Post by Frisil (the clueless prince) on Oct 21, 2006 18:23:28 GMT -5
I'm just saving them over from the gamefaq board before they get deleted for being too old. Here are my posts again, in case anyone is interested in them....
symbolism: ropes, fish-like airships and mermaids (SPOILERS!)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My thoughts on symbolism in this game: When we look at the fish-tank in the final chapter, there is a model of the orphanage at the bottom and the fish is slowly swimming above. That's why the airship is depicted as a fish flying/swimming above the orphanage in the opening movie. This puts the whole game into the microcosm of a fish tank, which we (the players) see as neutral observers, like the children watching a fish-tank. I think this should symbolize that the events in the game are not accurate, but blurred childhood memories. In these, both the airship and the fish played an important role: The airship is obvieous (Jen's parents died in the crash) and the fish is reported missing in the teacher's diary. In the mermaid chapter, he scolds Diana for having done something, I believe she took the fish, killed it (we find a knive and a severed fish head), cut a doll in half and combined both into a mermaid doll, as Jen finds in the fish tank in the end of the mermaid chapter. The mermaid boss is obvieously Diana, perhaps she was punished by the others in that way: When you take a close look at the mermaid boss, you can see it is not a real mermaid at all, her legs are completely tied up and her feet held crossed by the rope so that they look like a fishtail. The boss is vomiting acid, too, so I think they tied Diana up like this and swang her around on a rope until she was sick, maybe they even beat her with sticks while doing so. Jennifer took part in this torture, and so she re-lives this as a boss fight in the game, hitting a real mermaid-monster with a steel pipe instead of a tied-up Diana with a stick. At this point she is still in denial of really belonging to this children's society, so she justifies taking part in this torture by twisting it into a fight for survival. This may seem bizzare at first, but it fits perfectly with Meg's notebook (spinnig chair and onion bag, as the person in the bag is also tied up, as we can see in her drawing) and the mood of the game. The princess (Wendy) seems obsessed with tying up people (and things) and also considers it as apropriate punishment, as revealed when she has Jen tied to the pole in the beginnig, telling her that bad girls must be punished. Together with all the inanimate things tied, like the teddy bear and furniture everywhere, this is like a supernatural force holding together everything in the environment, as the children's society is under Wendy's thrall. This force outlived its master and became self-sustaining, as Wendy's thrall remains after she fell from power, now symbolized by the teddy bear and the doll tied together. Now it became kind of a supernatural evil force (in the view of the children) and its beasts (in relation to Golding/Lord of the flies) are the imps with their broomsticks und brushes, keeping order by keeping things clean. No need to elaborate on imps with beast-heads like pigs and goats, I think). The symbol of this force is ropes, because Wendy tried to tie Jen to her (last chapter symbolic opening animation, as another poster already mentioned) and she is aiming to control everything by tying it down and (sometimes even litterally) pulling the strings (as leading stray dog with a rope around his neck to the orphanage to slaughter the children when she lost her control over them).
Update: I now admit the mermaid was Clara, I mistook her for Diana. However, it does not change what I think the boss battle stands for, just the victim was someone else.
On the Hoffman Boss Battle
-----------------------------------
I don't think Hoffman was tied up by the aristocrats literally, but his authority was undermined by the rule of rose. This is what the boss battle with him shows, he is not tied up to a point of being helpless and unable to move, but he is kind of crippled by all the ropes around his body. In his diary, he wrote he mostly left because of Jen, the new girl. Now what did Jen do to him? She didn't harm him directly, but she beat Wendy from her position in power of the club, leaving it vacant and causing the rule of rose to become self-sustaining. This force (not a supernatural, but a social one), symbolized by the ropes, crippled Hoffman's authority and position as headmaster, creating a situation for him where he could only resort to violence (as shown in the boss battle) or give up and leave, what he really did. I think Hoffman never used physical violence, but he thought he was able to hijack the aristocrats' mindgames for his own purpose to get authority over the children. He used the talk about imps and stray dog punishing children who won't clean up to get the children to work, by backing up these fears. At a certain point, this completely backfired on him, causing him to lose control over the group, as happend to Wendy before him. Fear and irrationality became stronger than the authority of the headmaster; unwiling to accept and to admid this failure, he could only run away and blame the situation getting out of control on Jennifer, the new girl.
On Wendy and Jennifer
------------------------------
I have found some clues to ponder on:
1. In the funeral chapter, Jen is humiliated by the others who ignore her and throw papers at her. These papers accuse her of lying and stealing. What did she steal?
2. The lying princess is Wendy, as the next chapter reveals, not Jen. So why is Jen accused of lying?
3. In the last scene, Jen leaves Brown tied to a pole when she exits the hut. This scene completely parallels the scenes when Jen was tied to a quite similar pole. Yet, here Jen is the captor.
4. When examining the speaker system in the last chapter, Jen ponders on the headmaster never saying her name at all.
5. If I remember correctly, we never really see Wendy in the position of the Princess of the Red rose, save for the scene when Jen attacks her.
6. When playing through the last chapters, I always thought it was a strange parallel that first Jen is Joshua for Gregory, then she leaves and Wendy takes over that role.
7. At the orphanage, everyone lived in the dorm, except for Jennifer who had her own room, the filth room for unwashed clothing. Why was she living in that room and not in the dorm as everyone else?
Now here are some ideas on these clues:
The facts that the headmaster never spoke Jen's name, that she wasn't in the dorm and that everyone was just ignoring her on the funeral day hint to the idea that she didn't exist at all! But of course, this is not possible, as she is the protagonist of the game and it wouldn't make any sense without her. So maybe she was someone else then? In the other clues I mentioned, there is some blurring goinig on between Jen and Wendy (who was the liar) and a lot of hidden parallels between these two. So can it anyhow be possible that Jen and Wendy WERE THE SAME PERSON?
I have been pondering on this idea and it doesn't seem to make really sense, but I can't get it out of my head... but I don't really believe that, either. As it would mean that Jen was an imaginary friend of Wendy (or vice versa), that one of these characters was just made up by the other to compensate for her loneliness. Then again, what about the fight of these two and Brown? This would mean that Wendy had the dog killed without reason, just for cruelty's sake or to show the others how gross she can be to make them fear her? Or was it just Jennifer being forced by the others to burry her beloved dog, just another torment as the usually inflicted on her? That moment she snapped, went back to Greogory and made him kill the others? Another strange parallel: Jennifer had a dog (Brown) and Wendy did some dog-training with Gregory, as we learn from Martha's notes. If they were the same person, so Brown was Gregory? Jennifer was just a softened version of Wendy and Brown a softened version of Gregory, as in her memory the corpses of children were replaced by softened versions, too (just clothes, no bodies). Jennifer doing all this item serching with Brown in the game was in reality Wendy dog-training Gregory to kill the others? This seems very far fetched to me, but these clues must mean something! In the end, Jennifer leaves this place leaving Wendy behind a locked gate and locks Brown in the shack, vowing to protect him, but the closing door and ceasing light hints to being final, that she will not return. Protect him as a softened memory/lie of something that was far darker in reality, as she left Wendy behind the gate, her persona who actually was resposible for the killing of the children? So in the end, did she actually come to terms with her past, or was it just the final stage of denial, now blaming an imaginary person left behind for having caused Gregory to slaughter the children as revenge for all they did to her (tying to the pole, onion bag, etc.).
I don't think all of this makes sense and it seems far-fetched to me, but these parallels and clues must mean something!
Update: I don't really believe in the idea that Wendy and Jennifer are the same person, but I still like the idea too much to abandon it completely. Although most of my clues can be explained otherwise. On the other hand, as everything takes place in Jennifers mind only, everyone is just a persona of Jennifer based on a real person she knew in her past. So we do only know very little of how these persons really were and what really took place.
On the imps and ijime
----------------------------
"I knew what they really were... but that wasn't the problem. The real problem was my weak heart. My weakness was what drew them here." is what Jennifer says about the imps in the final chapter. So what were they really?
I read this passage as follows: She knew (=PAST=>she knew even as a child) what they were (=the other children, dressed up and hazing her) but it still got to her as she was really afraid. Being a child who is dizzed, mistreated and attacked by everyone, it doesn't matter if it's imps or demons harrassing you, or other children, the effect is the same, live becomes hell! I think that's what she meant. The line "my weakness drew them here" means that she was an outsider and too weak to stand up against the others, so when they saw her weakness, she became the victim. This is how children-related violence always works (e.g. in schools): the weakest outsider becomes the victim the other turn to in order to feel stronger. As this is a Japanese game, we need to think of a Japanese concept: ijime. Ijime is a social phenomenon in Japan, often translated as 'bullying', but that translation does not really do justice to it, as ijime is more than bullying: it is collective, has more method, is kind of planned and aims to really do severe psychological harm to the outsider, often driving him or her to suicide. The idea behind it is: Everyone has to sacrifice personal freedom to fit into the strict Japanese society, if you don't do that and take freedom for yourself that no-one else has, society will crush you!
I think the developers wanted this game to be an allegory on ijime, the ridiculous Rule of Rose is the strictness of Japanese society and Jennifer a victim of ijime, what the imps stand for. Unfortunatly, only very view people outside of Japan can understand it. I only know about this stuff because I did my final oral university exams on studies about school violence and bullying in Europe, America and Japan.
BIG THANKS TO EVERYONE DISCUSSING MY IDEAS ON THE GAMEFAQS BOARD, AS THESE DISCUSSIONS GAVE ME INTERESTING NEW INSIGHTS AND NEW IDEAS TO PONDER ON. I DON'T REMEMBER EVERYONES' NAMES (and I am too lazy to look them all up) BUT I HEREBY ACKKNOWLEDGE YOUR INFLUENCE ON MY IDEAS AND THE UPDATES. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!
symbolism: ropes, fish-like airships and mermaids (SPOILERS!)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My thoughts on symbolism in this game: When we look at the fish-tank in the final chapter, there is a model of the orphanage at the bottom and the fish is slowly swimming above. That's why the airship is depicted as a fish flying/swimming above the orphanage in the opening movie. This puts the whole game into the microcosm of a fish tank, which we (the players) see as neutral observers, like the children watching a fish-tank. I think this should symbolize that the events in the game are not accurate, but blurred childhood memories. In these, both the airship and the fish played an important role: The airship is obvieous (Jen's parents died in the crash) and the fish is reported missing in the teacher's diary. In the mermaid chapter, he scolds Diana for having done something, I believe she took the fish, killed it (we find a knive and a severed fish head), cut a doll in half and combined both into a mermaid doll, as Jen finds in the fish tank in the end of the mermaid chapter. The mermaid boss is obvieously Diana, perhaps she was punished by the others in that way: When you take a close look at the mermaid boss, you can see it is not a real mermaid at all, her legs are completely tied up and her feet held crossed by the rope so that they look like a fishtail. The boss is vomiting acid, too, so I think they tied Diana up like this and swang her around on a rope until she was sick, maybe they even beat her with sticks while doing so. Jennifer took part in this torture, and so she re-lives this as a boss fight in the game, hitting a real mermaid-monster with a steel pipe instead of a tied-up Diana with a stick. At this point she is still in denial of really belonging to this children's society, so she justifies taking part in this torture by twisting it into a fight for survival. This may seem bizzare at first, but it fits perfectly with Meg's notebook (spinnig chair and onion bag, as the person in the bag is also tied up, as we can see in her drawing) and the mood of the game. The princess (Wendy) seems obsessed with tying up people (and things) and also considers it as apropriate punishment, as revealed when she has Jen tied to the pole in the beginnig, telling her that bad girls must be punished. Together with all the inanimate things tied, like the teddy bear and furniture everywhere, this is like a supernatural force holding together everything in the environment, as the children's society is under Wendy's thrall. This force outlived its master and became self-sustaining, as Wendy's thrall remains after she fell from power, now symbolized by the teddy bear and the doll tied together. Now it became kind of a supernatural evil force (in the view of the children) and its beasts (in relation to Golding/Lord of the flies) are the imps with their broomsticks und brushes, keeping order by keeping things clean. No need to elaborate on imps with beast-heads like pigs and goats, I think). The symbol of this force is ropes, because Wendy tried to tie Jen to her (last chapter symbolic opening animation, as another poster already mentioned) and she is aiming to control everything by tying it down and (sometimes even litterally) pulling the strings (as leading stray dog with a rope around his neck to the orphanage to slaughter the children when she lost her control over them).
Update: I now admit the mermaid was Clara, I mistook her for Diana. However, it does not change what I think the boss battle stands for, just the victim was someone else.
On the Hoffman Boss Battle
-----------------------------------
I don't think Hoffman was tied up by the aristocrats literally, but his authority was undermined by the rule of rose. This is what the boss battle with him shows, he is not tied up to a point of being helpless and unable to move, but he is kind of crippled by all the ropes around his body. In his diary, he wrote he mostly left because of Jen, the new girl. Now what did Jen do to him? She didn't harm him directly, but she beat Wendy from her position in power of the club, leaving it vacant and causing the rule of rose to become self-sustaining. This force (not a supernatural, but a social one), symbolized by the ropes, crippled Hoffman's authority and position as headmaster, creating a situation for him where he could only resort to violence (as shown in the boss battle) or give up and leave, what he really did. I think Hoffman never used physical violence, but he thought he was able to hijack the aristocrats' mindgames for his own purpose to get authority over the children. He used the talk about imps and stray dog punishing children who won't clean up to get the children to work, by backing up these fears. At a certain point, this completely backfired on him, causing him to lose control over the group, as happend to Wendy before him. Fear and irrationality became stronger than the authority of the headmaster; unwiling to accept and to admid this failure, he could only run away and blame the situation getting out of control on Jennifer, the new girl.
On Wendy and Jennifer
------------------------------
I have found some clues to ponder on:
1. In the funeral chapter, Jen is humiliated by the others who ignore her and throw papers at her. These papers accuse her of lying and stealing. What did she steal?
2. The lying princess is Wendy, as the next chapter reveals, not Jen. So why is Jen accused of lying?
3. In the last scene, Jen leaves Brown tied to a pole when she exits the hut. This scene completely parallels the scenes when Jen was tied to a quite similar pole. Yet, here Jen is the captor.
4. When examining the speaker system in the last chapter, Jen ponders on the headmaster never saying her name at all.
5. If I remember correctly, we never really see Wendy in the position of the Princess of the Red rose, save for the scene when Jen attacks her.
6. When playing through the last chapters, I always thought it was a strange parallel that first Jen is Joshua for Gregory, then she leaves and Wendy takes over that role.
7. At the orphanage, everyone lived in the dorm, except for Jennifer who had her own room, the filth room for unwashed clothing. Why was she living in that room and not in the dorm as everyone else?
Now here are some ideas on these clues:
The facts that the headmaster never spoke Jen's name, that she wasn't in the dorm and that everyone was just ignoring her on the funeral day hint to the idea that she didn't exist at all! But of course, this is not possible, as she is the protagonist of the game and it wouldn't make any sense without her. So maybe she was someone else then? In the other clues I mentioned, there is some blurring goinig on between Jen and Wendy (who was the liar) and a lot of hidden parallels between these two. So can it anyhow be possible that Jen and Wendy WERE THE SAME PERSON?
I have been pondering on this idea and it doesn't seem to make really sense, but I can't get it out of my head... but I don't really believe that, either. As it would mean that Jen was an imaginary friend of Wendy (or vice versa), that one of these characters was just made up by the other to compensate for her loneliness. Then again, what about the fight of these two and Brown? This would mean that Wendy had the dog killed without reason, just for cruelty's sake or to show the others how gross she can be to make them fear her? Or was it just Jennifer being forced by the others to burry her beloved dog, just another torment as the usually inflicted on her? That moment she snapped, went back to Greogory and made him kill the others? Another strange parallel: Jennifer had a dog (Brown) and Wendy did some dog-training with Gregory, as we learn from Martha's notes. If they were the same person, so Brown was Gregory? Jennifer was just a softened version of Wendy and Brown a softened version of Gregory, as in her memory the corpses of children were replaced by softened versions, too (just clothes, no bodies). Jennifer doing all this item serching with Brown in the game was in reality Wendy dog-training Gregory to kill the others? This seems very far fetched to me, but these clues must mean something! In the end, Jennifer leaves this place leaving Wendy behind a locked gate and locks Brown in the shack, vowing to protect him, but the closing door and ceasing light hints to being final, that she will not return. Protect him as a softened memory/lie of something that was far darker in reality, as she left Wendy behind the gate, her persona who actually was resposible for the killing of the children? So in the end, did she actually come to terms with her past, or was it just the final stage of denial, now blaming an imaginary person left behind for having caused Gregory to slaughter the children as revenge for all they did to her (tying to the pole, onion bag, etc.).I don't think all of this makes sense and it seems far-fetched to me, but these parallels and clues must mean something!
Update: I don't really believe in the idea that Wendy and Jennifer are the same person, but I still like the idea too much to abandon it completely. Although most of my clues can be explained otherwise. On the other hand, as everything takes place in Jennifers mind only, everyone is just a persona of Jennifer based on a real person she knew in her past. So we do only know very little of how these persons really were and what really took place.
On the imps and ijime
----------------------------
"I knew what they really were... but that wasn't the problem. The real problem was my weak heart. My weakness was what drew them here." is what Jennifer says about the imps in the final chapter. So what were they really?
I read this passage as follows: She knew (=PAST=>she knew even as a child) what they were (=the other children, dressed up and hazing her) but it still got to her as she was really afraid. Being a child who is dizzed, mistreated and attacked by everyone, it doesn't matter if it's imps or demons harrassing you, or other children, the effect is the same, live becomes hell! I think that's what she meant. The line "my weakness drew them here" means that she was an outsider and too weak to stand up against the others, so when they saw her weakness, she became the victim. This is how children-related violence always works (e.g. in schools): the weakest outsider becomes the victim the other turn to in order to feel stronger. As this is a Japanese game, we need to think of a Japanese concept: ijime. Ijime is a social phenomenon in Japan, often translated as 'bullying', but that translation does not really do justice to it, as ijime is more than bullying: it is collective, has more method, is kind of planned and aims to really do severe psychological harm to the outsider, often driving him or her to suicide. The idea behind it is: Everyone has to sacrifice personal freedom to fit into the strict Japanese society, if you don't do that and take freedom for yourself that no-one else has, society will crush you!
I think the developers wanted this game to be an allegory on ijime, the ridiculous Rule of Rose is the strictness of Japanese society and Jennifer a victim of ijime, what the imps stand for. Unfortunatly, only very view people outside of Japan can understand it. I only know about this stuff because I did my final oral university exams on studies about school violence and bullying in Europe, America and Japan.
BIG THANKS TO EVERYONE DISCUSSING MY IDEAS ON THE GAMEFAQS BOARD, AS THESE DISCUSSIONS GAVE ME INTERESTING NEW INSIGHTS AND NEW IDEAS TO PONDER ON. I DON'T REMEMBER EVERYONES' NAMES (and I am too lazy to look them all up) BUT I HEREBY ACKKNOWLEDGE YOUR INFLUENCE ON MY IDEAS AND THE UPDATES. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!
