it back.  He does so by sending Mjolnir, the mystical hammer to Midgard, or Earth, saying the words, "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."

Believing his stay on the mortal world to be nothing more than a child at time out, when Thor hears of the hammer smashing down in the desert, he assumes that he is on his way home.  After shaming the government officials surrounding the place, he looks upon his weapon with an award winning smile.  In triumph, he reaches for the handle, and pulls.

But to his shock and dismay, it will not budge.  The rain cascaded down like tears as he agonizes over it.  Pulling with his might, he is left weak and broken.  Falling to his knees and screaming at the sky for anyone to hear the injustice, Thor wonders if it is some sort of cruel prank, or if this is his real punishment, to have his way home, but to never be able to use it.

Losing the will to fight, he finally begins.  Finally blinded, he saw.  Utterly broken, he began to be fixed.  It is where he was at his lowest, where he felt he could fall no farther, when all traces of hope was taken away, and there was no way out for him that he was finally in a place desperate enough to be taught.

Is this not a familiar story?  Is it not everyone's story at least at some point in our lives?  Are we not all sent here with by a Father with a way back home where a throne awaits?  Are we not all pouty children crying over our toy, yet destined to be kings and queens on high?  And is there not a power on this Earth that can only be wielded by those found worthy?

This is the human condition, and it is the moment that Thor discovers what it truly means to be a man.  Losing his power makes him a better man than he ever was as a god.  Not even knowing what it means to be worthy, he begins to become such.

What does it take to be worthy?  Thor's lesson for all is that such power can only be used to help other people.  It is not for personal gain.  If this were a scripture story, you would call that Priesthood Power, and you would call what Thor experienced a, "Mighty change of heart."  And what a description for the god whose name is synonymous with the word, "mighty."

So, lift the hammer with your might.  cry to the sky for answers to the seemingly unjust questions of the heart.  Then look inwards to see why those doors are not yet opened to you.  Like Thor, you may just find that a true hero is not measure by the size of his strength, or by the titles you have, but by the strength of ones heart.  Serve others, and you will find inside the hero who was broken and torn by pride.  Such a thing will take sacrifice, and it may not have a hero's welcome at the end.  But living like that is worth every effort.  Ye are gods.  Act as you are one, and not as a child pouting over a toy.

Lift, and be found worthy to stand.