The Strange Statues in RDR2: And More Allusions to American Literature

Learn the story behind the Strange Statues in RDR2 under “The Ladye Annabel,” below, plus 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.

You may have noticed something about the sources I’ve shared so far: With the exception of the Bible, all of the works are by European authors. Let’s start looking at works by authors from the U.S.!

Short Stories

The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving. A body in Monto’s Rest has a note on it from a Professor Crane. Crane is the name of the protagonist of Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which features the iconic character the Headless Horseman. The body with the note is missing its head. Both Cranes are teachers for young boys. And of course, there’s Kieran Duffy.
IGone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. This racist novel celebrates the antebellum South. Joe Butler, the disabled veteran in Rhodes, is named for Rhett Butler. Scarlett Meadows is named for Scarlett O’Hara (the in-game explanation is that it’s named for the color of the soil, but that spelling is “scarlet”). Two of the characters have a son named Beau, which may be the source of Beau Gray’s name. One of the rejection letters from Scruffers & Co. that can be found on NPCs is about a book called “The Winds of the Old South,” which also refers to this novel. According to the Red Dead wiki, this letter is found on male NPCs, which is part of the game’s pattern of erasing women.n “The Battle of Shady Belle,” John sarcastically tells Agent Milton that he’s Rip Van Winkle. Rip Van Winkle is the titular character in another short story in this collection. It’s a fitting allusion, as Van Winkle’s wife is supposedly a shrew. Like Abigail, she’s actually right that her husband is a good-for-nothing wastrel. Both women nag their husbands because they’re trying to get them to grow up and provide for their families.

“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. Algernon Wasp probably gets his first name from this story (and later novel), since his missions involve collecting orchids.

Novels

The Minister’s Wooing by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The rejection letters “Letter from Scruffers & Co. Publishers” that can be looted from NPCs recommend writing “a comedy of manners set in Newport.” “Comedy of manners” usually refers to a play, but a publishing company wouldn’t be recommending that someone write one. The Minister’s Wooing is a domestic comedy, which may be what they mean. In any case, this was the only prominent comedy set in Newport that my research turned up. Jane Tompkins mentions The Minister’s Wooing in West of Everything as the type of sentimental novel that the Western was created in reaction to. Stowe was also a good friend of Lady Byron and the author of Lady Byron Vindicated. The Lady Byron in question was Anne Isabella, estranged wife of George Gordon, Lord Byron, whom Dutch Van der Linde is largely based on.

Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming by Henry Ward Beecher. In his book Red Dead Redemption, Matt Margini says that Beecher’s Hope is named for Henry Ward Beecher (46), a prominent abolitionist and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother. (Uncle may get his name from Stowe’s problematic Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) This book about farming contains the word “hope” 22 times. (Including “hoped,” “hopeful,” and “hopeless,” the count rises to 34.)

Destry Rides Again by Max Brand. The mission “Jim Milton Rides, Again?” is named after this Western novel.

St. Agnes’ Stand by Thomas Eidson. This novel tells the story of a cowboy, Nat Swanson, who’s on the run after killing a man in self-defense. As he attempts to evade his pursuers, he comes across some nuns who were traveling through the desert with a group of orphans when they were attacked by Apache warriors, and several of their party killed. Swanson thinks their situation is hopeless, and as he believes himself to be no hero, he tries to abandon them to their fate. Ultimately, he finds himself unable to do so.
Swanson is a deeply traumatized man, but helping Sister St. Agnes and the children heals something in him, just as his namesake Reverend Swanson is healed by praying with Sister Calderón. Reverend Swanson directs Arthur to Brother Dorkins in a camp event at Shady Belle, which is how Arthur ends up meeting Sister Calderón. He’s also the one to provide a hint about where Agnes Dowd’s ghost can be found.
Sister St. Agnes has a crucifix her mother gave her (Ch. “Day One”). The plot of “Brothers and Sisters, One and All” surrounds a crucifix Sister Calderón’s mother gave her. Like Sister St. Agnes, Sister Calderón works with (presumed) orphans in the mission.

God’s Country by Percival Everett. This one has me baffled; I’m not sure if the writers used it as a source or not. The novel begins with a house being burned down and a woman named Sadie being abducted by a gang. There is also a character (totally unrelated) called Jake, which was Sadie’s husband’s name. The name “Percival” shows up several times in RDR2, but that’s an allusion to Arthurian legend. The opening seems like such a strong parallel, but other than that, I can’t identify anything that would seem to be an allusion to this superb novel. Generally, if the game alludes to a work so briefly, it’s in a mission name or a place name. If it uses events or characters from a work, the allusions are more sustained. This is also, so far, the only literary work by a Black author I’ve been able to identify as a possible source. Regardless, it’s excellent; you should read it.

Absalom, Absalom and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. The name of Compson’s Stead is an allusion to the Compson family in William Faulkner’s novels. This gentile Southern family is in decline after the Civil War.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Radley’s House and Radley’s Pasture allude to the character Boo Radley in this classic Southern novel. Boo’s real name is Arthur.
Lee was good friends with author Truman Capote, whose former home in New York City Dan Houser purchased (Zeveloff). The backstory of Mayor Nicholas Timmins of Strawberry is probably an allusion to the persecution of literary critic Newton Arvin, who was Capote’s lover for a time.

The Ladye Annabel (also known as The Mysteries of Florence) by George Lippard. A best-selling author in the mid-1800s, Lippard is now all but forgotten. The Ladye Annabel is an amusingly ludicrous work — there’s a great deal of fainting, and the word “shrieked” is used 92 times, while “said” only appears 65. RDR2‘s writers usually prefer to allude to more highbrow fare, but knowing their usual patterns, it’s easy to see what tempted them to include this silly novel:

1. The name Annabel, which allows the writers to allude to more than one character or person at once. One of the four characters in the game’s lore with this name¹ spells her name Annabel instead of Annabelle. She writes to her “husband,” Alfred; the novel’s Annabel’s lover is named Adrian.
2. Lippard was an “utterly Byronic” Romantic (“George Lippard”). Lord Byron was one of the most important influences on Dutch Van der Linde’s character, and several other Romantic writers are alluded to in the game.
3. Like several other authors whose work shaped RDR2, Lippard died young of tuberculosis.

The most direct allusion to this novel is the Strange Statues Point of Interest. As you might expect, they’re one of the strangest Points of Interest on the map: snake your way through a narrow gap in a mountain and you’ll find yourself in a cavern with seven statues of nude men standing around an eighth statue. Initially, I thought this was a harpy; looking closer, we can see that it’s a sphinx with its front legs broken off. In the game files, it’s called “lion man,” a name much more appropriate for a sphinx than a harpy.

This scene is inspired by Lippard’s work. Attempting to exactly recreate what Lippard describes would be — even by Rockstar standards — absurdly ambitious, considering that it’s only one of fifty Points of Interest in the game, and the POIs aren’t even central to the gameplay experience. Lippard describes an enormous cavern filled with grotesque statues of all shapes and sizes — “strange statues,” he calls them (Ch. “The Cavern of Albarone”). In the middle of this cavern is a giant pyramid, atop which the lords of the family are laid to rest.

The Strange Statues of RDR2 are a much more realistic — if still historically unbelievable — version of this scene. The pyramid becomes a sphinx, and the Great Sphinx of Giza is located near the Great Pyramid. Unlike the Greek version of the mythological creature, the Great Sphinx does not have wings. However, the emblem of the family interred in Lippard’s cavern is a winged leopard, and that symbol plays a major role in the novel.

And there’s more. Lippard created a secret society called the Brotherhood of the Union (“George Lippard”). In their secret literature (which has now been disclosed to the public) is a plan for how their meetings should be set up.

It’s nearly identical to the layout of the Strange Statues cave. Spaces 1-6 are where the leaders of the society would sit. Space 7 is where an altar was placed. (Space 8 was complicated tabernacle, not represented in the game.) The altar was supposed to look like this (below). It isn’t identical to the game’s sphinx, but it bears some resemblance:

The same altar was on the Brotherhood’s badges, which can be seen here. The badges read “Truth Hope Love.” It may be a coincidence that there are three gold bars hidden in the cave’s “altar” — but then again, it may not.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Called “The Sound of the Northern Wilderness” in a rejection letter from Scruffers & Co.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. This racist novel celebrates the antebellum South. Joe Butler, the disabled veteran in Rhodes, is named for Rhett Butler. Scarlett Meadows is named for Scarlett O’Hara (the in-game explanation is that it’s named for the color of the soil, but that spelling is “scarlet”). Two of the characters have a son named Beau, which may be the source of Beau Gray’s name. One of the rejection letters from Scruffers & Co. that can be found on NPCs is about a book called “The Winds of the Old South,” which also refers to this novel. The letter is addressed to “sir,” which is part of the game’s pattern of erasing women.

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1. These are: Dutch Van der Linde’s murdered lover; Miriam Wegner’s cousin, who writes her a letter; the woman to whom the poems in Vetter’s Echo are written; and the Annabel who wrote “Letter to Alfred from Annabel.” ↩︎

Bibliography