Revenge and Coldness, what does Sasuke Uchiha represents?

Parts: Brilliant and distant child, that fate changed in one night, trauma, avoidant attachment with people, embracing darkness, and last, peace

Part 1: Brilliant and distant child

Sasuke Uchiha, maybe we can say, and I think all Naruto fans will agree with me, most complex and grey area character. When the series began, there were Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke. Sakura is normal, hardworking, and has a little crush on Sasuke, the mystery guy, quiet, charming, and a prodigy maybe.

Naruto, on the other hand, is the definition of sun, brightness, and extroversion. He is also in love with Sakura, but of course, Sakura is already in love with Sasuke.

Sasuke is like, opposite of Naruto; cold, brilliant, distaned and introverted. He is like darkness and the moon. Maybe two sides of one coin.

Sasuke is the most successful student of his class; every girl had a crush on him, except Hinata. He seems the perfect child, brilliant, kind of like. However, things changed when they met Kakashi, and Kakashi asked them, what are your goals in life?

Naruto, of course, as a sun, wanted to be Hokage and might lighten people’s lives in the village just like the sun does. On the other hand, Sasuke surprises us with the quote, ‘I want to kill my brother’ quote.

Part 2: That fate changed in one night

Why a child approximately with the ages of 10–12 wants to kill his brother ?

We see a quite reasonable reason for that, his brother, Itachi Uchiha, killed his clan in just one night, including his mother and father. You see, it seems a very good reason for the point; he wants revenge.

When the series continues, we can actually observe that, before that night, Sasuke is quite a cheerful and fun kid just like Naruto. That night, I suppose, changed Sasuke’s character and evolved him to become a darker version of himself.

That fun, sweet child gone with that night, and he became cold as ice, ice that can cut your heart from the middle. Just like he did in the whole series of Shippuden and Naruto’s main series.

We can say his fate changed from a lovable shinobi to an evil one.

Part 3: Trauma

What is trauma when we describe an event or situation as a trauma?

According to the American Psychological Association, any event that concludes with extensive fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other adverse feelings that have long lasting effects on adverse effects on people, their behaviors, and thoughts, we can be named as trauma. https://www.apa.org/topics/trauma

And with this definition, I want to look at Sasuke’s situation. That night, his brother’s acts caused him quietness, numbness, and negative thoughts about people around him. Maybe we can call that night, for Sasuke, a serious trauma.

Trauma can seriously affect people’s, especially a little child’s, emotional world and mind. Traumas are unfortunately unescapable and sometimes not preventable events. A person might blame themselves or the people around them.

This extreme trauma might be one of the main reasons for him to betray his village and continue to seek strength; eventually, he became so obsessed with power.

Part 4: Avoidant attachment with people around him

Attachment is something we show to others when we are building a relationship with them. https://www.webmd.com/parenting/what-is-avoidant-attachment

Early attachment with family could mainly affect our attachment style of our’s. It changes from how parents are careful about their child’s attachment style, which might be secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized, and so on. https://www.webmd.com/parenting/what-is-avoidant-attachment

When we look at Sasuke’s situation, he avoids establishing deep connections; deep down, he sees connections as unvaluable in his journey of constructing power. We can call this style avodiant; basically, people with this style are overly independent and trusting themselves rather than others, and run away from deep connections with people around them. https://www.webmd.com/parenting/what-is-avoidant-attachment

I think this is the main reason why Sasuke and Sakura never really worked out well. Sakura shows interest in him, barely seen with the naked eye. Sasuke misbehaves with her, insults and even tries to kill her. The same goes for Naruto; also, we can count Kakashi too.

He basically avoids during the series continues, makes with arrogance in the first, then in Shippuden, he basically tries to kill them.

Part 5: Embrace darkness

Dark is not bright, we can not see any light in it, you hurt yourself in a dark and unknown room most probably. Even if you want to close the dark with good intentions, eventually it will swallow you, your soul.

Sasuke wanted to take revenge on his brother, and when we finally managed it, he felt nothing. Not even a single happiness or feelings of victory, you can see his eyes, the darkness of soul, the black color of revenge, no light or sun in it.

When he killed his brother, Itachi, he no longer had any aim; he just stared at the dead body and sat with his dead brother in the heavy rain.

He learned the plot twist of his village and brother from Obito; his brother only wanted to save Konoha and the people living inside. His aim is for nothing, his brother was actually not a heartless monster, he is just a human decide controversial decision, a moral dilemma he fell into just like the rest of us (of course not that serious).

When he decided to embrace full darkness, that point. He then killed a lot of characters and so on. What my point is, darkness is a point his revenge led to him, left him with no one, even his best friends at some point, maybe.

Part 6: Peace

Sasuke’s peace is not with light, heavenly colors. His peace is just like him, complex, full of dilemmas, and between black and white; dark grey.

From the beginning of the series, Sasuke is not like Naruto, the typical main character of all anime and superhero movies. Sasuke, he is, what we can say, an undecidable character; either lovable or hateable, just a normal human being like us who has gone through adverse trauma, not a prophet like Naruto, always shining and sometimes hiding his shadow beneath his soul.

He made peace with his life when he was in the final battle with Naruto. He finally accepts failure, and his ego breaks with his arm.

To conclude, we can either love or hate Sasuke, but we have to admit, he is not a shallow character; he has both evil and good sides inside of him, just like us.

References:

1- https://www.apa.org/topics/trauma, for trauma part

2- https://www.webmd.com/parenting/what-is-avoidant-attachment for attachment style