Taking the Hulk apart

he Hulk is an examination of repression and expression.

Bruce Banner represents the timid, shy person we can all be at times who conflicts with the loud, uncaring industrialized modern world. The Hulk represents that breaking point where we've all had enough and we snap.

The Hulk's "child like mind" is a a metaphor for the shunning of social graces, because the action of losing one's temper isn't perceived as mature. When you lose you temper you don't think about societal convention and political correctness. You explode and say what you really feel and sometimes act without forethought. That's the Hulk to the nth degree. He's what happens when a man let's go fueled by a scientific radioactive phenomenon.

As for why he's so strong? It probably has less to do directly with the gamma radiation and more to do with the auspices under which he was created. Remember- Bruce Banner is a mixture of Dr. Jekyll (repressed Scientist/ mad beast-man), Einstein (quiet, timid scientist who wore the same clothes every day while working on the atom bomb- like Bruce used to with the tacky purple suits) and Robert Oppenheimer (built the hydrogen bomb in the dessert and it was tested there like Banner's Gamma Bomb).

When Oppenheimer's bomb went off people say there was a "crack" in the sky. Like reality itself had been broken open. Bombs of large magnitudes do crazy things. It's my thinking that the Hulk is so vastly powerful because of a mixture of three things that could have created three separate mutations in one person.

1. Exposure to vast amounts of gamma radiation. This mutated his cellular structure. He instinctively wanted to survive and therefore tapped into the energies unleashed by the explosion.

2. Said energies which do not normally exist on this plane were channeled through his body in the form of mass, strength, and healing properties. His body is able to withstand this change because of the mutative properties of the radiation.

3. The phenomenon or mutation also allows him to tap into the rest of his brain power. Not necessarily to make him smarter, but to channel the energies in the rift.

It's probably like a valve. The mutation is triggered, he taps a bit of this power and becomes bigger and stronger. As he gets angrier- he instinctively taps more and more thus making his strength go up. Kind of like how the body releases adrenalin when a person experiences extreme emotions. As his rage begins to subside, the valve closes and he mutates back to his original state.