Is the Punisher REALLY insane?

[PhotoJones]

All this, just so can fullfill that need to be justified in your thinking that a fictional comic book character is sane. And you're calling me "backwards"?

 

[UK_Stu]

I'm not sure about this, but I guess it depends how you define insane - Legally or clinically.

Personally I don't think the Punisher is insane, just misguided and deluded. Don't ask me for proof, I don't have any - this is my opinion

 

[Docker2.0]

Has the Punisher ever been recruited by Shield? Wouldn't it make sense for them to have a guy, even though kind of twisted, is the perfect weapon to get the job done right by any means necessary.

 

[Horrorfan]

All this, just so can fullfill that need to be justified in your thinking that a fictional comic book character is sane. And you're calling me "backwards"?

If it's not a big deal, why be deceptive about it? Says a lot about you that it doesn't mean anything yet you are the one who tried to manipulate the facts....god knows what you would be like with something important.

 

[Horrorfan]

Has the Punisher ever been recruited by Shield? Wouldn't it make sense for them to have a guy, even though kind of twisted, is the perfect weapon to get the job done right by any means necessary.

That's a good point, but I don't th ink he would do too well....plus Shield has publicity to worry about too...and god knows the public hate someone being too effective in cleaning up crime

 

[Anubis]

The vast majority of the s**t SHIELD does is hush hush. So, public realiations is a non factor. Plus, he's done stuff for Fury before. Usually in exchange for something. But Castle would never join SHIELD or anyother organization. He kills who he wants too, not who somebody tells him to. Got enough of that in Nam.

 

[Kitsune]

moronic backwords is cinorom

 

[Anubis]

And cinorom is a type of testicle parasite.

 

[Nasty-B]

Let me reinterate what I said before. I don't think Frank is any crazier than a head of state who, by his/her decision to declare war, is ultimately responsible for the deaths of 1000s of people. I'm not necessarily saying this applies to Bush, because I think Bush is clearly way crazier than the Punisher. Of course, the Punisher is different from a wartime president because presidents are generally elected officials who have a claim to legitimacy and are thought to be held accountable for their actions. Meanwhile, Frank is just a self-appointed, vigilante executioner who answers only to his own code of conduct. But what I'm saying is that, mentally, both the Punisher and wartime Prez have to justify their actions and settle all that death with their conscience. I think that Frank has a to go through a lot fewer mental gymnastics in order to justify the people he has killed, than it must take someone like, say, LBJ to come to terms with the fact that they are responsible for the deaths of many magnitudes more people than Frank. Not to mention that LBJ's actions lead to the deaths of as many, if not more, innocent civilians than enemy soldiers. Seeing that Frank goes to great lengths to avoid civilian death when he's not tripping balls on rupees, it would seem like it should be easier for him to rationally justify what he does compared to what a wartime leader does. Plus, Frank has a much better casus belli (yes, I did actually know that phrase before I read WWH prologue, thank you) than, again for example, LBJ had for Vietnam. IN other words, Frank losing his family to crime and using that as an excuse to wage a war on crime is a much more emotionally honest reason for declaring war than is a made up incident in the Gulf of Tonken being used to justify declaring a war of choice in the name of some abstract socio-political theory (e.g. the domino theory). That's just my two cents.

 

[Horrorfan]

Let me reinterate what I said before. I don't think Frank is any crazier than a head of state who, by his/her decision to declare war, is utimately responsible for the deaths of 1000s of people. I'm necessarily saying this applies to Bush, because I think Bush is clearly way crazier than the Punisher. Of course, the Punisher is different from a wartime president because presidents are generally elected officials who have a claim to legititimacy and are thought to be held accountable for their actions. While Frank is just a self-appointed, vigilante executioner who answers only to his own code of conduct. But what I'm saying is that, mentally, both the Punisher and wartime Prez have to justify their actions and settle all that death with their conscience. I think that Frank has a to go through a lot fewer mental gymnastics in order to justify the people he has killed, than it must take someone like, say, LBJ to come to terms with the fact that they are responsible for the deaths of many magnitudes more people than Frank. Not to mention that LBJ's actions lead to the deaths of as many, if not more, innocent civilians than enemy soldiers. Seeing that Frank goes to great lengths to avoid civilian death when he's not tripping balls on rupees, it would seem like it should be easier for him to rationally justify what he does compared to what a wartime leader does. Plus, Frank has a much better casus belli (yes, I did actually know that phrase before I read WWH prologue, thank you) than, again for example, LBJ had for Vietnam. IN other words, Frank losing his family to crime and using that as an excuse to wage a war on crimee is a much more emotionally honest reason for declaring war than is a made up incident in the Gulf of Tonken being used to justify declaring a war of choice in the name of some abstract socio-political theory (e.g. the domino theory). That's just my two cents.

Great post :heart:

 

[The Question]

Ok, the thing is, I notice a lot of characters seem to keep refering as Punisher as insane....I would highly, highly dispute this. Of course some people would consider dressing up in lycra insane too, so maybe they are just jealous he has very few villains who repeat offend :P

But my point (avoiding the subject of punisher's actions being justified or not) is, that he is not insane. He clearly knows what he is doing, he knows why he is doing it...I do agree that he's probably not in the greatest of mental and emotional health, but he's not insane. I just saw him as a normal guy who was pushed beyond normal limits by the faliure of the justice system and who decided to do something about it.

He kills for punishment, not revenge, and the subject of crime and punishment is different in many people's eyes. He doesn't kill those who are innocent, he has never had collatoral damage, and takes great effort to ensure that.

So what do you guys think? Is Punisher bat **** insane, or just a sane guy pushed beyond reason who decided to push back?

Well, sanity and insanity are very murky waters. Is the Punisher completely dillusional, out of control, bat**** crazy? No. However, he is very far from being in a healthy mental state. He is almost constantly in a deeply depressed state. And, coming from experience here, depression can quickly turn into anger, fear, and paranoia under the proper circumsances (which Frank is in almost constantly). He is obsessive to the point of self destruction. He's also completely emotionally detatched from everyone around him, which only worsens things since one generally gets over the above problems through emotional connections between close friends and loved ones.

So, while he is in control of his faculties, and is fully aware of his actions and their consiquences, He is not mentally healthy.

 

[Nasty-B]

Well, sanity and insanity are very murky waters. Is the Punisher completely dillusional, out of control, bat**** crazy? No. However, he is very far from being in a healthy mental state. He is almost constantly in a deeply depressed state. And, coming from experience here, depression can quickly turn into anger, fear, and paranoia under the proper circumsances (which Frank is in almost constantly). He is obsessive to the point of self destruction. He's also completely emotionally detatched from everyone around him, which only worsens things since one generally gets over the above problems through emotional connections between close friends and loved ones.

So, while he is in control of his faculties, and is fully aware of his actions and their consiquences, He is not mentally healthy.

I totally agree. But I think that it's important to add that sanity,like so many other lables we attach to people, is really more of continuum than an axiom. Thus I think it can be argued that, considering that Frank is usually in control of his actions, he way less crazy than someone like the Joker. I would also say that his actions are even a lot more rational than, as someone mentioned above, a character like Batman. If you could quantify the craziness of all comic book characters, heroes or villains, and create an instanity index, then I think Frank would come out somewhere around 7 out of 10.

 

[ElectroFlare]

Well, sanity and insanity are very murky waters. Is the Punisher completely dillusional, out of control, bat**** crazy? No. However, he is very far from being in a healthy mental state. He is almost constantly in a deeply depressed state. And, coming from experience here, depression can quickly turn into anger, fear, and paranoia under the proper circumsances (which Frank is in almost constantly). He is obsessive to the point of self destruction. He's also completely emotionally detatched from everyone around him, which only worsens things since one generally gets over the above problems through emotional connections between close friends and loved ones.

So, while he is in control of his faculties, and is fully aware of his actions and their consiquences, He is not mentally healthy.

"Fear leads to anger...anger leads to hate...and that is the path of the Dark Side."

 

[Darthphere]

"Fear leads to anger...anger leads to hate...and that is the path of the Dark Side."

If you're going to quote something, get it right.

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."

 

[ElectroFlare]

Forgive me, almighty Darthphere

 

[The Question]

Let me reinterate what I said before. I don't think Frank is any crazier than a head of state who, by his/her decision to declare war, is ultimately responsible for the deaths of 1000s of people. I'm not necessarily saying this applies to Bush, because I think Bush is clearly way crazier than the Punisher. Of course, the Punisher is different from a wartime president because presidents are generally elected officials who have a claim to legitimacy and are thought to be held accountable for their actions. Meanwhile, Frank is just a self-appointed, vigilante executioner who answers only to his own code of conduct. But what I'm saying is that, mentally, both the Punisher and wartime Prez have to justify their actions and settle all that death with their conscience. I think that Frank has a to go through a lot fewer mental gymnastics in order to justify the people he has killed, than it must take someone like, say, LBJ to come to terms with the fact that they are responsible for the deaths of many magnitudes more people than Frank. Not to mention that LBJ's actions lead to the deaths of as many, if not more, innocent civilians than enemy soldiers. Seeing that Frank goes to great lengths to avoid civilian death when he's not tripping balls on rupees, it would seem like it should be easier for him to rationally justify what he does compared to what a wartime leader does. Plus, Frank has a much better casus belli (yes, I did actually know that phrase before I read WWH prologue, thank you) than, again for example, LBJ had for Vietnam. IN other words, Frank losing his family to crime and using that as an excuse to wage a war on crime is a much more emotionally honest reason for declaring war than is a made up incident in the Gulf of Tonken being used to justify declaring a war of choice in the name of some abstract socio-political theory (e.g. the domino theory). That's just my two cents.

I'd disagree there. War time leaders, be they political or military, usually have one justification to fall back on that The Punisher can never honestly use: At the time, he was left with no other choice. Truman, for example, made the descision to drop the atomic bombs. To anyone, it would seem like a morally reprehensible thing to do. But if he hadn't, twice as many of people would have died, including civilians. Of course, one could make arguements about dropping the second bomb as soon as they did, but that's not the point. In wartime, one is often left with only the wrong choices, and is forced to choose the lesser of two evils. Frank, on the other hand, doesn't have to kill all the people he does. He could have dispatched with hundreds of his victims without killing him. He simply chose not to. So, I'd say he has much less justification than a war time leader.

 

[Nasty-B]

I'd disagree there. War time leaders, be they political or military, usually have one justification to fall back on that The Punisher can never honestly use: At the time, he was left with no other choice. Truman, for example, made the descision to drop the atomic bombs. To anyone, it would seem like a morally reprehensible thing to do. But if he hadn't, twice as many of people would have died, including civilians. Of course, one could make arguements about dropping the second bomb as soon as they did, but that's not the point. In wartime, one is often left with only the wrong choices, and is forced to choose the lesser of two evils. Frank, on the other hand, doesn't have to kill all the people he does. He could have dispatched with hundreds of his victims without killing him. He simply chose not to. So, I'd say he has much less justification than a war time leader.

Well, some commentators have suggested that the Japanese were ready to surrender before Hiroshima and that Truman just dropped the bombs in order to scare the Russians, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I should have specified that I was trying to compare Frank's actions to those of a leader who goes to war by choice. On the other hand, if we're talking about leaders who go to war or commit terrible acts in the name of self-defense, then I would agree that their acts are definately more justified than the PUnisher's.

 

[The Question]

Well, some commentators have suggested that the Japanese were ready to surrender before Hiroshima and that Truman just dropped the bombs in order to scare the Russians, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I should have specified that I was trying to compare Frank's actions to those of a leader who goes to war by choice. On the other hand, if we're talking about leaders who go to war or commit terrible acts in the name of self-defense, then I would agree that their acts are definately more justified than the PUnisher's.

Ah. I see. Cool.

 

[sandwraith]

Did anyone read Punisher: Barracuda? I was wondering whether Frank was truly sane when he blew up that corporate cruise liner leaving everyone on that sinking ship, innocent or otherwise, to be shark's food. Insanity?

 

[fifthfiend]

I think the Punisher is lying unconscious in a hospital bed somewhere and everything that's had anything to do with him since his "death" has been a part of his convoluted coma-dreams.

Does that count?

 

[GyLocke]

Well Horrofan, a few weeks ago I was walking home with my little sister, when Frank Castle jumped out of the garbage.
He wore a pretty barbie pink dress, a bow in his hair and insisted on being called "Virginia Caslte" and couldn't stop chanting "I'm a pretty girl! I'm a pretty girl!".
Then he screamed "Quaplah!" while he played with his nipples and urinated all over himself.
So my little sister beat his creepy as. When I asked her why she did it, she said:
"Cuz i can."

I can't find the scans right now, but I think it proves that Frank Castle knows what he is doing, and he is a perfectly sane, although somewhat old fashioned hero of the people.

 

[BrianWilly]

He's not insane. Not legally, not clinically.

But he is incredibly sociopathic. He is incapable of experiencing or unable to experience various emotional ranges, including empathy for others. He is deeply reckless and self-destructive and doesn't care about it. He also disregards various societal norms, sometimes for no reason at all. He is capable of incredible meticulousness and foresight when it comes to dealing out death, but not for ordinary social life situations.

He does have periods of psychosis, though; the infamous scene from Civil War comes to mind. Frank is standing in a room filled -- FILLED -- with superheroes who could obliterate his ass, Captain America himself told him that he would be tossed out violently if he stepped out of line, two harmless, unarmed, docile "villains" step into the room...and Frank Castle just has no choice, he simply cannot control himself but to riddle them with holes right there on the spot in front of everyone? What, even if he was sure they deserved it, he just couldn't wait ten or fifteen minutes for all the freakishly powered super-types in the room to leave so that at least he has no witnesses? No, he does it right then with no hesitation for any manner of consequences. And then he just stares at everyone, "What?" like nothing's wrong? That is borderline psychotic behavior. That, mixed with his aforementioned sociopathy, explains a whole lot; he knows what's going on, he knows exactly what would happen if he did it, Captain America is punching his face off right that moment...and he doesn't care. In that moment, in that trigger point, he was self-satisfied in his behavior in spite of all conceivable facts showing otherwise. His mind has literally convinced itself that this was the case.

If he acted like that all the time, then he really would be nuts. The one thing that would draw him from "incredibly disturbed" right over to "outright insane" is if he actually thought that he was doing the right thing all the time. Thankfully, unlike a lot of killers, he doesn't think so. I've never read the Punisher saying things like, "Yeah I'm just so awesome, I'm doing such a great thing, all those cops and heroes who don't slaughter all the bad guys they meet are just being stupid and I'm just being smart." He doesn't think of himself as this great guy doing this righteous thing that everyone should be doing; he thinks the exact opposite, most of the time. He has no great justification, no higher purpose, no grand philosophy for his actions: he's simply pissed. Fckers killed his family so he's going to kill all the fckers. It's as simple as that, and he'd be the first to tell everyone that it's as simple as that.

Ironically it's this sort of clarity, self-awareness, self-wisdom, self-examination that's probably giving him his semblance of sanity. He doesn't indulge himself with self-delusions, he doesn't fool himself with half-baked justifications of morality for his acts that fall apart under any scrutiny; he is perfectly, completely aware of the sort of person that he is. He just doesn't care. That is dangerous and unhealthy, but not insane.

 

[Nasty-B]

That's a pretty insightful assesment. However, one thing about the incident in Civil War 6: I don't think that Frank killed those two villains because he couldn't control himself. It seemed more like he felt he had to kill them then and there before Cap even had a chance to accept their offer. I think he was just sacrificing himself to keep Cap's image untarnished.

 

[Blaktin America]

Nasty has a point. I think the respect he has for Cap played into that whole scenario.

 

[Horrorfan]

I also think that if you think about it, you may say the war time decision was more justified- but that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civillians. No matter how you slice it, that's pretty hard to defend- targeting civillians even in a war is pretty low, even if it was probably the best option he had.