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This is a "Hot Network Question" from another site that I thought would make a great question here.
The Joker: "I believe whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you stranger." (Clip from The Dark Knight for context)
I think it's a great line, but what does it mean? And how is it twisted?
This is my opinion. How do I see the dialogue from the legendary actor.
‘Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you . . . stranger,’ the old proverb is actually derived from Nietzsche -‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.
I think Ledger takes it as a kind of pun. The Joker likes to tell stories about how he got the scars and how did he suffer in his childhood. As a kid, he was asked to laugh by his drunken father whilst his mother was being assaulted. The Joker tries to make everybody understand that we all live in the world of fiction. The Joker builds up stories that manifest not only his indifference to the truths but also his weird thoughts.
The worst things never killed him but made him stronger. BUT, he's a joker, always masked and thus stranger. Having this said, the things that don't kill you (the worst circumstances and events in his life) makes (him) you the stranger (the Joker). In simple words, this deadly strange face is due to the worst things happened in his life those were fatal but did not kill him leaving him strong, inhuman and cruel.
I would say that, as a "twisted" person himself, his view of the world is that anything that harms, but does not kill, warps and corrupts your mind or body until you might as well be dead.
The original phrase ("...makes you stronger.") implies that people get better from being injured. This means the opposite, people change for the worse from injury. They don't die outright, but suffer a kind of "death from a thousand cuts": each suffering moves them slightly from their original self (possibly going back to what they were at birth, the "tabula rasa") until they are effectively dead compared to their original self. Maybe lacking any compassion because they have been victimized too many times, or trust because they have been cheated on and defrauded when trying to love and help. Eventually the original self would, if still alive, be so alienated from what it became it would disown itself as being "dead to me".
Did this answer your question, or did I just ramble nonsense? Let me know and I will revise it.
Huh, I think other answers may be over-analyzing this.
Yes, it's an obvious play on the classic "... makes you stronger". So the Joker is a strange person who exults in his own strangeness, so he deliberately mangles the quote.
Any deeper analysis than that seems to me to be in the "well, maybe, but I doubt the scriptwriter was really thinking that deeply" category.
