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.
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.
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.
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.
Paradise Lost is one of the most celebrated literary works of all time. Paradise Regained, John Milton's followup to the epic, is less so. The second poem tells the story of the Son (Christ) wandering in the desert, where, after 40 days and 40 nights, Satan accosts him and tries to tempt him to break his obedience to God. It is, quite frankly, not very interesting: there's no suspense at all. Satan losing is foregone conclusion. The Son is totally unbothered.
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.
Red Dead Redemption 2 mourns the loss of Eden: the outlaw life in pre-Industrial America. But under the brutal rule of colonialism, who is it who lost paradise? 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. One of the cleverest things the developers did in Red Dead Redemption 2 was to make the technical limitations of Red Dead Redemption thematic. John can’t swim; Arthur can. John prints; Arthur writes. Arthur is more eloquent…
One of the writers’ apparent motivations in writing Red Dead Redemption 2 was to make Red Dead Redemption even more sad. The way the first game is retconned in the second one can be annoying because of the mismatch in details, but at times, it’s very effective ...
In Red Dead Redemption 2, choices for the player are plentiful, but they rarely have any impact on the game’s narrative. At most, they affect its mood. Of course, in any story game the outcomes have to be predetermined (at this stage, at any rate), but the differences that appear in the story are small indeed. The player can’t change any outcome; you can’t save anyone.
