Batman’s arc centers on the conflict between his actions and his ideals when it comes to his relationships with other people. As he searches for Jason among the ruins of the warehouse in the beginning of Chapter 5, he reflects on the history of their relationship and realizes that he has used Jason to fulfill ulterior personal motives: 

It’s just that I felt so adrift when I lost Dick Grayson as a partner. The Batman needed a Robin. But that was a different, less dangerous time. I guess the truth is that I was lonely…didn’t want to go it alone. So what do I do? Bring a young innocent into this mad game… (100). 

Batman spends the early chapters criticizing and punishing Jason for his self-interested impulses, but across the storyline, Batman begins to recognize that he himself has been using Jason to address his personal needs as an isolated crimefighter when he should have focused on giving Jason a nurturing environment to work through the emotional traumas of his early life. Had he prioritized Jason’s well-being instead of his own, he would have helped Jason grow and heal from his past trauma. Instead, Bruce leveraged Jason’s trauma and encouraged him to become Robin, following the same trajectory that he himself followed to become Batman, perpetuating a cyclical pattern.

Throughout the storyline, both Bruce and Jason see the people in their lives through the lens of their own needs rather than as individuals with needs and desires of their own. Jason fixates on the idea of his birth mother as a requisite to give his life clear purpose and meaning. He’s quick to believe that finding his birth mother will help him achieve an emotional stability in his life, and he doesn’t stop to consider other possibilities for his birth mother’s true character outside of his constructed ideal. The three women he meets during his quest all pose various challenges to the notion that such a relationship could bring his life stability. They are all engaged in some form of warfare or exploitation that only serves to complicate Jason’s life further rather than stabilizing it. Jason ultimately discovers that he’s viewed the idea of his birth mother as a means to an end, rather than considering the realities of her as a person.

The failure to see people as anything more than a means to an end puts Batman and Robin on the same footing as the Joker, who openly models a ruthless desire to use those around him for his own ends. The Joker has no sympathy or emotional attachment to anyone other than himself, which is why he’s quick to betray Sheila and his henchmen once they no longer serve his purposes. The fact that Sheila’s betrayal occurs immediately after she hands Robin over to him underscores his indifference to the needs or desires of other people. Once he has completed his plans in the Middle East, the Joker kills his henchmen with the same laughing gas he uses to murder the prison guards and his targets at the United Nations. To the Joker, everyone is a means to achieve the ultimate end: his own satisfaction. To see people as means to an end allows him to justify his way of looking at the world.