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.
An unfortunate feature of American storytelling is the “anti-racist” text that is, itself, racist. These pieces ostensibly speak against racism, but the authors haven't done the difficult work of confronting their own false and negative beliefs about the people they're writing about. As a result, they uphold or create harmful stereotypes, like the white savior or the Uncle Tom. One such text is Quentin Tarantino's film Django Unchained, which probably gave RDR2's writing team the idea for a Western set in the South. Having chosen that questionable inspiration, they chose another with similar flaws: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
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…
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…
Paradise Lost, as one of the most essential influences of Red Dead Redemption 2, naturally contributes more than characters to the game’s narrative. Like the poem, one of RDR2’s central themes involves the gaining of knowledge. However, the game and the poem come to divergent conclusions about that concept. What Milton condemns, RDR2 declares imperative.
