get over it, guy: a secret of monkey island analysis
i'm not the first and i certainly won't be the last person compelled by the themes offered in the secret of monkey island, but none of the analyses i've seen so far have been comprehensive enough to satiate me. for such a bite-sized game, you'd think someone else would want to try & pick it apart in order to weave together a proper tapestry greater than the sum of its parts- but don't let me blather on for too long. i care about why this game's setting is the way it is.
i'm going to start by trying to explain just what's going on with its infamous anachronisms. from a watsonian perspective they've been tossed and turned inside-out by later entries, made into simply "part of a monkey island game"; keeping one's attention on only this game, as i'm going to for the rest of this writing, it feels like monkey & meele island simply exist in a world where our modern ideas of stuff like tourism, healthy living, and legal dispute are in coexistence with the golden age + land of piracy. like maybe the entire world is at a modern point except for this pocket "deep in the caribbean", and this is what it has to show for it. though, what really matters to me is a more doylist side of it all. we have here a historical setting that has within it fantasy elements integrated and modern ones applied. what i mean is all the ghosts and magic are presented like they belong in the general piratical-caribbean scene, whereas the images of modernity show up not quite in conflict with the story or gameplay but not facilitating it either. there could've been a beat where guybrush negotiated his way into the monkey islanders' good graces without them putting off eating him for cholesterol concerns, specifically; meathook's house could've been signposted without the bright lights and promised attractions; but it's not nearly as difficult to oppose lechuck without him being a ghost, only defeated with a magic root, holed up in the caverns of hell. even then, lechuck would always have been a villain & antagonist as a rejected suitor who refused to let goveror marley be, and in this way his ghostliness is just an extension of an evil that already existed, both literally in-universe and on a more symbolic level. it's still thoroughly local to the environment, much like the resident highly-cliche wise magical black woman.
i'm not going to bury the lede and ignore amusement park theory at all- it's just that, like i said, i'm largely dismissing mi2 (without which that interpretation is pretty baseless) along with the rest of the series for this essay and pretty much all anachronisms most associated with it do have a place in the setting of "tangible piracy-age caribbean". what it takes is understanding pretty much all the modernity here as ill-fitting and external, both from an out-of-universe, creative perspective and an in-universe one (a theme echoed in mi4, of all games). i mean, start with some of the most obviously amusement park-y bits, the three trials and their rewards: elaine acknowledges how many wannabes come to her mansion trying for her idol at the behest of the pirate leaders, being largely annoyed by it. incidentally, the initial reason for offering the position of pirate to wannabes is the inconvenience lechuck's menace poses to the pirate leaders' lifestyle- put a pin in that. the treasure reward is built up as a meele island specialty, practically the thing that would draw someone to the isle, and is put in place by the chamber of commerce, not the actual marley government. stan's place goes almost completely unacknowledged by meele islanders- i forget if the scumm bar cook references it by name, or simply a way to get a ship -and with how it's set up & how he presents himself it's not hard to see as a new business that's rolled into town. the fettucini circus is surely a travelling affair and similarly isn't mentioned by meele islanders unless guybrush brings it up first, and the men of low moral fiber talk about having putting out their own entertainment like it's the obvious or only way to get a living, without much inconvenience. herman toothrot plays into the castaway-hermit vibe like it's a role he couldn't live without. carla and meathook are both adverse to tourists, and you can add smirk to the list of people uninterested in visitors as a whole (the troll at the bridge is mostly a gameplay obstacle, but he may as well be acknowledged as fitting into that role). the monkey islanders' adherence to healthy living is in clear conflict with their usual business of cannibalism, if not also human sacrifice; their site of worship that doubles as the entrance to hell was a tour site and no matter their creators' authenticity their idols are received as cheap tourist crap. the vending machine gives no grog. the conclusion is obvious: modernity, tourist culture most of all, is unwanted, but it shows up anyway. the closest there comes to anyone immune/opposed to it would be the ghost pirates, probably because they're antagonistic towards decency enough as is.
i have to say it's interesting how pretty much all of this is so thoroughly detached from the actual story of guybrush's adventure in this game. it's all quite incidental, and you'd think with how mostly-polite, ineffectual, and immature he is he'd skirt his way outside of the paradigm, yeah? not at all. he's an aspect of modernity too.
guybrush's status as a player-insert is hard to dispute. he has no background, the first thing he does on screen is proclaim his motive (and farce of an identity- never once are you supposed to think of his name as that of an actual person), the arc of his relationship with elaine is pure wish-fulfillment, and he's altogether very genial regarding all the opposition he faces in gameplay; if he ever got frustrated by what he came upon, it'd seem only an appropriate reflection on the player's attitude. him pestering meathook is about the strongest characterization he gets beyond the player's dialogue choices, and the only time he genuinely complains about something is notably when he faces the player and jokes "i'm sure you're feeling the same thing." part of this is just that, even if they're a bit cold or grouchy like carla or the shopkeeper, everyone in the game who isn't the villain is no more ill-tempered than they have to be to progress guybrush's journey. none of the nasty pirates roaming meele's roads do anything to guybrush if he loses- they'll even direct him towards the sword master once he's about ready to face her -and if the monkey islanders never imprisoned him he'd never find herman's banana picker. it's game design, sure, but narratively it calls to mind amusement park theory, yeah? said meele pirates are responsible for the most damning near-4th wall break of the game, the comment on "how people talked back then." specifically, they're telling guybrush he needs to play along. he wants to be a pirate, he showed up here specifically to be one, but he isn't: he never actually proves himself to the pirate leaders nor rescues elaine, and she herself doesn't think he's like them. the character who most represents the player is just a tourist.
i'm going to take a moment to go over how else modernity shows up in this story. because obviously the only anachronisms to monkey island aren't the flashy ones. start with governor elaine marley, who wears pants, maybe. carla the sword master, who also wears pants. the type of banana that grows wild on monkey island. a circus that hangs up its posters in town- in the caribbean? probably a dozen more things that could be picked up on by someone who truly cares about the age of sail, but then there's also the vibe of meele's residents. i'm afraid i can't describe the attitude of a lot of these people as much more than modern (and i may as well mention that you can consider the "modernity" i speak of throughout this essay to be local to the 90s, specifically, i'm just not hammering that point in myself), in that they don't seem as pressed about the economics of survival as would be appropriate for their era. luxury, or things just-as-they-like, is what's on most everyone's mind, from the pirate leaders' desire for naught but more grog, to carla's solitude, to the storekeeper and carla, to herman's banana picker and the monkey islanders' cholesterol. like, in the lattermost case, you kind of get the impression that the lives of the monkey islanders would not be put in jeopardy if they truly gave up cannibalism; and the lives of the men of low moral fiber comes across as the sorts that only work out in places with decent social support systems. people aren't concerned by tourism because- recall the pin -it threatens their livelihoods, mostly because it disturbs their peace, which is not a great enough cause to get up in arms about.
otherwise guybrush would face actual opposition, wouldn't he? instead, with his good heart and unthreatening presence, he's allowed to chat people up and get the island(s) working to his heart's content. as a tourist, guybrush is specifically the kind of modernity that caribbean residents are most bothered by, but he gets away with what he does because for how thorough his status as player-insert is (how vital the player character's free traversal through the game is) he's in the end a light subversion of that position. as mentioned earlier, he doesn't actually complete the three trials and "become a pirate", the fulfillment of his stated goal. when that goal becomes rescuing elaine, he doesn't pull that off either. as well, his task of having a crew for getting to monkey island is fruitless, because they're no part of his work, and when he has to trick and negotiate his way to navigation through the pits of hell, said crew(/herman) pulls off the same thing with no such effort. ask yourself, what does he do that nobody else could? even when it's not about the tasks set up in gameplay, it's clear the rest of the game's cast has rich lives beyond guybrush that don't need him to run: the pirates who sack the mansion without him, the fettucini brothers who bicker their way on and off screen, carla's history with smirk and the shopkeeper, the scumm bar pirates who dismiss conversation with guybrush for each their own reasons, et cetera. sure, there were the one to two (to three) ghosts leading up to him, but lechuck's actual defeat is pure serendipity on guybrush's part. and though i am loathe to step outside the bounds i've made for myself, i think it's time to mention how a relationship with elaine, the one thing guybrush truly "wins" by the end of the game, is unceremoniously lost by mi2.
so to conclude. no matter how prepared this fantastic pirate world might be for it, the player is never going to fit within it, truly never, no matter how hard they try. the player is from a modern age. so at the end of the game, once your jaunt through mystery, through immaturity, is concluded, you're told to get off your computer and go to sleep. you probably put that off in order to play, and here's a gentle reminder that dreams and fantasy are always within your reach, you just really ought to power down one of these damn machines to get there. if you're tired after your adventure that's fine, because you can be tired in a good way. it's just that if you exhaust yourself with escape into a world that cannot have you, doesn't want you, won't give you what you want, you progress- well, maybe regress? you end up at the similar-but-changed sentiment of the mi2 final screen, which tells you other stuff you could be doing, head off the pillow, out of the clouds, building character, just anything other than stewing over more of the same for near two years. what are you waiting for? tour's over. go home.
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