The setup for Konami’s 2001 hit Silent Hill 2 is that widower James Sunderland has received a letter from his late wife Mary, three years gone from an incurable disease. In her letter, Mary beckons him to find her in their “special place” in the town of Silent Hill and James sets out, meeting a cast of eccentric characters and battling manifestations of his inner demons along the way. By the end of the game, it’s revealed that Mary’s slow decline in health took a toll on the couple, which resulted in James putting her out of her misery by killing her himself. When the game was in the production process, assisted suicide was a hot topic in society, as Dr. Jack Kevorkian had been in the news for his role in aiding the terminally ill to end their own lives. Series composer Akira Yamaoka specifically states in an interview that euthanasia was a controversial subject that Silent Hill 2’s development team was eager to explore. There is ample evidence to show that the game’s story is almost exclusively based around the causes and effects of euthanasia – and secondarily, justified homicide – on the nuclear family.
To begin with, Konami has taken advantage of the fictional town’s more “normal” side and its Hellish counterpart, often dubbed “Otherworld,” to tell its stories before and since Silent Hill 2. Most Silent Hill stories are running metaphors realized in these towns for very real social issues. The original Silent Hill finds Harry Mason searching for his daughter Cheryl after they were separated in a car wreck. Harry eventually learns that a religious cult has taken Cheryl and she has rejoined her spiritual other self, Alessa Gillespie, in an effort to prevent the cult from birthing their demonic god and bringing about the end of days. Countless innocent lives are ruined by the group’s agenda, led by their blind faith and horrifying convictions. Silent Hill 3 offers a dilemma not unlike Rosemary’s Baby, in which the main character Heather finds herself carrying a child destined to be a demonic cult’s deity. Throughout the game, she is urged by the members of the cult to deliver their God into the world. Heather is clearly against playing this role. Silent Hill: Homecoming puts players in the role of Alex Sheperd, a combat-hardened veteran and sufferer of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Homecoming was developed in the United States during the Iraq war, so it would be hard to believe that the developers weren’t also making a commentary on the tolls taken on our soldiers after they serve overseas. Finally, Silent Hill: Downpour, released in March of 2012, involves Murphy Pendleton, a prison convict lost in the title town during a transfer. His story is revealed to involve a corrupt prison guard assigning Pendleton to kill inmates in exchange for favors. Given Konami’s proven history with these titles examining social issues like abortion, religious zealotry, shell-shocked veterans and prison economy under the authority of corrupt law enforcement, it’s clear that Konami is no stranger at using its franchise to explore controversial topics. Silent Hill 2 was one of the first titles in the series, and thus one of the first to socialize its story.
When James Sunderland sets out to find his wife, he is bewildered that she could write and send him a letter, since she had died of a terminal illness three years prior to the game’s events. The merciless fog of the town limits James’ visibility to 15 feet or so; humanoid monsters roam the streets. James’ first destination to find Mary is a waterfront park, and along the way he meets Angela, a young woman looking for her mother; Eddie, a young man physically upset by the town’s inexplicable transformation and the monsters that seem to inhabit it; Laura, an eight-year-old girl running loose in the town; and Maria, a doppelganger for James’ late wife Mary. Maria accompanies James to the Brookhaven Hospital and is seemingly killed by a seven-foot tall man with a pyramid-shaped metal helmet and a five-foot sword. Eddie and Angela slowly lose their minds to the town. Eddie eventually tries to kill James, so James kills Eddie in self-defense, while Angela ascends a burning staircase into a fire from which there is no escape. James reunites with Maria, who has no memory of her implied death, though by the time James can arrive at her side, she seems to have been killed a second time. The last area of the game is the hotel in which James and Mary stayed on a vacation. James finds a videotape that shows that he killed Mary – though the object isn’t shown, James swings something in his hand down and across Mary’s torso or neck, presumably a blade. Remembering this long-forgotten truth, James’ final battle takes place on the roof of the hotel with a horrific version of Mary, suspended in a rusting metal box frame, and depending on player performance throughout the title, one of many endings is shown revealing how James has dealt with his part in Mary’s demise.
Although it isn’t made apparent until the final hour or so of the game, the proof is unmistakably there that James has euthanized Mary and the preceding actions of the characters are largely in response to that act. First, James is shown on video sitting by Mary’s sick bed and striking her with an unseen object – “I couldn’t watch you suffer,” he tells her ghost immediately after watching the tape. James, not excusing his own behavior, is stating that he performed a mercy killing to ease his wife’s suffering, and this claim is never refuted – not even by the closest thing to Mary we see, which is a likeness of her in the same bed and outfit from the tape, awaiting James on the roof of a hotel. Mary – or her ghost, James’ projection of her, whatever the audience wishes to call it – only argues with “Do you think I could ever forgive you after what you did?!” This shows that Mary is upset with James for not letting her live out her final days, but in the absence of anything in the game resembling a Do Not Resuscitate form, Mary’s outrage is only one possible post-mortem response – and the worst one, at that – that a grieving family could imagine from a loved one who has been put down. A conversation between James and a doctor, in an off-screen voiceover flashback, actually confirms that Mary’s chances of survival are zero, excluding the possibility of James prematurely cutting short her possible recovery. Thus, James is certain that ending Mary’s life at her worst point of suffering is a kindness, despite her not consenting.
Still, his guilt racks him throughout the game, and is made manifest not only with the characters and endings but with many of Silent Hill 2’s monsters as well. In the town’s hospital and hotel – two areas which ring strongest with James’ memory – nurses with scalpels shake and shuffle towards James, swiping at him. Their faces are distorted, their clothes and skin look dirty or burnt, and there is certainly an irony that nurses would try to hurt someone in a hospital. While the nurses have become a staple creature in many Silent Hill games, here they serve as a Dantean form of punishment for James’ sins, their attacks reminding him of his guilt. Another beast is made of two bottom halves of mannequins joined together at the waist. It walks on one set of legs and kicks James with the other. This double-mannequin’s legs are shaped like women’s; it’s no surprise then that James struggles with them amidst a complex love triangle that involves his late wife and a woman who looks just like her. He has the memory of his wife but she is gone; the body of a new woman, Maria, but has only just met her – two halves making one dysfunctional relationship.
The creatures, the endings and the other characters – it all comes back to James euthanizing Mary. All too often in storytelling, the audience is shown characters who will say “I might as well have killed [him/her] myself,” through their acts of disregard or consent to events leading to a death. In this instance James has simply done so literally. How this act, the willful but not malicious death of a loved one, affects the nuclear family is another matter.
In the would-be family of Silent Hill 2, James and Mary are the married couple and clearly the mother and father of the group of characters. Initially, James’ journey seems fueled by at least a morbid curiosity about receiving a letter from his deceased wife, if not the vain hope that she is, somehow, alive and well. It’s worth noting that James seems not to realize his own part in Mary’s death, just as the audience doesn’t, until the final steps of James’ adventure. He states in his opening monologue that “Mary died of that damned disease three years ago,” not that he expedited her passing, which implicitly evokes sympathy for this seemingly poor, devoted husband. James has either blocked out, or is simply denying, his guilt over Mary’s death.
Early in his journey to reunite with his wife, James meets a doppelganger of hers named Maria. Not only are Mary and Maria physically identical, but their names are similar as well. Their personalities, however, are almost opposites. Where Mary is quiet and reserved, Maria is flirtatious and suggestive. Mary’s few appearances in the game show her dressed like a prude – in a long skirt and buttoned-up cardigan; Maria’s outfit is scant and sexy – she wears a low-cut shirt and leopard-print miniskirt. James and Mary initially seem to have had a textbook wedding but Maria throws herself at James and is insanely jealous at the mention of Mary. James and Maria’s relationship grows, and she even asks him outright if he wants to be with her or if he only cares about his “dead wife.” After James believes he sees Maria killed, they’re reunited later in the game and James asks her if she’s really Maria. “I am, if you want me to be,” is her coy reply. This singular line of dialogue is crucial to understanding her role in the game and for exploring the family dynamic of the characters. It is only then, after six of the eight big areas in the game have been played, that Maria’s role in the family is clear: she’s the stepmother in an unhealthy relationship. One would argue that she’s simply James’ ideal version of his late wife, Mary – she’s as beautiful as Mary, as attentive and as interested in him, so devoted that she doesn’t want to share him with anyone else. However, James’ and Maria’s explosive argument earlier about whether James cares about Maria or only Mary, along with her tease that she can be just like Mary – his “first wife,” in this scenario – betrays her purpose as a replacement spouse.
Silent Hill 2 offers a total of six endings depending on player performance. No instruction is given on how to obtain any of the endings, and all of them have only been discovered through community trial-and-error. The idea that Maria is primed to be a second wife for James is further supported in one of the game’s endings – the “Maria” ending. James begins the game with only a picture of Mary and the letter she wrote him in his inventory. If, at any time, the player looks at either of these mementos, the Maria ending is forfeit. Furthermore, when James meets Maria, there are a number of factors leading to or from the Maria ending. Most of these factors are determined during James’ time with Maria. In one instance, James leaves her in a safe room in a hospital while he explores. If the player returns to her room to check on her frequently, it will increase the likelihood of obtaining the Maria ending. After James believes he sees Maria killed, if the player leaves the room and tries to return to see her again, that will also tilt the odds in favor of the Maria ending. If the player does indeed get the Maria ending, James is seen telling Maria he wants her to “be with him,” and that she doesn’t “need to worry about Mary” anymore. Finally, Maria coughs, and James replies that she should see a doctor – though it’s up to players to decide if this is his way of taking a more active role in the health of his new partner than Mary or if it’s simply implying that he’s likely to go down the same road with Maria. It is the only ending in which James ends up involved with Maria. Interestingly enough, it’s also the only ending that requires a willful ignoring of Mary’s inventory items, which does suggest that James is simply replacing her rather than dealing with her death and his role in it.
It is clear that James has replaced Mary with a new love interest, Maria. Being jealous or dismissive of a previous lover is a trait frequently used in popular culture for its stepmothers and second wives, and Maria does both in spades. James, at his worst, is projecting his love for his late wife onto his new significant other, which explains why they share the same appearance and similar names. In terms of Mary’s intentional death and his role in it, James initially rebukes Maria’s flirtations in favor of finding Mary – he says in dialogue later that he came to Silent Hill because he wanted to be punished for his sins, and finding Mary is his path to processing those feelings. It’s up to the player to decide if James should let Mary go and pursue Maria in James’ next serious relationship, though James risks repeating history. Maria’s focus is on James, not what he did in the past. She’s happy to be his and escape the town, though she does express genuine concern and care for the most obvious “child” of the family: Laura, who runs loose in Silent Hill among the monsters.
Laura is an eight-year-old girl who James first meets in an apartment building during his attempts to navigate it in his search for Mary. While reaching through a set of bars for a key on the floor, James gets a surprise when Laura runs into the hallway from an adjacent room, steps on his hand and kicks the key out of his reach, laughing as she runs off. James encounters Laura again and again throughout his journey, and she is often disrespectful and insubordinate to his requests. He spies her in a bowling alley and she runs off, against his pleas, out into the foggy terror of Silent Hill. Outside, James encounters Maria, who tells him here for the first time that she’s concerned about Laura but was unable to catch her before she ran off. Later, in the Brookhaven Hospital, Laura urges James to enter a small examination room where she claims to have an additional letter from Mary waiting to be read. James enters and Laura shuts and locks the door behind him, trapping him with two of the toughest monsters the game has offered to that point. Despite their best efforts, James and Maria are unable to corral or command Laura. Laura tells James once that she and Mary were friends in the hospital while Mary’s health declined, and that James didn’t love Mary enough. If these common symptoms of a child acting up after her parents’ separation weren’t enough of a clue into Laura’s role in the family, the largest hint is given to the player when Mary reveals in a letter that she had planned to adopt Laura if things had worked out differently for them. This would officially make Laura a member of James’ and Mary’s family beyond the frequent implications that are made about it.
Using the metaphor of Laura’s role as the daughter in the post-euthanasia nuclear family, her relationships with Mary, James and Maria instantly make sense. She, like James, paints a portrait of the deceased Mary as essentially a walking saint, holding her in the highest regards and never uttering a bad word about her. Laura outright tells James that he killed Mary early in the game and he snaps back and calls her a liar. Little do we know that Laura is speaking a plain fact, and instead we ascribe her words to the hurtful words children sometimes hurl at their parents without understanding the consequences. Like the countless petulant children who have told their parents they hate them, the audience likely doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash that Laura would say something so hurtful to James. She’s a child, she’s angry, and for all intents and purposes, she’s his adopted daughter.
The only real interaction between Laura and Maria is when Maria is unable to stop Laura fleeing the bowling alley, but this isn’t surprising either. Having established Maria as the stepmother, what can we expect from a daughter still attached to “her mother?” As discussed earlier, as James searches for Laura in Brookhaven Hospital, the player can return to Maria’s safe room and check on her as often as the player wishes. Every other visit to Maria’s room, a cutscene plays in which Maria tells James she’s fine, and asks if he’s found Laura yet. Clearly, if the development team offers the option for Maria to say this, she cares at least to some extent about the child’s welfare.
James Sunderland’s makeshift family amounts to himself, the father figure; Mary, his first/deceased wife; Maria, his second wife/Laura’s stepmother; and Laura, the daughter. Prior to Mary’s death, her growing relationship with Laura seems inversely proportionate to her weakening marriage. James and Laura are both devastated by Mary’s passing, despite James’ involvement. Mary tells Laura in a letter that although Laura doesn’t particularly like James for who he is, she should give him a chance as “deep down, he’s really a sweet person.” Laura is too young to understand the complexities of a marriage, let alone one that involves a terminally ill partner, and thus acts out against her “father,” James. Maria is ready to move on with James, as is evidenced in dialogue and action both, so long as he gets over Mary. The Mary-James-Laura family has made a bumpy transition as Mary is replaced by Maria, and though James struggles with euthanizing his wife, the potential to deal with it healthily and overcome his loss lingers through many of the game’s endings.
One in particular, the “Leave” ending, hints that James will proceed with Laura’s adoption and leave the town – and Mary – for good. This ending is obtained by players keeping James’ health up as much as possible, eschewing a potential new relationship with Maria by paying little to no attention to her throughout the game and other acts that involve directly dealing with Mary’s death, like looking at her picture and letter and so on.
There are two other endings that depict James as totally unable to accept his ordeal. One, dubbed the “Rebirth” ending, alludes to James figuring out how to actually resurrect Mary’s body from the dead, as players are able to obtain items like sacred texts and charms. That ending is unavailable on the player’s first run through the game, so it’s inevitable that players will have seen the entirety of Mary’s letters to James and Laura before they even start on the path to her resurrection. Mary’s letters are both at peace with death and very final, which gives the idea that she would rather be better left alone and wishes James to move on. Further, the Silent Hill games have long before and since depicted the resurrected dead as morbid, Hellish creatures, dozens of which James encounters on his own travels, so his attempts at reviving Mary are unwise, selfish, mentally unhealthy and a desecration to her body and memory. Unlike saying his goodbyes and moving on with Laura (as his daughter) or Maria (as his new love), this is a James that is quite literally stuck in the past.
The other bad ending for James is the “In Water” ending. James is seen bringing Mary’s body from the hotel rooftop to his car, and he is heard revving his engine and peeling out at high speeds. His engine hums higher and higher, indicating unsafe speeds, and a small crash is heard, followed by a large splash and a watery background behind the reading of Mary’s full letter. It’s implied that James has killed himself and taken Mary with him to the depths of Toluca Lake. Between Laura’s potential to either be adopted by James or left uncertain in the town and Maria’s cemented disregard of Mary, James’ different endings can shift the resolution of his family tragedy drastically. It’s up to the player to decide their fates, based on that player’s own feelings as Mary’s vicarious husband.
The commentary that the endings make on euthanasia seem to branch off in two main directions: James can either refuse to accept Mary’s fate and his role in it or he can grieve for her and move on. Whether he’s committing suicide in the “In Water” ending or trying to bring Mary back from the dead in the “Rebirth” ending, James clearly has a dark future that the developers wrote in due to his dangerous nostalgia. On the other hand, the “Maria” ending – which sees James finding a new love – and the “Leave” ending, in which James adopts Laura and continues Mary’s wish of making a family in a way that accepts Mary’s death, are at least marginally more optimistic than the first two. It’s worth noting that the developers don’t offer an ending for James to continue his life completely alone. This is likely to show that a death in the family doesn’t only affect the deceased and his or her immediate family, but that tragedy ripples throughout the community.
In the entirety of Silent Hill 2’s main story, there are only two other speaking characters: Eddie Dombrowski and Angela Orosco. Both of them only fleetingly mention any character besides James, and their own stories involve similar subject matter to that of James: justifiable homicide. Eddie, an overweight young blonde man in a polo shirt and cargo shorts, is first shown throwing up in a toilet in an apartment after seeing a corpse. This shows that he is having a harder time dealing with the town than James, since James never becomes physically ill. Eddie insists to James that he had nothing to do with the death of the corpse next to him. Next, James finds Eddie in the bowling alley, eating a whole pizza and refusing to stand up for himself despite a torrent of insults being slung at him by Laura. Later, James finds Eddie in the Toluca Prison under the lake, in the cafeteria. By this third encounter, Eddie’s character has changed significantly. First he seemed terrified and physically revolted by the town’s violent imagery; in the bowling alley he was aloof to the town’s violence, and gave into his desire for food – a far cry from throwing up, he now eats gluttonously; and in the prison he mentions to James that killing somebody is “no big deal.” In fact, there is another corpse near him in the prison encounter, and Eddie not only admits to killing the man himself, but he justifies his actions by saying the man “had it coming.” Eddie claims his victim was “making fun of me with his eyes.” Here we also learn that Eddie has been bullied his whole life for how he looks, called fat and “a disgusting piece of shit” regularly, and it’s taken a major toll on his psyche.
Eventually, driven by a lifetime of verbal abuse and his own insecurity, Eddie believes that James is also bullying him by not validating his killing, and shoots James in the shoulder. This instigates a combat sequence in which the player has no choice but to kill Eddie, after which James is deeply remorseful for having to outright kill a human being. Eddie’s presence in the game serves the purpose of scientifically testing out the constant of justifying killing a human being – as the player does or doesn’t do for James in his euthanizing Mary – against the variable of a different, and possibly much weaker, defense. Eddie, arguing that the man in the prison looked at him cross, is giving players a much more dubious and insubstantial justification for homicide than any other that is offered in Silent Hill 2.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from Eddie is the aforementioned Angela Orosco. James meets Angela in Silent Hill’s cemetery in the beginning of the game. She kneels in front of a grave, and through conversation we learn that she’s looking for her mother. Much later in the game, James finds Angela being attacked by monstrous version of her father that James must kill. Subsequently, players learn that Angela’s father was raping or molesting her, and her mother would do nothing to stop it, so Angela eventually killed her father. Like Eddie, Angela has told James her story in seeking some semblance of closure for her murder. However, unlike Eddie, Angela’s past has bred in her a hatred and distrust of men in general, so she seems less inclined to seek James’ – and the player’s – approval for killing her abusive father, and more generally confessional.
Eddie’s and Angela’s stories are both heartbreaking, but it’s no coincidence that they involve separate cases of homicide in which the killer feels justified in his or her actions. It’s especially no coincidence that both Eddie and Angela compare themselves to James, who has also killed “for a reason,” so to speak. The player ultimately decides if James, Angela and Eddie have acted reasonably and deserve punishment or absolution for their crimes. Some cases are presented more strongly than others: again, Eddie’s claim that his prison victim looked at him funny is delivered with a tone that is both unconvincing and nonchalant, whereas Angela’s life seems irreparably ruined by her abusive father. Even still, the player is judge and jury, and the developers never tell the gamer how to feel.
From the introduction to the closing credits, Silent Hill 2 delicately balances three stories, all of which involve adults who have consciously taken the lives of others. James’ story is catalyzed by putting his wife out of her misery at the end of a losing battle against a terminal illness. The consequences of Mary’s euthanizing ripple out among the other related characters – Maria, James’ new love interest; and Laura, his surrogate daughter. Maria is sometimes impatient with James and worries that he still pines for Mary; Laura is attached to Mary and acts out in a youthful rebellion against James and his new relationship. Additionally, the secondary characters – Eddie Dombrowski and Angela Orosco – deliver the other two stories, both of which center on justifiable homicide from different angles. James, Eddie and Angela are consistently developed, and Konami fully and fairly uses Silent Hill and its demons as metaphors for these social issues of life and death and their consequences without preaching one side or the other. It’s left entirely to the player to determine the killers’ guilt, somewhere out there in the fog between mercy and madness.
Works Cited
Reynolds, Matthew. “’Sine Mora’ Interview: Akira Yamaoka talks ‘Silent Hill,’ Grasshopper.” Digital Spy 2 Apr 2012. http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/interviews/a374438/sine-mora-interview-akira-yamaoka-talks-silent-hill-grasshopper.html Web. 24 Dec 2012.
Silent Hill. Dev. Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, Team Silent. 1999. PlayStation Game Disc. Konami, 1999.
Silent Hill Downpour. Dev. Vatra Games. 2012. PlayStation 3 Game Disc. Konami, 2012.
Silent Hill HD Collection. Dev. Konami, Hijinx Studios. 2012. PlayStation 3 Game Disc, Xbox 360 Game Disc. Konami, 2012.
Silent Hill: Homecoming. Dev. Double Helix Games. 2008. PlayStation 3 Game Disc. Konami, 2008.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Dev. Climax Studios. 2009. Wii Game Disc, PlayStation Portable Digital Download. Konami, 2009, 2010.
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