What ‘Joker’ Can Teach Us About Free Will

If the world is cruel, then do we follow it into cruelty? And if it is harsh, then do we add to its harshness?

It's only when we are given choices, when we have the options to do good or evil, that we can demonstrate our choice to do good. Shutterstock

There’s something familiar about the deeper theme in “Joker.” It follows a character who is a victim of his own kindness, who is cast out and rejected by the world as it is, and in his isolation becomes a parody of society’s downfall.

He is eaten away by his expectations that the people around him should be kind and courteous. So he gives up, and in his disappointment follows the restlessness brooding beneath society’s façade, where he fuels the growing flames.

A Cruel World

After Civil War Gen. William Sherman burned homes of civilians in the South, he famously declared: “War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”