Warlock — an 1958 Western by American novelist Oakley Hall — influenced Red Dead Redemption 2 deeply. Its complex plot is loosely based on iconic elements of the incidents now known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Johnson County War. Like RDR2 itself, it reimagines and reworks its source material. Tombstone, Arizona, becomes Warlock, a frontier town plagued by random acts of violence: a group of men associated with local rancher Abe McQuown shoot the place up, rustle cattle, and rob stagecoaches. Because the state governor, General Peach, is senile, he hasn't issued Warlock a town patent, which means the townspeople have no authority to hire a…
How the enemies and allies of John Sontag and Chris Evans inspired characters in RDR2.
Eden, in Red Dead Redemption 2, is the natural, unindustrialized world. However, the writers create a stark juxtaposition by using Dante’s Inferno — meaning “Hell” — to define and describe the Van der Linde gang’s journey through this Edenic world. No matter how beautiful their surroundings, their circumstances make their environments punishing. As Milton’s Satan says, “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell” (IV.75). The gang brings their misery with them.
On the face of it, the writers' choice to use Wuthering Heights to shape the narrative of Red Dead Redemption 2 was a promising one. Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar explain, is “a radically corrective ‘misreading’ of Milton . . . with the fall from heaven to hell transformed into a fall from a realm that conventional theology would associate with ‘hell’ (the Heights) to a place that parodies ‘heaven’ (the Grange)” (189). RDR2 attempts a similar project, with Arthur’s fall into knowledge being not the path to sin, but to redemption.
The flawed beliefs about gender that Dan Houser, Michael Unsworth, and Rupert Humphries demonstrate through RDR2 harm their efforts to write characters of both the genders the game depicts. They dismiss the women and damn the men rather than allow them to act in ways the Western codes as feminine. If they were able to understand that women are not lesser beings, perhaps their minds would be broad enough to imagine other endings for their male characters. But they aren't: women are not written well in RDR2.
Homophobia often shares roots with misogyny: patriarchal constructs define male homosexuality as inherently feminine, which patriarchy believes is bad, because, naturally, women are less than, other, prone to evil, etc. Rockstar's portrayals of women in Red Dead Redemption 2 don't significantly diverge from this viewpoint.
Paradise Lost and Arthurian legend are both so steeped in misogyny that removing it would transform either work unrecognizably. Eve, as Milton infamously writes her, is a dim-witted, sexy doll, if a doll could also be evil. This conception of Eve connects directly to the chivalric treatment of women. Many people take offense at the idea that chivalry is misogynistic because they think of it as “being nice to women,” when its real function is to infantilize and patronize women based on the presupposition that they are lesser beings that must be guided and taken care of – Eves who must be protected from their own sinful nature.
The remaining allusions to King Arthur in RDR2 that didn’t fit into essays elsewhere: what's up with Kieran's beheading, why Arthur sees a deer in his honor visions, Pleasance, and much more.
At the same time as a version of the fall of King Arthur’s court unfolds, another allegory plays out in Red Dead Redemption 2: the quest for the grail. More than King Arthur, perhaps even more than Lancelot, Arthur Morgan resembles another character: Perceval, the grail knight.
I've discussed Paradise Lost in some depth now, but there are still quite a few allusions that didn't fit elsewhere. This also seems like the best place to discuss the other allusions to the Romantics in the game. Here's a roundup of the essays, followed by a list of the other references the game makes.
