Killing Joke Alan Moore Analysis

“The Other Wes Moore” written by Wes Moore, is a story about two boys who grew up around the same area and in similar circumstances. The author, Wes, grew into a well-respected man. The other Wes Moore goes to prison for the rest of his life, without a possibility of parole. During the story, the other Wes is punched in the face and instead of punching back he shot and killed the man who punched him. The story expresses many themes, one of which is that some people will do anything to other people’s lives to gain power, respect, or money. This is also shown when the other Wes describes the drug trade, when he almost stabs a kid, and when he and his crew shoot and kill a police officer.

The book focuses on the phenomenon of two boys growing up in the same neighborhood and on the same street in Baltimore, Maryland with the same name of Wes Moore during the late 1970s. They had numerous experiences that were quite similar as they grew up but they made different decisions and found solutions to the obstacles that faced which took them down different paths. The “Other Wes Moore” by Wes Moore starts during the year 2000 where the Baltimore Sun, a local newspaper company, published two articles about a person named Wes Moore. One article was about the successful and brilliant Wes Moore who wrote the novel named "Local Graduate Named Rhodes Scholar", Rhodes Scholar is one of the most prestigious academic awards in the country, perhaps in the

According to Wes Moore, “At each stage of [the boys’] young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies” (1). Two young African- American kids lived in the same decaying city and shared the same name: Wes Moore. While one Wes Moore was sentenced to life in prison, the author Wes Moore became a Rhodes Scholar and a best-selling author. Similarities and differences pertaining to life choices and role models of both Moores were described in The Other Wes Moore.

The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore (2011), tells the story of two children who grew up in the same neighborhood with the same first and last names. It was not just the neighborhood in which they grew or their names that were the same, however. The two boys engaged in the same activities growing up, being active participants in a difficult neighborhood, engaging in gang activity, and getting into trouble with the police (Moore, 2011). In spite of these similarities in their early life, Wes Moore, the author, had a remarkably different life than the second Wes Moore; in addition to being an author, he has been a Rhodes scholar and is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of BridgeEdU a social organization dedicated to increasing the ease through which a high school student can transition to the higher education process (Moore, 2011). Moore’s (2011) case is one that has intrigued many in the field of criminology, in part due to the myriad theories on criminal behavior and the disparities present between the situations of the two boys (Schram, & Tibbetts, 2018). Among the different crinimiological theories or perspectives that are the most in alignment with the situation described in Moore’s (2011) book are those of social learning theory and differential association theory (Schram, & Tibbetts, 2018).

Joker’s backstory begins as an engineer who decides to quit his job at Ace Chemicals Co to become a comedian. After failing in his attempt to keep his pregnant wife, Jeannie, afloat, he agrees to help two criminals rob the playing card company next door. The police soon inform the ‘soon-to-be Joker’ of the death of his wife due to a household accident. The other criminals strong-arm him into continuing with the plan. Once at the plant, the criminals make him wear a mask, later recognized as Red Hood. Unknown to the engineer, the disguise is secretly being used by the criminals to frame him for the crime.

A literary convention is a specific pattern like a repetition of a word, phrase, character, or setting. They are recurring patterns in particular literary genres and are present in many novels, short stories, plays, and sonnets. There are many different literary conventions or tropes in the stories that we have read, but I am choosing to write about the film The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan. There are also many within the film, but the one that stuck out most to me was Jokers famous saying, “why so serious?”. When he says this his tone of voice is almost angry, or he may even sound mentally insane. There are two stories from where The Joker says that the saying “why so serious” originates from. The most notable one is that his father was a drunk and killed his mother. Then his father asks him “why so serious”, and decides he should have a smile, so he put a knife in his mouth and cut his face from ear to ear. This phrase and the way that he says it ends up making people of Gotham more scared then they maybe normally would be. The phrase could also mean that order will never be contained, that somehow someway chaos will always rise. I think that by the different stories about his scar, his actions throughout the film, and by his famous “why so serious?” phrase, Joker is a psychopath who is mentally deranged, yet maybe not insane, and somehow he is very intelligent. The phrase is something that occurs very frequently in the movie. It has also become a very popular saying

So when there's a tap on my shoulder it makes me jump. I spinned around a became face to face with the notorious Dark Knight of Gotham. His face was set into a permanent scowl making him look terrifying. Batman had a sense of sadness that floated around him like he seen hell with his own eyes.

The film “One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” accurately depicts and presents the various psychological issues, such as the use of psychosurgery, institutionalism inside the psychiatric hospital and the medical and societal attitudes towards patients during the 1960s. Set in 1963, the film uses characters – patients and authority figures alike – and setting to accurately depict various aspects of psychological treatments, theories and concepts applied, before more ethical practices were introduced later in the 20th century.  The film itself was extremely powerful in presenting the methods it used by psychiatric asylums to treat its patients, and was credited with tarnishing the

With this page of The Killing Joke Alan Moore and Brian Boland use panel composition to increase the drama with each individual panel. Within the first three panels of the page the reader’s gets three different “camera” shots. The second panel in which the reader gets a shot of the Joker re-entering the bar/restaurant, the shadow of his hat hiding his eyes making it difficult to read his emotions. The next panel being the only panel in the page that is purely black and white and also lacking any background details making the words on the page more significant to the reader as the attention is pulled towards the words that are being spoken. The focus on the words makes the reader focus on the lack of sympathy the men have on the Joker, similar to the lack of sympathy the joker has on all of his victims.

The scene that I am analyzing from the Dark Knight starts at 1:25:39. This is the scene where after the joker gets arrested, Jim Gordon and Batman interrogate him at the MCU to find out where Harvey Dent is. This is because they are tired of the Joker killing cops and innocent people, and putting other people’s lives in danger. While Jim Gordon is interrogating the Joker, he plays innocent in this scene as he acts like he doesn’t know where Harvey Dent is to try to get in Gordon’s head revealing there may be some untrustworthy people in Gordon’s unit and saying that Jim Gordon is alone in all this, making Gordon even more angry and frustrated (The Dark Knight, 1:26:10-1:26:30). The darkness around Joker represents evil and the light around Gordon represents good. The joker is taking the more laidback approach as you can tell he really doesn’t want to talk to Gordon, but when Batman shows up you can tell he wants to talk to Batman as the energy and tone in his voice changes. The joker gets in Batman’s head by telling him that he does not want to kill Batman saying Batman is just like him (The Dark Knight, 1:28:25), and that the reason all those innocent people are dead is because of Batman because he refuses to kill. Joker also tells Batman that Rachel has been kidnapped too and that he can’t save both Rachel and Harvey, but only one of them implying that if he chooses one of them he is responsible for the other one dying (The Dark Knight, 1:30:08). Batman is being pushed to his extreme limits trying his best not to kill Joker to get the information of where Harvey is. In this scene, you can see that Batman and Gordon are both frustrated and angry by the tone in their voices, by their facial expressions, and by the way Jim Gordon enters the interrogation room, and by the way Batman violently interrogates the Joker by beating him up. In addition, it is obvious that Batman gets uncomfortable around the joker. This is also evident in other scenes with Joker as Batman doesn’t look like himself. For example, when Batman is destroying anything in his way to get to the Joker (The Dark Knight, 1:19:33-1:21:00), and when he is driving straight at the Joker to run him but decides not to at the last moment and falls off

The autobiography The Other Wes Moore was written by a man who was comparing the lives of two men, the author himself and another man who, coincidentally, had the same name. In an attempt to eliminate any confusion, I need to clarify to which Wes Moore I am referring, so, I will refer to the author as Wes 1 and the other Wes Moore will be referred to as Wes 2. It took me a few minutes to decide what to call them since my initial reaction was to say Good Wes and Bad Wes. However, if this course on cultural competence has taught me anything, it’s to not label people. I see now that these two men lived their lives making the best decisions they felt they could have made at the time, and I realize that terms such as “good” or “bad” are misleading

An example of this is in the opening sequence, he torments many people, by putting grenades in their mouths to stop them from talking. He has no remorse for anything he does, to anyone. Another example, in this scene, is when he sits with the owner of the bank. After putting a grenade in his mouth also, too stop him from talking back, making him vulnerable and uncomfortable. Camera angles is one technique that helps develops this characteristic as it is a low angle tilt, to show that The Joker is superior and a dominant figure in this scene. The angle almost is intended to be a view point from the bank owner. Which makes the bank owner to feel vulnerable. In this shot, Lighting is also a very effective technique that shows his minimal. The lighting is dark, only exposing half of his face, this gives the feeling of fear and distress. Also, to add to this characteristic of minimal empathy, dialogue is another effective technique. The Joker says, “What doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger.” Almost in confident hysterics The Joker walks off with the peg to the fake grenade in the bankers mouth. This develops his character as a criminal with minimal empathy and lack of moral, as he doesn't care about conforming to society.

The two scenes that stuck most with me were both between the Joker and Batman, the interrogation scene and the final scene of the film between them. What made those two scenes so strong was the writing and the acting, both actors were fantastic, and even though the Joker is clearly insane, some of things he said did ring true about

This scene revealed to the audience the damage that the joker had done to the town, and

At that point, according to the Joker, they drop their phony façade and behave like the chaotic, selfish animals that we all are. I submit that his motivation is to conduct social experiments to prove himself correct- that at the core people are controlled by their own selfish needs (while he is only controlled by his own delusion of pretentiousness). He has two men fight to the death with one sharp stick between them. He gives two boatloads of people the detonator to bombs on the other ship. He tells Batman that if he [Batman] wants to catch him [the Joker], that he’s going to have to break his One Rule that was brought up at the end of the first movie—to not kill.