The Body Reborn: An analysis of The Body Keeps the Score & Daredevil: Born Again
Exploring the movement to “reclaim your life” through analyzing The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. and Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli.
In the pantheon of mental and physical health positivity literature, one aspect of positive self-help that is especially intriguing is a movement best described as "reclaiming your life." The movement to reclaim your life from ailments such as trauma is a positive movement that is relatively young but has exploded in popularity in such a way that all one must do is walk into a local bookstore, whether a chain or locally owned, and see a plethora of self-help books that tackle all facets of the concept. This analysis will explore the topic of "reclaiming your life" through two works: The Body Keeps the Score, written by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. (2014), along with Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's seminal graphic novel Daredevil: Born Again (2025) with special focus on the brand-new edition released in February 2025.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk is arguably the progenitor of this positive movement, as his work can be traced back several decades (as detailed in his book). He continues to maintain relevance as a positive figure in this movement even after the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic (Williams, 2021). The relevance that Daredevil: Born Again has to Dr. Van der Kolk's work is the way Miller's writing and Mazzucchelli's art weaves a tapestry of physical and psychological destruction of the titular character (and his life as Matthew Murdock) to the absolute pit of metaphorical Hell (Murdock is a devout Catholic thus adding credence to the metaphor) and grabbing the reader's attention to follow the painful journey that Matt Murdock endures and perseveres until he is "reborn" in all aspects of his life.
The Born Again story arc that the graphic novel collects originally began with issue no. 227 titled Apocalypse (1985) and has an interesting parallel with the timeframe of Dr. Van der Kolk's work in trauma identified in Zoe Williams' interview for The Guardian, states that "he had set up the Trauma Center, in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1982, while he was still a junior faculty member at Harvard medical school, and had built it into a leading research, training, and clinical institution for PTSD".
At first glance, The Body Keeps the Score, and Daredevil: Born Again evokes the appearance of a dichotomy. However, the two works have an underlying connection, one that focuses on uncompromising their purposes. Dr. Van der Kolk weaves a multi-decade story of his journey in researching trauma and uses powerful and uncompromising anecdotes that, depending on the reader, can cause distress. The power of these anecdotes is putting the reader into the shoes of those involved, the patient(s) and Dr. Van der Kolk, as they explore the evolving field of psychiatry. As mentioned earlier, the Born Again storyline coincided with some of the anecdotes in The Body Keeps the Score, a shocking and fascinating revelation during the research process. While a reader is unable to see precisely the imagery that those anecdotes are meant to evoke, the uncompromising artwork by David Mazzucchelli in Born Again forces the reader to watch Matt Murdock suffer during his journey into Hell and back, ala Dante Alighieri (Biography.com Editors, 2023).
Once in darkness, navigating to the light on the other side is not always as easy as waiting for the sun to rise after its fall. From Dr. Van der Kolk's initial steps into his journey that began by surveying Vietnam veterans and uncovering the extraordinary trauma that shattered their lives (p. 12) to the destruction of Matt Murdock's home that accelerates his descension to Hell (p. 32), all the way to triumphant wins such as the revolutionary release of Prozac on February 8th, 1988 (p. 34) and lastly Matt Murdock's final speech that reclaims his identity and solidifies his "rebirth" (p. 179).
Early into Born Again, Matt Murdock is experiencing the beginning of his fall from grace at the shoving hands of Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, and delivers a soul-crushing soliloquy: “A blind man who’s lost his job, his livelihood, his home, his girl…who fate gave the ability to hear and smell and touch better than anybody in the world can – which is a great way to catch all the misery of being alive,” (p. 36). Years later, Dr. Van der Kolk illustrates a psychological analysis of this state of mind, “Sights, sounds, smells, and touch are encoded as isolated, dissociated fragments, and normal memory processing disintegrates. Time freezes, so that the present danger feels like it will last forever” (p. 60). The damage has just been inflicted, Matt Murdock’s world has just been incinerated, and his heightened senses feel more than a survivor of an inferno, and just as Dr. Van der Kolk pointed out, Matt Murdock cannot see a time when his danger dissipates.
At the beginning of the finale, after his rebirth as Daredevil, Matt Murdock takes the final steps to reclaim his mind, body, and life by giving his ex-lover Karen Page (who endured her series of traumas and rebirth throughout the story) and the reader insight into how his identity as Daredevil is key to the winning scores kept by his body, “…Costume gives me a psychological advantage over criminals, Karen…makes it easier to move…really it’s crucial…” (p. 170). As the son of a boxer and a nun, Matt Murdock uses the skills of a warrior and the faith of a believer to endure as Marvel’s flawed paragon of blind justice.
As I put the finishing touches on this analysis on April 20th, 2025, I am reminded of my struggles, fortunately unlike those of Matt Murdock’s but unfortunately like some of those treated and studied by Dr. Van der Kolk. Two days after writing this conclusion, it will be the third anniversary of the last time I committed self-harm. It has not been easy to curb that kind of extreme addiction, and while it was the physical kind I gave up, the mental, emotional, and interpersonal kind is not always easy to extinguish. Throughout this analysis, various references to fire are used to highlight the connections to Hell in Dante’s Inferno (Alighieri, 1321), Daredevil: Born Again’s overt devilish imagery and symbolism of suffering, and The Body Keeps the Score’s accounts of patient’s hellish experiences. However, fire can also encourage life. I resonate with Matt Murdock’s internal fire that keeps him putting one foot in front of the other, and even when knocked down, his spirit brings him back to the fight (because any boxer who steps into the ring is brave, no matter the outcome). I resonate with the patients who suffered, refused help, and eventually sought a better life (even when it feels impossible to move from one stage of your life to another). I am not religious, but whether one derives their strength from physicality, faith, medicine, or therapy, I believe in the body reborn.
References
Alighieri, D. (1321). The Divine Comedy.
Bessel van der Kolk, M. D. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Penguin Books.
Biography.com Editors. (2023, August 9). Dante. Biography. https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/dante
Miller, F., & Mazzucchelli, D. (1985, October 22). Daredevil (Vol. 1, No. 227) [Comic book]. Marvel Comics.
Miller, F., & Mazzucchelli, D. (2025). Daredevil: Born Again (Marvel Premier Collection). Marvel Comics.
Williams, Z. (2021, September 20). Trauma, trust and triumph: psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk on how to recover from our deepest pain. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/20/trauma-trust-and-triumph-psychiatrist-bessel-van-der-kolk-on-how-to-recover-from-our-deepest-pain
