Charlie’s Batman Costume Symbol Analysis

Charlie’s Batman costume represents the protective identities that Charlie, Sarah, and Little Bee construct for themselves to hide from fear and emotional pain. Although four-year-old Charlie does not fully understand death, he senses that the world is large and frightening and knows that he has somehow lost his father, Andrew. After his father’s suicide, Charlie refuses to remove his Batman costume and will only answer to “Batman.” Taking on the Batman persona allows Charlie to feel a sense of power and agency, rather than recognize his own powerlessness and fear. While this helps Charlie endure the months after Andrew’s death, being Batman makes him believe that he is responsible for fighting the evil in the world, and especially that he is responsible for Andrew’s death, since Andrew hanged himself while Charlie was not wearing the costume.

The Batman costume thus represents the way that a constructed identity can help a person cope, but may burden that person with greater responsibilities than they can bear, whether it be saving the world or fitting a particular ideal as a mother or a refugee, like Sarah and Little Bee try to do. At the end of the novel, Little Bee ultimately convinces Charlie to shed his costume aside and be freely and simply himself—as she sheds her “costume” as Little Bee and shares with him that her real name is Udo. When Charlie takes his costume off, he runs and plays as a happy four-year-old with other children, unburdened by responsibilities that should not be his. Charlie’s freedom without his costume suggests though a person may protect themselves with a constructed identity, it becomes a burden that they are ultimately freer and happier without.