Cassandra and The Mark of Cain
aka my analysis of the significance of the biblical story of Cain in relation to Cassandra Cain. This is a good bit of text from a doc I've been working on for a while. Please feel free to correct me if you see anything that is inaccurate.
There are spoilers for Batgirl (2000) below the cut if you haven't read yet
PART 1: Introduction
I know most people who read this will already be familiar with Cass as a character, but I feel like it's still important to lay down the basics in case anyone is new to her or, like myself, didn't read her first appearance until much later.
Cassandra Cain's first appearance happens in Batman v1 #567 in an issue titled Mark of Cain: 1 and continued in Detective Comics #734 with Mark of Cain: 2
In Mark of Cain: 1, Cassandra has an encounter with David Cain and stops him from assassinating Jim Gordon. She then tries to communicate who it was that tried to shoot Gordon and because she isn't able to communicate verbally yet she draws the symbol instead
Barbara recognizes this as The Mark of Cain, a symbol that belongs to assassin David Cain.
Gordon begins to interrogate Cassandra, asking why Cain didn't shoot her and if she knows him. Cassandra then reveals that Cain is to her what Gordon is to Barbara—her father.
Part 2: The Mark of Cain
(during this section when I refer to Cain, I'm speaking about the biblical figure unless stated otherwise)
The Mark of Cain, commonly associated with The Curse of Cain, originates from the text of Genesis. It's important to note that The Curse and The Mark are not one in the same.
The Curse was cast on Cain, firstborn son of Adam and Eve, as punishment for the murder of his brother, Abel, and for lying about the murder to God. Cain became the first murderer to roam the Earth.
The Curse (not the mark!) can be split into two parts:
Cain had cursed the Earth with Abel's blood, so the Earth refused to yield produce for him.
The most important to Cassandra as a character, the second part of the curse marks Cain a fugitive and wanderer.
The Mark of Cain, however, was God's act of mercy upon Cain, a second chance to start a new life despite the sin he had committed. It was a promise from God to Cain to protect him from premature death, specifically as a way to prevent anyone from killing him so that no one could enact vengeance on him.
If someone harmed Cain, the damage would come back seven-fold.
The Mark is the blessing, and the Curse is the punishment. Having Cassandra's first appearance be a reference to the Mark is something that instantly offers massive insight on the type of person she was meant to be, or I guess doomed to be.
In other translations, the curse is said to have condemned Cain to a life of "groaning and shaking upon the earth" and is mostly taken as a visible physical ailment, serving the purpose of warning others not to kill the trembling man.
Jewish philosopher Philo believed this curse was allegorical and, instead of being a physical ailment, was an ailment that tormented the soul—more specifically one that ripped out the positive passions of the soul—that brought forth Cain's fear of being soulless.
In Genesis Rabbah it's also said that God gave Cain a dog—the supposed first pet in history—to accompany him and protect him during his travels as Cain feared he would be killed by other murderers or wild animals. The dog is described in the same text as displaying gratitude and obedience to the master who treats them well.
This dog ultimately becomes the official sign for Cain as the animal epitomizes loyalty and, again, gratitude and obedience. Some speculate that the "Mark" given to Cain wasn't a physical bodily marking or anything metaphorical, but was actually the dog God gave Cain.
The symbol Cassandra draws is a dog. This implies that, at least in the DC universe, the Mark of Cain is tied to the dog and isn't a physical or metaphorical bodily marking.
Part 3: Connections
THE FIRST KILL:
Cassandra Cain was raised from birth to become an assassin. During this upbringing, she was deprived of human language in exchange for a perfect understanding of body language. She understands communication through physical movement the same way others would understand it through speech.
Her first assignment is to kill an unnamed business man. Believing it to be a game, the actual kill comes easily. She reaches for his neck and rips out his throat, then looks into his eyes. Because of her ability to read bodies, she sees death as her victim saw it. Terror, then nothing.
She realizes she's crossed a line she didn't know was there and that her entire reason for existence, what her father has dedicated their lives to, is wrong.
Having stained the earth with the blood of this man, Cassandra brings her fathers curse upon herself.
THE WANDERER:
Cassandra bears the weight of her sin immediately. She runs away from her father and for 8 years, she wanders the streets completely alone.
While reading Batgirl (2000), her experience is always filled with an air of loneliness. She spent 8 years of her life drifting. When she became Batgirl she didn't need the training like the other current members did. Despite her age this meant, at least to Bruce, that though she was a child she didn't really need supervision.
She's capable and strong and as long as she isn't seen in the daylight, can be left to her own devices until she's needed. This is really what contributes to her life feeling so painfully lonely (at least to the reader), especially after Barbara has to step away.
And when Cass dies, no one is there to help her. She bleeds out in the snow and all the people she cares about don't have a single clue.
The wandering seems to come around after Cassandra's perceivably killed someone and "cursed the earth with their blood". After her initial 8 years of wandering, we see this theme come up again at the end of Batgirl (2000) when Cass believes she's fatally wounded Shiva and intentionally left her to die. Her original solo run ends with this image.
"She thought she was a bat. but she came to find she wasn't that either. She was only a runaway girl...named Cain."
Cassandra, as someone who bears the Mark, has this fear we see throughout her story that she might be wrong, that maybe nature can't be changed and she'll always find herself spilling blood again. Doomed to be a wanderer for the rest of her life and forced to bear the curse of her father.
Second Chances:
The Mark of Cain was God giving Cain a second chance. Cassandra is a devout believer in this opportunity for change. Even when some might feel it's undeserved, she believes that everyone should get that second chance. That everyone is capable of change.
This all stems from her own insecurity regarding her perception of herself. If she's capable of change, especially with the cards she's been played in life, then everyone should be.
And if everyone isn't capable of change, maybe she never was either and all that she's worked towards has been for nothing, reiterating her fear of being unable to fight against her nature. Cassandra believes her nature is to kill and, in a way, she's right.
In issue #15 of Batgirl (2000) she's hit with a ray that doesn't make you kill but makes you DECIDE to kill. Your brain creates a scenario that justifies killing and, for most, it can take a few minutes to an hour.
For Cassandra, it was instant.
Though in this issue she hadn't actually taken a life, she committed the act in her mind within a scenario that felt real. No time was wasted in creating said scenario as though something within her was just waiting for the opportunity.
She has to believe that she can change. She has to believe that second chances work and that her nature can be fought against. She has to believe that someday there will be no scenario that ever drives her to kill again.
This is why I partially believe Cass not only bears the Curse of Cain, but is the physical embodiment of the Mark of Cain. We know that Cass has killed, we know she bears the curse, so why were her two introduction stories titled with the Mark?
She's her fathers daughter, his greatest work. She's his blood and his sweat both in the physical and the metaphorical sense as his project and his child.
Cassandra simultaneously bears the curse because she is his daughter, and is the blessing because she is his daughter.
She represents second chances at the same time she represents punishment.
THE SOUL:
The soul is a theme that haunts Cass no matter how far she wanders. She. unlike her bat family members, will never be able to fully understand what its like to be one of them. Her experiences have left her with a limited vocabulary, intense suicidal ideation, and no experience or understanding of social skills or cues as a result of the intense abuse and isolation she endured as a child.
She struggles to hold complex conversations not because she's incapable of complex thought, but because she doesn't have the words to express herself with and is often misunderstood as a result. Others see her as off-putting, weird, and worst of all, frightening.
Her formative years were wasted away and she was found far too late to have her habits—instincts—corrected. She was doomed from the beginning, born as someone beyond saving.
She communicates on a wavelength no one understands quite like herself. Her mother tongue is a language that belongs to the people who have hurt her. Cassandra Cain is a person, but she very rarely feels like one.
The Curse of Cain brings on a fear of soullessness. In issue #45 of Batgirl (2000) a drug called 'Soul' is rapidly spreading through Gotham that supposedly judges its host and punishes or rewards them accordingly. If you're a good person, Soul feels good. If you're bad, Soul will put you through hell.
Cassandra saves a woman who was nearly attacked by a man, both of who were high on Soul, and the woman is frightened of her. Her first instinct is to call her a monster, and the next is to accuse her of being cold and empty. Of having no life, no love, and no soul.
All seen through her eyes, through her body.
Cass doesn't have a dedicated nemesis and though she often runs into Batman's rogues, they hold very little significance to her. Despite being one of the best martial artists in the DC Universe, her story has never really been about the fight. Her story revolves around learning how to be a person, a real person. Not mimicry or imitation, but someone real.
She borrows Barbara's old Batgirl suit, revealing her eyes and mouth. She makes herself more palatable, less frightening. She sacrifices parts of herself to feel more human and quickly learns that it doesn't feel the way she hoped it would. She's experienced life in two different ways: a weapon and a girl.
Neither are kind to her, but at least one is familiar. She puts the old suit back on.
In the issue that follows, Cassandra accidentally takes Soul.
Her mind can't decide on how to judge her, but she first hallucinates others judging her. Bruce and her father side by side speaking of her weakness and wasted potential, Barbara stressing her fragility and wanting her to be more social, to let her be a teenage girl, while the teenage boys in her life uncomfortably sexualize her for the same thing.
Eventually, the judgement falls to herself. Her subconscious does seem to split in two and those two halves begin to argue over her verdict.
The Soul makes its judgement.
If Soul judges you based off your own sub conscious, then we see Cass as what she truly sees herself as. She wants to see herself as good, but was born for something else.
She thinks she's someone who can DO good, but will never BE good. She can pretend to be a person, but she'll never really be one of them.
THE DOG:
As previously mentioned, Cassandra bears the Curse and, if she really IS the physical embodiment of the Mark, the Mark makes her a representation of the dog that God gives Cain.
A dog who, again, epitomizes loyalty, gratitude, and obedience. All traits we see in Cassandra, traits she follows to a fault.
Cassandra being representative of the Dog adds some more uncomfortable insight to her story. She's been trained from birth and molded into something perfect, taught to speak through actions instead of words, treated essentially like an animal. She expects this treatment and feels uncomfortable when shes treated otherwise.
Meeting Barbara was her first step towards learning that she deserved something more but even then, she was dedicated to serving a purpose as a courier for Oracle. She was looking for someone to give her orders, something to belong to. Barbara made the mistake of eventually loving her like a person.
When Barbara offers her humanity (freedom, choice, care), she has no idea how to accept it because she's never really been human before. It's because of this that Cassandra finds greater comfort in being around Bruce, who deeply cares for her but—and especially in the earlier issues—treats her the way she's used to being treated. Like a dog.
Going back to the earlier reference to Genesis Rabbah, Cain's dog displays gratitude and obedience to the master who treats them well. The different ways Bruce and Barbara treat Cass tend to tear her in two.
Barbara wants to offer her humanity, to break away from what she's been raised for and become something new, someone free. Bruce offers her the comfort that David Cain once offered her. Work, pain, a sense of purpose. Cassandra finds in Bruce what she used to find in her father, and what is she without a purpose?
Bruce and Barbara engage in a kind of tug of war custody battle with her for a lot of her run. It's impossible to tell which one is 'treating her well' because someone like her is brand new to them. She had no one to raise for a significant portion of her life and was never socialized. She can't be trained like Bruce's other proteges because her weakness has never been her abilities, and she's technically Barbara's ward.
They have no idea what it means to treat her well, and neither does she. Cassandra only knows what she's been trained for and the line she refuses to cross. How do you raise a child that believes they're a dog awaiting punishment? Is she a 'bad dog'?
