57195


Some were saying that Light's insanity was influenced by the use of the Death
Note, taking note that Ryuk tells Light about what the Death Note makes people
fear and so on. But having rewatched the first episode, Light tells Ryuk that
creating a utopia with the Death Note needs to be done even if it costs you
your sanity, so it occurred to me that this was the cause for Light's insanity
over the series and not the Death Note, since his main madness is about
winning and not about the Death Note.

Then again, in the manga Light's behavior is a little different than in the
anime, when Light fears in his bed and mentions his nightmares (and I don't
remember Light saying the above in the manga) while in the anime such behavior
is not mentioned at all, so it might even be some difference between the anime
and the manga.

Anyway, the question is: what influences Light's insanity, the Death Note or
his godly craziness, and does this differ between the anime and manga?

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hhh62.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hhh62.jpg)


CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-27T23:21:22.937
56645
2020-04-09T00:45:24.937
2020-01-29T15:10:02.623
35679
51620
question
death-note
Is Light's insanity influenced by the Death Note, or did he make himself become that way?


I think it is just Light in his pure essence, what I mean is that he is like
that, but the power of having the Death Note motivates him to show his darkest
side, no more limits or fear.


CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-04-01T22:40:59.133
57134
2020-04-02T01:01:46.473
2020-04-02T01:01:46.473
7579
52556
56645
answer


I've only read the manga, but from what I remember, the relationship between
Light's craziness and the Death Note is complicated. The Death Note
facilitates a lot of the steps he takes on the road to craziness, but things
could have played out very differently if not for elements of Light's
personality that we either see very early or can infer from what we know about
his past. (Spoilers ahead, by the way.)

At the beginning of the series, Light is in his late teens, has grown up
comfortably in a middle class modern Japanese family, and has been a popular,
handsome, academically gifted student his entire life. People have been
telling Light his whole life how wonderful and smart he is. This upbringing
could easily make a person think very highly of themselves. And it could also
easily make a person look down on others who aren't as smart or handsome as
they are.

The Death Note drops into his lap, and after getting over his initial
disbelief, Light comes up with an idea. He plots out a whole plan to change
the world by killing criminals with the Death Note, eventually using the fear
he creates to discourage all crime, and even merely unpleasant behaviors. For
anyone to believe they know how the entire world should be organized is
arrogant. For an eighteen-year-old who's never experienced anything but
comfortable living and people telling him how smart and handsome and wonderful
he is, it's the most ridiculous heights of arrogance. But Light barely
questions himself. He does get scared and hide under his covers in one scene,
but he's just committed his first murder and found out the Death Note is real,
so there's a lot going on there. He ultimately does decide to enact his plan.

He starts using the Death Note to enact his plan, catching L's attention. He
fights to stay ahead of L, and later Near and Mello, using every resource
available to him. He takes obvious pleasure in winning and in manipulating
other people, such as Misa and the police on the task force. He becomes more
and more sure that he knows how the world should be run, and takes steps to
solidify his control. When he finally does lose in the end, he doesn't go down
gracefully. He screams, blames his allies, hurls insults, and tries to kill
one last person with the scrap of Death Note hidden in his watch before being
shot by Matsuda and then finally killed off by Ryuk.

There was definitely something in Light's personality that made him think his
will should be imposed on the world. There was definitely an arrogance that
made him think he was morally superior enough to start killing people to
achieve his goals. But without the Death Note, he would never have had the
tools to do what he did. So in that sense, the Death Note made him a murderer;
with the tool for easy, consequence-free murder in front of him, he went right
ahead and used it. The way he thinks about what he's doing seems to shift as
things go on. Murder becomes less and less of an issue for him, and he shifts
from murdering only criminals to murdering just about anyone who gets in his
way, including his own father. And that too probably wouldn't have happened
without the Death Note. The Death Note made murdering easy, convenient, and
consequence-free (or so he thought, since he believed he could outwit anyone
who came after him). He already looked down on other people. In his most
charitable moments he thought of them as poor benighted fools who needed his
protection. Usually he thought of them more as either pawns he could
manipulate or roadblocks to be destroyed, and he shifts more and more to that
way of thinking as the series goes on. So as he commits more and more murders,
the idea of committing one more, of killing one more disposable inferior
human, barely registers as a concern. So he kept murdering, and got in too
deep.

But at the moment L started coming after him, Light could have decided it
wasn't worth the risk and stopped using the Death Note. He didn't, because his
arrogance would never allow him to admit defeat. When L pulls the trick with
Lind L. Tailor and gets Light to kill his double on a global TV broadcast,
Light doesn't get spooked and back down and sink into obscurity. He ramps up,
declaring war on L, and that spirals out into everything else that happens
after that point. So his personality, his arrogance, pushed him into the
situation where he had to kill more and more people to stay ahead. That's all
on Light; the Death Note didn't make him do it.


CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-04-09T00:45:24.937
57195
2020-04-09T00:45:24.937
7579
56645
answer