More Secrets & Mysteries: The Strange Man’s Cabin in RDR2

How a Russian author inspired the Strange Man’s cabin in RDR2, how a Norwegian playwright inspired the mystery of Emerald Ranch, and much more.

All articles on this site feature detailed discussion of literary allusions in Red Dead Redemption 2, and as such contain unmarked major and minor spoilers for the game, and occasionally the eventual fates of some characters in Red Dead Redemption. Read at your own risk.

As should be apparent by now, RDR2’s use of literature ranges from deep and extensive to brief and glancing. Sometimes, the writers allude to a work broadly rather than dealing with its themes.

And on the other hand, sometimes the source that yielded inspiration has been so transformed in RDR2 that it’s impossible to say with certainty that the writers used it. This list contains plenty of both examples, and some that are somewhere in-between.

Note: Generally, I’ve done close readings of everything on Read Dead with Red Dead Redemption 2 in mind. That isn’t the case with the following works, although I have read some of them.

Drama

The Mourning Bride by William Congreve

The mission “Hell Hath No Fury” takes its name from the common misquotation of this play, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” (As the writers like to do, the mission name is alluding to several things at once: the play, Dante’s Inferno, the mythological Furies themselves). The original line is: “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,/Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d” (Pascal).

Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, and When We Dead Awaken by Henrik Ibsen

In “Letter to Miriam Wegner,” Miriam’s cousin Annabelle mentions that she’s been cast in a play by Ibsen. The placement of the allusion in this particular letter is pointed. In Ibsen’s most famous works, A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler, the main characters are women who are emotionally stifling under patriarchy — imprisoned in it, as Miriam seems to be imprisoned in her home by her father. In the play, Hedda’s former lover, Eilert Lovborg, dies in murky circumstances in a brothel. Miriam’s fiancé Joshua died in murky circumstances in a saloon. (It’s rather ironic, given the feminist nature of Ibsen’s work, that “Letter to Miriam Wegner” is the only letter [of more than 70] that is both to and from a woman in the entire game.)

The evidence that When We Dead Awaken influenced RDR2 is vague and circumstantial, but it’s still worth consideration. When We Dead Awaken concerns a sculptor and his former model, both of whom die by suicidal recklessness — attempting to summit a mountain in a storm — at the play’s climax. The play likely influenced the Face in Cliff Point of Interest, which is near Emerald Ranch (where Miriam Wegner lives). While the sculpture is obviously inspired by Mount Rushmore, the lore around the sculptor is likely influenced by the Ibsen play. Thematically, the play is concerned with the psychological detachment with which an artist may regard their model, and the effect this has on both artist and subject. Ibsen’s sculptor fails to act on his romantic feelings for his model; it’s only years later that they reconnect and declare their love — and then die together. The suicide note RDR2’s sculptor leaves makes it clear that, like Ibsen’s sculptor, the artist devoted himself to the image of his beloved that he was creating, and he lost the actual woman as a result. An even more vague possible link is that below the Face in Cliff is the Flattened Cabin; a hunting cabin is one of the locations in the play, and the artist and model die by being crushed in an avalanche, not unlike how the Flattened Cabin’s occupant has died. In the play, the cabin belongs to a bear hunter; one of the bear hunting random events can spawn by the Flattened Cabin.

(Note: Ibsen was Norwegian. It’s possible something in one of his plays influenced the Manzanita Post mystery, but nothing has leapt out at me.)

John Marston

The 17th-century dramatist may have given the character his name. The connection isn’t especially obvious to me, but he did attend Oxford, as did RDR2 writer Dan Houser.

The Revenger’s Tragedy

This play is possibly by Thomas Middleton; Hosea Matthews gives the author as Cyril Tourneur, which seems to be historically accurate as regards contemporary attribution of the work). Hosea mentions trying his hand at acting in this play in camp dialog.

Authors & Series

Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

Although the Braithwaite family is named for Braithwaite, Louisiana, Penelope’s first name is probably a loose allusion to the character Pandora Braithwaite from the Adrian Mole series. Both are outspoken feminists named after characters from Greek mythology (“Pandora Braithwaite”).

Anthony Trollope

Alden Carruthers mentions the author in dialog when the player character picks up a bounty poster from the train station.

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The in-game Aldous Filson mysteries — The Case of the Deceitful German and The Case of the Shrew in the Fog — parody the Sherlock Holmes series.

Short Stories

“The Mysterious Portrait” and “St. John’s Eve” by Nikolai Gogol

Note: The connection to these particular works is on the more tenuous side. I believe they inspired the Painting in Cabin Point of Interest, but I can’t be absolutely certain.

“The Mysterious Portrait” tells the story of a talented young painter, Tchartkoff, whose life is ruined when he buys a strangely lifelike painting. Unbeknownst to him, the painting contains the soul of a usurer whose loans, via some supernatural means, always brought out the very worst in the people to whom they were given. (Since the major plot point of the game hinges on unethical loans, the writers may have been searching up stories that involved that practice.) When he brings the painting home, Tchartkoff feels a growing sense of dis-ease about the painting. The eyes, in particular, frighten him. The way his sense of dread builds can be compared to the way the painting in the cabin is slowly completed.

Tchartkoff has a terrible dream that the man in the painting comes to life and leaves the frame — not unlike the way the Strange Man will appear in the mirror behind John Marston when the painting in Bayall Edge is completed. In the artist’s dream, the man from the painting has a purse, and he dumps an enormous amount of money out of it. The next day, Tchartkoff chances to find a large sum of money hidden in the painting’s frame.

Initially, he thinks he’ll use the money to finance his life while he completes his artistic studies, but in fact, he spends it on new clothes and becomes a society painter, making unimportant, though skillful, works that flatter his subjects. This calls to mind the note in the cabin that reads “I offered you happiness or two generations. You made your choice,” alluding to Herbert Moon in Armadillo. As he ages, Tchartkoff begins to care about money and nothing else — until a peer of his creates a masterful painting, and Tchartkoff is driven mad by jealousy. He dies of consumption (tuberculosis). The writing on the cabin’s wall that reads, “I gave everything for art, and I learned too much and nothing at all,” might well express Tchartkoff’s sentiments.

In the second part of the story, the son of the man who painted the portrait explains its background as it’s being auctioned off. He knows its terrible power and wants to destroy it. However, as he’s speaking, the portrait is stolen right from under everyone’s noses — just as the Strange Man will disappear when John turns around.

Other imagery in the cabin is also suggestive of the story: the store where the Tchartkoff buys the portrait mostly holds “oil-paintings covered with dark varnish, in frames of dingy yellow,” and “very red sunsets, like raging conflagrations” are a common subject. Several of the paintings in RDR2’s Strange Man’s Cabin feature blood-red sunsets. Gogol compares the people attending the auction to “birds of prey swooping down upon an unburied corpse”; one of the paintings shows a hawk ready to dive, and another shows a vulture.

In “St. John’s Eve,” a poor young man commits a terrible act in order to get money so that his sweetheart’s father will allow her to marry him. He’s tempted into committing this act by Basavriuk, who is a devilish trickster figure somewhat similar to the Strange Man. The tale describes Basavriuk’s victims being tormented by “some fiend from the swamp”; the cabin at Bayall Edge is in the swamp. At the story’s climax, an apparition appears, covered in blood, and lights up “the whole room with red light.” The light in the Strange Man’s cabin is red-toned because the windows are covered with red curtains. In the end, the village is tormented by Basavriuk, which calls to mind the suffering of the town of Armadillo. The map and note in the cabin make it clear the Strange Man is behind what has happened to the town.

Finally, the story ends: “Satan (the son of a dog should not be mentioned) sobbed so pitifully in his lair that the startled ravens rose in flocks from the neighbouring oak-wood and flew through the air with wild cries.” A taxidermy raven sits on one of the tables in the cabin.

“The Vampyre” by John William Polidori

Polidori was a friend of Lord Byron and the Shelleys — in fact, his story was begun as part of the same contest that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. His work had a profound impact on the way vampires have been typically characterized for the last two centuries: aristocratic, seductive, melancholy. Although the design of the vampire in RDR2 is based on the vampire in the early film Nosferatu, his presence in the story is a nod to Polidori’s work. Looting his body yields the Ornate Dagger, and a distinctively designed dagger is how the protagonist of “The Vampyre” identifies said creature as his friend, Lord Ruthven. The story is partially based on Lord Byron’s “Fragment of a Novel,” as well as Lord Byron himself.

Novels

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

In the rejection letters from “Scruffers & Co.” found on some NPCs, they suggest writing about “the suffering of stonemasons in the West of England.” This probably refers to this novel.

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

Alluded to in one variant of “Letter from Scruffers & Co. Publishers.” The letter reads, in part: “Thank you for the submission of your manuscript ‘The Education of A Young Witch’ The book was competently written but we at Scruffers and Co. do not believe a book about a girl learning about witchcraft at a boarding school could ever catch on. You seem like you may evolve in to a competent writer, but fairy stories just do not sell.” In fact, they do, which is unfortunate. Don’t give your money to transphobes; they will use it to, quite literally, support Nazi agendas.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Existence and Oblivion by Nikolai Federov, one of the books in Dutch’s small library, may be loosely based on this book (Dostoevsky was also the author of Crime and Punishment). Dutch would absolutely be a Brothers Karamazov guy. The girls who get it get it.

Greek Mythology

Achilles

Jim “Boy” Calloway alludes to Achilles, the famous mythological figure of the Trojan War. This is one of the only times that a queer person is mentioned in a positive light in the game.

Acrisius, Proetus, and Helen

Acrisius and Proetus from “Oh, Brother” are named for quarrelsome twins in Greek mythology. Helen is named for Helen of Troy, over whom the Trojan War was fought.

Cassandra

Blind Man Cassidy is named for Cassandra, the mythological figure who was given the gift of foresight, and cursed that no one would believe her visions. Neither John nor Arthur listens to Cassidy’s warnings. Naming a male character for a powerful female figure is in line with naming Angelo Bronte for Emily Brontë, and calling the horse Hera “he,” although there is a (less-prominent) woman prophet in the swamp.

Castor’s Ridge

This location in the Heartlands is possibly named for the twins Castor and Pollox, but the relevance is unclear. There is also a Sir Castor in Arthurian legend; again, thus far I haven’t been able to find any significance there, either.

Eris Field

Probably named for the Greek goddess of discord, although the connection is unapparent.

Hector and Achilles

Jack alludes to these mythical figures from the Trojan War in camp dialog.

Hera

Hera was the jealous wife of Zeus, the ruler of Mount Olympus (where the gods lived). Sadie’s horse in the epilogue is named Hera. John and Sadie both refer to this Hera as “he,” but Hera is, in fact, a mare.

Icarus

“Icarus and Friends” is named for Icarus, of course. Arthur also alludes to Icarus in his journal entry for the Flying Machine Point of Interest (rather oddly referring to the dead body with a male pronoun, although it is wearing women’s clothing). Icarus’s father, Daedalus, made himself and his son great wings by sticking feathers to their arms with wax. He warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, or the wax would melt. Icarus didn’t listen, and died as a result.

Penelope and Odysseus

I’m not sure if it’s ever possible to see it in-game, but Beau Gray alludes to the myth of the warrior Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, in his writing. (Probably this is supposed to be the book he has at the beginning of “The Course of True Love I.”)

Prometheus

Prometheus is analogous to Satan: he defied the heavenly authorities to bring fire to humankind. Like Satan, he is subjected to eternal punishment for his “crime.” Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a lyrical drama based on the myth; the full title of Mary Shelley’s first novel is Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Reverend Swanson talks about him in one of his campfire monologues, pointing out that his gift is a double-edged sword.

Sisyphus

The constipated man in the Saints Hotel in Valentine is called a “Sisyphean Warrior” in the credits. Sisyphus was doomed to toil eternally: he repeatedly rolled a boulder up a hill, which always rolled back down just before he could reach the top.

Philosophy

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

In “The Widow II,” Charlotte Balfour says, “The end of labor is to gain leisure. Is that not what Aristotle said?”

The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

Micah quotes Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead” to Reverend Swanson in camp (observed Horseshoe Overlook).

Plato

The Greek philosopher is alluded to in “The Noblest of Men and a Woman I.”

Other Works

Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini

Perhaps not an allusion so much as an inclusion. One of the songs Dutch Van der Linde plays on his gramophone is “Un Bel Dì.” The problematic opera this lovely song comes from is about a horrible man who marries and callously abandons a Japanese woman, leading to her suicide — which foreshadows Molly O’Shea’s story. Dutch’s counterpart in Madame Butterfly is named Pinkerton.

New essays are published Wednesdays at 1 p.m. E.T./10 a.m. P.T. Follow me on Bluesky, Twitter, or Tumblr for updates.

New here? Visit the Table of Contents to read the essays in order.

Sharing the site is deeply appreciated!

Bibliography