When considering race and anti-Black racism, Black perspectives are the most vital. That said, too often, we act as though being white is an automatic, default, or neutral position instead of considering the precise ways in which racism distorts white perspectives and beliefs. RDR2's portrayal of the white perspective is unconsidered and obscures historical realities. Arthur's demonstrable ignorance of white peoples’ prevalent attitudes in “Preaching Forgiveness as He Went” and “No Good Deed” denies the realities of the time and is totally unbelievable: in no way were white supremacist acts of violence, let alone beliefs, confined to the South.
The history of the Wild West is so enshrouded in myth, lies, obfuscations, half-truths, and rumor that once these delicate layers are peeled back, the definite facts they're mounded on seem scant enough to be scattered by a breeze — if they weren't weighted with blood and gold. Famous figures like outlaw Emmett Dalton and Wyatt Earp's wife, Josephine, intertwined the bare facts of their lives with legend. In the attempt to immortalize themselves, they erased themselves: it is not always clear whether something really happened, let alone how it happened or who did it.
Learn the story behind RDR2's Strange Statues, plus much more.
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.
Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, is the first science fiction novel. Famously, it was conceived as part of a contest between Shelley, her husband Percy, and their friends Lord Byron and John William Polidori. The group was staying in Geneva, where Byron rented a house called Villa Diodati. They were “delighted to learn that Milton had once stayed there, an astonishingly good omen for this group who by now saw themselves as fallen angels, like Milton’s Satan: rebellious and misunderstood” (Gordon 168).
During “A Fine Night of Debauchery,” Arthur Morgan grumbles to Josiah Trelawny, “This ain't Hamlet.” This is the writers begging us to notice that this is Hamlet. Happy to oblige. After the death of his father, Hamlet's uncle Claudius marries Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, and becomes king. One of the senses of discomfort this creates — the rottenness in the state of Denmark — is that Hamlet is of age. Under the rules of primogeniture, he should be king. Arthur is similarly infantilized.
Allusions to William Shakespeare's The Tempest are among the most obvious references in RDR2 — and yet, other allusions to the Bard's work are so subtle we almost have to guess at them. The game doesn't make direct allusion to King Lear or Othello, but the influence of those dramas is clear. Those plays feature a scheming villain spitting poison in the ear of a noble-but-tragically-flawed leader and a loyal but hapless child or follower who dies as a result of the leader's weakness: a plot that RDR2 reworks beautifully. However, this is an influence felt, not named. Other Shakespearean works are alluded to more directly. We’ll begin by discussing…
Finishing our journey through the intertwined Eden and Hell of RDR2.
As I began to discuss last week, the writers of RDR2 create a taut juxtaposition in the game by presenting the uncolonized natural world as Eden — but also basing each of the gang’s camps on a different aspect of hell, as imagined by Dante Alighieri in The Inferno.
The relationship between RDR2 and the Bible is an odd one. The game seems thoroughly secular on the surface, but its ideas about sin and redemption are not unchristian — perhaps because it relies so much on Paradise Lost to shape it. But the use of that text doesn't entirely account for the use of Biblical material in the game, which indicates a broad familiarity with that body of work.
