SPIDER-MAN

Today, I’ll write about the last super hero I’ve chosen: Spider-man.

I want to start saying that he is my favorite super hero. I can see in him things the others don’t have, however, it doesn’t mean I think he’s perfect. No, he certainly isn’t.

Peter Parker got his powers when he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Before it, he used to be an unpopular, ugly, and clumsy student. He was a geek, although this term didn’t even exist at that time: intelligent and with no social life. If this isn’t enough, he was crazy about his neighbor, Mary Jane Watson, a gorgeous girl, certainly not the right type for him.

Yeah, this is the old story of the boy who has nothing and then, suddenly, after an unbelievable event, becomes just spectacular. A kind of male Cinderella. But that’s when the story reaches a higher level, at least in my point of view.

Peter had everything to be another person, when his powers appear, but he realizes he can’t. He is immature, and in his only try to live a new and “easy” life, he causes his Uncle’s death – who was practically a father for him.

After this, he finds out that life isn’t a game for no one in the world. It’s never easy. Not a question of having or not super powers or the right instruments, it’s a question of being able to use wisely your gifts.

“With great powers, great responsibilities come”. This is the phrase that guides Peter and help him to make his way through difficulties.

The magic of the story is to see that he becomes spider man, but he is still the same Peter Parker, he really cares about others, and his personality doesn’t change even a little. He’s just a young boy lost in his problems, incapable of saying something to the girl he loves. And in the other side, he finds inside him the better he can offer: bravery.

This is the better thing in spider man: he doesn’t complain about his problems (and he has a lot of them), he loses almost everything that is important in his life (his uncle, his best friend, later his aunt), he renounces happiness (his love) to make a greater good, and he does all these things because he feels it’s the right thing to do. There’s no philosophy under his acts, he’s just a learner in the art of life, and like everybody, he always make mistakes, but never gives up trying.

Finding a metaphor in the story (I always do this) I would say that Peter represents the course of each one of us: the growth, a thing we all have to face soon or later. And he deals with it wonderfully.

Conclusion: 9