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Steve Rogers Character Analysis

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The first thing it is important to know about Steve Rogers is that he has been chronically ill since he was a child. There are conflicting reports about what illnesses he suffered from, but there is some consensus even still: he had both scarlet and rheumatic fever, chronic or frequent colds, sinusitis, heart palpitations, and, the most important to this app, asthma. Now, the asthma alone would have been enough to make his life difficult -- treatment wasn't very advanced in the days of Steve's childhood, and it would have made it hard for him to do much -- but compounding that, society's reaction to asthma was largely unfavorable. It was thought at the time that asthma was a result of a mental weakness, rather than anything medically wrong, …show more content…

Steve feels an obligation to his country, to his fellow man, that his body initially doesn't allow him to fulfill, but that doesn't stop him from trying. One might imagine that this is due to his mother and father's influence in his life -- both of them set aside their lives in the hopes of making life better for others. His mother was a nurse in a TB ward, and his father died of mustard gas in World War I. Due to these two influences, as well as his own intrinsic sense of moral obligation, Steve feels compelled to fight in World War II, despite the fact that he is, by all measures, completely unsuited for it. As the doctor at the beginning of Captain America: The First Avenger states, Steve would be ineligible for service based on his asthma alone -- but that doesn't stop him from trying to enlist five times. While there is an element of having something to prove to the world -- Steve's illness throughout his life and society's reaction to it has left him with a chip on his shoulder a mile wide -- he also just plain wants to help, because he sees it as his moral obligation to. Now, Bucky says that there are important jobs on the home front, and Steve could do any one of them, but Steve denies this, saying "There are men laying down their lives. I've got no right to do any less than them." Nearly 70 years later, Steve is called back into service just over two weeks after having been pulled out of the ice, and he goes without a complaint, even though he's still adjusting to the reality of his new world. Steve's own mental well-being is less important than his obligation to the rest of the world. Two years after that, when Steve is forced to fight his best friend, he begins by asking Bucky not to make him do it -- and then fights him anyway, because Bucky is standing between him and his avenue to save the world, and Steve's duty to the world is more important than his own

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