The Escapist

In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Joe and Sammy's superhero The Escapist was pretty much a very strong and skilled escape artist. No chains, locks, or anything could keep him from serving up justice. This character was very sentimental to Joe because he himself was a practicing escape artist back in Prague and aspired to be like Harry Houdini. Joe also admired The Escapist because being a Jew escaped from Prague, he felt that the Germans were holding him and his family down and he so desperately wished to escape that he started picking fights with every German he saw in order to exact his revenge(if you would call it that). At the end of the book when The Escapist had to finally be retired due to a lawsuit, it hit Joe pretty hard. Although he didn't show it, he felt that something inside of him had died.