The Appeal of Mjolnir

Mjolnir seems to hold the bulk of the unconscious appeal for Thor stories, in my opinion, by being a magical validation device that any audience member who strives to be a good person would want to have.

I struggle to find a central ethos for Thor as a character on his own. It would seemingly be his insurmountable worthiness, since he is the only one good-natured enough to wield Mjolnir, but I fail to find something about his personality that sets him apart from his fellow Asgardians and his fellow superheroes to make him especially "worthy", when there are plenty of other extremely humble and valiant people in the world. Frankly I think this is proven by the excitement that audiences feel when characters like Captain America and Superman are able to wield the hammer -- those instances feel so satisfying and earned because we completely understand what makes those characters so worthy, so we feel they deserve the hammer wholeheartedly. But with Thor it is almost taken for granted that he can lift the hammer because of some unclear aspect of himself, like his general humility or nobility. If we had the same clear understanding of what makes Thor a good enough person to wield Mjolnir as we have for Captain America, we likely would not even want to see Captain America upstage him in that way. We would want Thor's worthiness to stand above. But alas his worthiness is murky, and so his character seems, to me, to be the least interesting aspect of the Asgardian corner of the Marvel Universe.

But Mjolnir on the other hand carries some resonance and a tremendous unconscious appeal:

A person attempts to be a good person and faces insecurities in the process -- am I good enough? Am I truly good, or am I selfish and just obfuscating it with a layer of performative morality? Can others see that I am good? If others judge me as a bad person, is their judgement more valuable than mine since I carry a bias towards myself that they lack?

A person attempting to be good has to address these questions of self-doubt in two steps. (1) They must perceive themselves using critical assessment, to see if there is actual evidence of their personality being good. Then if they discover that they are indeed a good person logically-speaking, they must (2) validate themselves as good to acknowledge it and build confidence based on it. Validation is usually the difficult part. You can validate yourself mentally, or you can seek validation from others, but the trouble is that we are organisms that always seek to improve ourselves, so we find it challenging to rest on our laurels and are much more comfortable criticizing ourselves in order to motivate improvement -- even if we are addressing an area that does not require improvement. It is a human paradox: it is hard to accept ourselves as good enough when at the same time we are always striving to be better.

So you may try to validate yourself in your head, saying that you are trying your best and that you have done nothing with malice and that you are indeed good -- but this inexplicably rings hollow sometimes. It becomes hard to believe yourself. So you seek validation from others (which can be hard to find sometimes), and you are told that you are loveable and likeable and that you make lives better around you -- but you question everything with your self-improvement-driven insecurity and doubt their words, assuming they are just being polite. You just want to be confident in your goodness because that leads to confidence in the rest of your personality (given that most people consider "being a good person" among the highest achievements in life, so reaching that status is invigorating).

So now imagine that there was an objective, magical, flawless, perfect way to know whether you are a good person or not. A device that is beyond thought or feeling, but something that reaches into the abstract to find the truth about you. Mjolnir is the ultimate validation. It tells you that if you can lift it, then you are worthy, beyond a shadow of a doubt. There is no questioning needed, there are no mistakes possible, there is no bias present. "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor" may be rephrased to, "Whosoever holds this hammer is worthy of the power of Thor".

I believe the hammer bears a strong unconscious appeal to our desire for validation. Owning Mjolnir is a wish fulfillment prospect. When we want to be a good person and confident in being so, we can only rely on ourselves and others for reassurance -- but a magical object that would do that for us would be a dream come true for anyone who is striving to be worthy, and wants to evaluate themselves as plainly as possible.