Did Madara get a Fitting Death?

It's not arrogance if you're that good.

If you follow Naruto, you should know Madara died in the latest chapter.

There was no climatic final battle. It was a quiet, peaceful death.

Some may dislike it, but it was a fitting end for him.

Many expected a climactic battle. Some just wanted to see him get his teeth kicked in. Others waited for the moment where Naruto uses Talk no Jutsu and shows him the error of his ways.

None of those happened.

Instead Madara is stabbed in the back by Zetsu and later dies after no longer having the Juubi sealed into him (unlike Obito, he didn’t get to keep the Gedo Mazo).

In a way, we were robbed that last battle. Many people hated Madara and wanted to see him lose. 

Others really liked him and wanted to see him treated with more respect.

Kishimoto, for better or worse, rarely goes along with reader expectations.

Madara represents the past in all its bloody glory. 

He is from the time where little kids died every other day, caught in clan wars that began before they were born and continued after they died.

More than that, Madara represents the certainty that thing won’t change. It doesn’t matter how much you clean it up, people will hate each other and wars will happen.

Thematically, that’s why the Five Kage couldn’t beat him. They are the keepers of the ninja system, which sucks.

This is also what makes Madara different from Obito.

Obito is someone who loses hope in the present world as a result of one bad day.

Madara becomes disillusioned with the state of the world as a whole due to repeated experiences. By the time he first appears chronologically, he has already lost four brothers.

By the time the village is founded, he realizes the guy who killed his last remaining brother is an Uchiha hating ass who is going to be Hokage.

Things don’t change. In fact according to the little stone table in his basement, things have been this way forever.

And really? He is not exactly wrong. Ninja had decades to clean up their act during the village era. They didn’t.

While Obito chooses to abandon his identity out of nihilism, Madara turns himself into something more.

Unlike Obito he does not need to be validated. Instead, he elevates his own name to a symbol, the symbol of the savior of this world.

He is Uchiha Madara.

He is the solution. He is the only guy who has it right in the world and he is the only one who can fix the world.

He is utterly and completely unyielding in his view and he can be that way because they are the result of hard earned experience as opposed to simple despair.

Madara is the one who rises up against the system the ninja world has created, trusting on no one but himself.

Ironically, that’s why he is defeated by Zetsu.

Zetsu is the fly in the soup.

Zetsu is the one who kick started the ninja era. He is the taint that bred wars and hatred. He is the one who represents the ninja system more than anyone.

Ultimately, Madara falls prey to the ninja system he so hated. He doesn’t fall to the new wave. He falls to the older one. Just like the Kage fell to him.  

Hatred breeds hatred. Live by the sword and die by the sword. Someone who lost faith in everyone was betrayed by something he thought was his will.

Madara’s story is not the story of a villain that gets defeated by the protagonist and shown the error of his ways.

Madara’s story is the one of someone betrayed by the world repeatedly.

In the end, Madara does not really go back on his views.

His talk with Hashirama, touching though it was, does not contain an admission of wrongdoing.

All Hashirama gets is the admission that he could probably have relied on others more.

That does not mean, he has changed his beliefs on the basic nature of mankind. It does not really mean he thinks he is wrong about the world.

Madara dies, betrayed and with his dream in pieces.

His unyielding spirit shall remain.