The Identity of Iron Man

Rating: 8/10 (24 August 2015)

Tony Stark is a character that was created to court controversy. Comic creator Stan Lee has admittedly stated that in creating Tony Stark his goal was to create an arms dealer during the Vietnam era who becomes a hero. The challenging element to this creative decision was in making him likable to a generation of youths who were against the Vietnam War. By injuring him mortally through a heart wound and making him vulnerable and then leading him to essentially don a suit of armor like a chivilaristic knight, Stan Lee was able to create a sympathetic character out of an unsympathetic situation. Throughout Mr. Stark's storied history, comic creators have added further moral conflict into his character. These additional conflicts have included alcoholism and absolute black & white decisions.
The question posed by this unique character is what is it that makes up the worth of an individual; is it the contributions made toward the community or is it something more innate? In the film Iron Man 3, Mr. Stark struggles with the idea of is his value as Iron Man or as a person able to contribute to society with his own natural talents. This is a question that he is only able to answer when his quality of life, his technology, friends and family are taken away from him.
This is a dilemma that many people have to face at some point in their lifetime. Generally when someone introduces themselves to a new acquaintance they state their name and their occupation. By doing this a person is prioritizing their occupation over other areas in their life. This displays a sense of identity within how a person contributes to their community whether it be local or regionally.
This is a concept that is reinforced through our upbringing and family life. The message that some receive is that there is value not only in your occupation but that there are occupations that are better than others. This leads to behaviors geared to attain the best occupation possible to display yourself. Some of these behaviors include gearing our life to be more available for work such as where we live, what we do in our leisure time and other personal decisions.
While there are other areas of life that suffer in importance in opposition to a person's occupation such as volunteer time, personal relationships, personal development and so on. While the potential of community impact and personal value is just as great for the other areas of life; they are put on the back burner for the professional life. This causes some individuals to become numb to a complete life and to minimize the importance of such a life. It is only when we lose what we consider to be our life that we are able to find value in the rest of our life. It is regrettable that this tends to only happen when we are forced to in order to find happiness within our lives.