Caregiving and Interdependence in “Logan”

James Mangold’s Logan is many things. It is inspired by, and in many ways is, a classic western. It’s a road movie. It is a film that purposefully chooses to defy convention, to its benefit. The film is also a journey of self-discovery for the title character, a journey which is interwoven with the journeys of his family, adopted father Charles Xavier and newfound daughter Laura. Each character of the trio could or has carried their own movie, but it’s in the interplay between the actors and their characters that Logan truly shines. It’s this interplay that’s at the heart of my critical reading of Mangold’s film. Inspired by Eva Kittay’s Love’s Labor, this paper reads Logan as not just a poignant character study, but one whose poignancy and extraordinary character moments are grounded in the notions of caregiving and interdependence. I believe that the intertwined stories of Logan, Charles and Laura represent different facets of these notions, and it is by examining the stories through those lenses that we can begin to unravel the meaning in the characters that Mangold and his actors work so tirelessly on.

Part I: Logan and Charles as Polar Caregivers for Laura

Of the many interpersonal relationships presented in Logan, perhaps the easiest to start with are those of Logan and Charles with Laura, and to analyze how each of the two men reacts to becoming a caregiver to this newfound child. To do this, we first have to define what we mean by caregiving and how exactly it should be done, and for that, we turn to Kittay. In Kittay’s model, there are two main parties: the caregiver (what she calls the dependency worker) and the charge, which Webster’s defines as a person “committed or entrusted to the care, custody, management or support of another.” The caregiver, Kittay says, “directs her energies and attention to an intended beneficiary, the charge…For the dependency worker, the well-being and thriving of the charge is the primary focus of the work.” Kittay, borrowing from Jane Martin, writes that caregiving is epitomized by the “Three C’s”: care, concern, and connection. Per Kittay:

It is the work of tending to others in their state of vulnerability—care. The labor either sustains ties among intimates or itself creates intimacy and trust—connection. And affectional ties— concern—generally sustain the connection.

With this frame of reference in mind, we can analyze the Charles/Laura and Logan/Laura relationships more deeply to see what they reveal about the characters. Let’s start off with Charles and Laura. Even before we meet Laura, Charles says that he has detected her via his psionic powers. “There are forces trying to kill them! They need help!” Charles tells Logan, trying to inspire him to find this rumored young mutant. Here already Charles is attempting to tend to Laura in her state of vulnerability, as Kittay would say. He is caring about her. Logan does eventually find Laura, despite his protestations (more on that in Logan’s section). When Laura arrives at Logan and Charles’ hideout, she is wary, but Charles immediately attempts to put her at ease. “This is Laura,” he tells Logan in a very grandfatherly tone of voice before beckoning Laura over in the same demeanor. Here, Charles is expressing his concern for Laura, mainly through the non-confrontational and welcoming tone of his voice. He is trying to be foster affectional ties with her. He continues this as he waves her over. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he says. “Come. It’s okay. You can stay here, Laura. It’s safe. We can look after you here.” He also attempts to foster a connection and trust with Laura by speaking to her in Spanish, her native tongue, to ease her possible anxiety. It’s clear from even this brief interaction that Charles is endeavoring to make use of the Three C’s, even if he doesn’t know it, and that he genuinely wants to help Laura.

In sharp contrast to Charles’ actions are Logan’s, actions that are emblematic of a man who is simply tired of the world. Early in the film, Gabriela, Laura’s nurse and foster mother, finds Logan and asks for his help. Logan brusquely waves her off, bluntly telling her to “Get the fuck away from me!” Granted, this is a strange woman coming up to Logan out of nowhere, but Logan’s apathy continues throughout the film. He only accepts the idea of helping Gabriela and Laura once Gabriela offers him money and later on, following Charles’ death and a health scare for Logan, he once again refuses to aid Laura until she “bullies” him into doing so. And throughout the film, Logan repeatedly berates Charles for getting them involved in this insane quest and is gruff, if not flat-out angry, toward Laura, an emotional stance he will preserve until the final half hour of the film, at most.

So what can we learn about Charles and Logan as characters from the way they care for Laura, and how do those observations connect to Kittay’s ideas? Charles, in his caring for Laura, is very close to what Kittay calls the “transparent self,” the idea for which caregivers should strive toward. In those who wield the transparent self, Kittay says, “The perception and response to another’s needs are neither blocked out nor refracted through our own needs.” Charles is a transparent self since he does not ignore Laura’s cries for help as some might do, and he helps her at the risk (and cost) of his own life. In terms of character, Charles is helping Laura because that’s who he is. He is, in Mangold’s words, “A man who spent his whole life trying to help people, help mutants in need, help humanity when it’s in need.” Charles is by nature a caregiver, evidenced by both his history as head mentor at the school that bore his name and by a scene in the film where, after having a psionic seizure that may have injured people, he openly weeps and is wracked with guilt. Charles helps Laura because it is the right thing to do, because that is what his moral code demands that he do, not because he has something to be gained.

Logan, on the other hand, seems to want nothing to do with Laura, and his aversion can also be explained through Kittay’s work. Simply put, Logan is not abiding by one of Kittay’s core rules about the caregiving dynamic. “The relationship between the dependency worker and her charge is most importantly a relation of trust,” she writes. In Logan’s case, the relationship is quite the opposite. The trust simply isn’t there. Mangold describes Logan as having “A sense of disbelief, [a] reluctance to get involved… [a] sense of grumpy, gruff self-absorption.” Present in Logan as a lack of belief, it’s this void of trust that makes his role a caregiver to Laura doomed to fail early on. Logan refuses to believe that Laura is a mutant—exemplified in the scene where he tries to wrestle away Laura’s backpack and she holds her own against him—because if she’s not, then he doesn’t feel as compelled to help her. “It should be dawning on him that his girl is incredibly strong and Hugh plays that. But then he keeps moving on,” Mangold says. “Then he doesn’t believe she’s a mutant, then he doesn’t believe she has special talents. Then he doesn’t want to engage in any mission.”

Still though, Logan will end up engaging in the mission as a caregiver, even if he is a reluctant one, and it’s in the course of their journey to Eden that the second major part of Kittay’s work comes into play: that of interdependence.

Mangold’s Hands: A Prologue to Interdependence

Something that Mangold brings up one the commentary is the idea of joined hands as a thematic symbol for the movie. While Mangold has his own (perfectly valid) explanations for the hands, I would say that the hands are a motif of Kittay’s interdependence, of people relying on one another. I believe this point is bolstered by the fact that Mangold’s joined hands occur at three distinct and crucial instances in the film where one of the older characters is being dependent on Laura and she is trying to comfort them. As I go through this section on interdependence, I will point out each of the joined hands moments and explain its relevance to the themes being examined.

Part II: Interdependence

From the trio of main characters present in Logan, one can derive six core pairings, three that are what I call “traditional” and three that are “inverted,” for reasons I will explain below. The three traditional pairings are that of Charles and Laura, Logan and Laura, and Logan and Charles. The first two, which we discussed at length above, are traditional connections between a child and their parent/guardian. Logan and Charles’ relationship is also fairly straightforward, at least in terms of defining it. “Ties of affection” bind Logan to Charles, his adoptive father. This pairing is traditional not only because of the family aspect, but because of Charles’ age and apparent neurological disease. Both people with degenerative diseases and the very old are often viewed as dependent, hence the “traditional” label. The “inverted” pairings then, are what happens if you switch around who is dependent on whom. The “inverted” pairings are Laura and Charles, Charles and Logan, and Laura and Logan. These pairings create unexpected caregivers and situations, but they are just as insightful as the “traditional” ones.

One of Kittay’s central ideas is that none of us is truly independent. She makes this point very broadly, saying “Dependency is found not only in the case of a young child who is dependent on a mothering person. A boss is dependent on his or her secretary. Urban populations are dependent on agricultural communities…. Professors are dependent on janitors… We are all interdependent,” but she also specifies that interdependency is present in the caregiving relationships that we’ve been discussing, saying that the assumption that those who cannot care for themselves cannot care for others is wrong. “Interdependencies of caring relationships are not only possible, they are common,” she writes. “Care may be reciprocated simultaneously.”

It’s this reciprocity that I will explore in the coming pages, as we find those who seemingly would not be very good at caring— young Laura and feeble Charles– giving care that is perhaps more profound than the simple guardianship that was explored in the first section of this paper. Much of what Laura does for Charles, and what they both do for Logan, is somewhat abstract in that it is emotional caregiving, helping the character grow or come to terms with an aspect of themselves. This emotional caregiving is, by its very nature, hard to accurately describe, but I shall endeavor to do my best and to direct the reader to scenes that I feel are emblematic of the point that I am trying to make.

The reciprocity of care in the dynamics of Logan is interesting for it is alternately entirely unintentional and at other times actively rebuked. Charles seeks to provide for and protect Laura—and she does the same for him when it’s required of her—but she seems to unintentionally reciprocate Charles’ care, granting him some emotional peace simply by being around him. The most obvious of these moments is when, following Charles’ seizure that I mentioned earlier, Laura takes his hand (that’s hand #1) and he immediately is calmed, and it’s only when she lets go does the emotion overtake him. There are also slight differences in the way that Patrick Stewart plays Charles when he’s around Laura, especially in the scene where they are just hanging out in the hotel room watching old Westerns, versus when he’s alone with Logan, make it clear that Charles feels more relaxed around Laura, more at ease.

Much like Laura serves as an impromptu anchor for Charles, so to does Charles do that for Logan. Logan, as explained earlier, is not someone who wants to embrace the heroic side of himself and he actively tries to ignore that part of himself. Charles though, knows that that noble part of Logan is still there and is continuously trying to incite that part of him to action. Logan tries to deny Charles’ reciprocal care, but he can’t, not really. Charles will always be there, Logan’s out of body conscience telling him the things that he needs to hear, even if he doesn’t want to hear them. Hence why Charles is frustrated with Logan when he refuses to help Laura and Gabriela, saying “What a disappointment you are,” and why he tries to encourage Logan to help the girl who will become, and biologically is, his daughter, by reminding Logan that he too once lead a hard life until Charles took him in and gave him a family. And as much as Logan tries to brush off Charles, his impact on Logan is profound, as evidenced by Logan’s actions following his adopted father’s death. On the run and running out of time, Logan takes time not only to bury Charles, but to find a spot to bury him by the water. The water is important since it recalls Logan’s easier promise to Charles that they would buy a boat and sail away together. Locked up in the water tank for what one can only assume to be years, the boat and the open water represented freedom for Charles, and Logan’s burying Charles by the water represents his attempt to keep that promise and to perhaps grant Charles some metaphorical freedom.

As he buries Charles, Laura walks up to him and gently takes his hand (that’s hand #2), trying to comfort her adopted father as he mourns his own. And when he’s done, standing over Charles’ grave, James “Logan” Howlett, Weapon X and the Wolverine, quietly weeps.

And then there’s Laura. If Charles was responsible for making sure Logan was a good man, then Laura taught him how to be a loving one. We are shown throughout the film that Laura truly does love Logan, and it is through this love that Laura gives him care. Logan is a person who, of his own volition, does not love people, save perhaps Charles, for, in his own words. “Bad shit happens to people I care about.” As such, as with Charles’ advice, Logan actively denies Laura’s love for him and refuses to let himself love her back for most of the film. Toward the end of the movie, Logan begins to realize that he A) does love Laura and B) should reciprocate that. He refuses to take payment for his bringing her to Eden, but Laura isn’t convinced. “Such a nice man,” Laura says, voice dripping with sarcasm. And following Logan’s line about the people he cares about, Laura looks him dead in the eyes and cooly says “Then I’ll be fine,” before rushing out, clearly hurt by Logan’s inability to admit that he loves her. Logan will eventually admit that he does, but it will take one final act of interdependence to get him to acknowledge it. In the final battle between Logan and X-24, it is clear that the odds are against Logan. He’s fighting himself in his prime, when he was faster and stronger. X-24 impales Logan on a large branch, and when it seems that all hope is lost, Laura blasts X-24’s brains out with an Adamantium bullet, ending the fight.

In his final moments, Logan is utterly dependent on Laura. He could not have won without her help. Even more than that, Laura’s killing of X-24 represents a thematic dependence of Logan on Laura. X-24 of Logan is widely regarded as the embodiment of Logan’s darkness—his time in the Weapon X program, his unbridled rage, the killer within him— and Logan can only defeat the darkness within himself with Laura—if he learns to love again. As he lay dying, Logan reaches out to grab Laura’s hand (that’s hand #3), actively loving her instead of just passively accepting her love. Logan’s final words are simple, poetic: “So this is what it feels like.” Given the context of the scene, the immediate reaction is to take “it” as death; Logan was functionally immortal and has likely never known mortal pain for very long, if at all. But in an emotional reading, the “it” is love, something Mangold confirms on the commentary. “I don’t think he just means dying,” Mangold says. “I also think he means love.” In his final moments, Logan has learned to love again, to be dependent on someone else, and by acknowledging this interdependence, he is granted serenity in death.

Logan is a masterpiece of cinema and storytelling, but it’s also a poignant study in the way that people care for each other and interdependence. The web of interdependence among the core three characters of Logan is what underlies the beautiful character moments of the film. When the characters realize their dependence or help to reciprocate the care they are given by others, Mangold and his actors craft scenes that feel so natural that it takes genuine effort to uncover the theory behind them. And maybe that’s the point. Whether or not Mangold set out to make a film that specifically was meant to “cut through the fiction of our independence,” I do not know, but it most assuredly did. Logan teaches us about Logan, but it also teaches us about us. The characters of the film are relatable not just because they’re well-written and well-acted, but because their stories are rooted in Kittay’s primal and universal interdependence, something that we have all experienced, consciously or not. And just as Logan tells Laura to “Don’t be what they made you,” so too does Logan tell us not to be what society wants to make us, i.e., entirely independent. In short, if the Wolverine can learn to be dependent on others, can’t we all?