portraitoftheoddity:

One of the things I love about Steve Rogers is that he goes against the archetype of good/optimistic characters only being – and deriving their goodness/optimism from being – innocent and naïve.

Steve isn’t naïve. Steve grew up in hardship. In the comics, he was abused and watched his mother be beaten by his father. In the movies, he had no father, but was violently bullied and dirt poor. Steve grew up in the school of hard knocks, in the middle of the Depression; any naïveté about how cruel the world could be got beaten out of him as a child.

And then, Steve signed up to go to war. He fought on the front lines of WWII, and witnessed untold violence. Some comics and cartoons show him helping to free concentration camps. And he fought – Steve never had the luxury, as Cap, of having a “no killing” rule like Superman. He’s never relished taking lives, but he’s done it when necessary. Steve is no unsullied innocent.

From all this hardship, all this violence, Steve could easily be a character who has a grim, cynical outlook on the world. He’s seen and experienced the absolute worst of humanity; he’s borne witness to genocide, after all, and horrors of war. And usually, the characters who have endured brutality are the ones who are the bitter anti-heroes, or dark and angsty heroes – the Batmans and Daredevils, the Wolverines and Punishers. Meanwhile the hopeful, optimistic heroes are often the ones who have had warm and loving homes, and who haven’t been broken yet by the world.

But Steve, despite everything, stays hopeful. Steve believes in the best of humanity, in spite of having seen it at its worst. Steve believes in the importance of Good, because he has looked deep into the heart of Evil. 

Steve has suffered all his life, but he refuses to let the world break him. 

That refusal, that strength of outlook and principle, and that subversion of archetype with a rejection of the increasingly popular grimdark hero narrative, are all reasons I love Captain America, and find Steve Rogers a truly interesting and inspiring hero.