>;D

The Letter

Silent Hill responds to guilt and trauma. So naturally when James arrives outside the town, it calls out to him. Shapes itself with his sins and desires and all the things he's desperate to forget and deny.

So after James' mental break, he claims he received a letter. But the letter Mary wrote for him was supposed to be given to him by the hospital AFTER she passed from the disease.

I don't think he ever got it, I think after killing Mary he immediately put her body in the car and drove to Silent Hill. So how did he get the letter at the beginning of the game? Was the letter he had even real?

If you recall, the hospital didn't have the letter either because Laura took it with her when she left to find Mary (I think she hitched a ride with Eddie). So what if Laura arrived in town before James did?

Then that means Silent Hill already had the letter, and I believe the town manifested it for James based on his repressed desires.

Now here's a question: did the letter only have part of the message or the whole thing? Maybe, maybe not. But I don't think it would have mattered if he'd been given the entire message.

If James couldn't handle the truth, couldn't bring himself to confront those 3 years and admit they happened, then he would've suppressed the rest of the message so he could cling to the lie. But at the same time the heart can't help wanting what the heart wants.

James is made up of contradictions. He loves and hates Mary, he wants Mary, he doesn't want Mary, he wants real closure, he wants the truth, he wants the lie, he wants to be punished, he wants to be saved.

So with the delivery of the letter, James accepts both a truth and a lie because of his opposing desires; that Mary is dead and that she's alive. Waiting for him. He desperately wants to see her again and because of that letter, James makes a wish.

And from that wish, Maria is born.

The Lie

So James says his wife Mary died of disease 3 years ago. We know that's not the truth, Mary died fairly recently. Like...a matter of days recently. So how long did Mary live with the disease before James murdered her? My guess…3 years.

I think James went to Silent Hill not just because he had promised Mary he'd take her again someday, but also because he was planning on burying her there/committing suicide. (Maybe that's why at the start of the game he's in the bathroom washing his hands, he'd just finished digging her grave in the cemetery and had returned to the car to retrieve her body? As for why he didn't bring Mary with him before digging the grave, I'm guessing he wasn't mentally prepared yet to see her body so he procrastinated, waiting until the very last second.)

ANYWAY, James is in the bathroom, hands shaking, wedding ring missing, clearly in distress. My guess is he suffered a psychotic break and/or a ptsd attack. It makes sense that while he was driving to Silent Hill he'd been pushing everything away and running on autopilot, but now he's arrived at Silent Hill. It's time to bury Mary's body, which means he HAS to process everything. Those 3 years with his sick wife. And the horrible way that those 3 years ended.

He can't handle all the trauma and guilt.

To avoid an internal confrontation his mind invents a story, a lie he can hide in because it has enough truth to allow him to believe it. Mary died of that damned disease 3 years ago…and he can believe it because to him, in a way, she did. When she got sick she became someone else, a woman he didn't know. She became the disease.

James buries those 3 years of suffering, and in doing so, he separates Mary into two. He holds onto one version of Mary, latches onto the lie while discarding the truth. He clings to the idea of a beloved wife that was killed 3 years ago by a disease. He soothes himself with false closure because he longs for it.

But what happens to the discarded truth? All those suppressed memories? What happens to the other Mary he doesn't want, the neglected one who endured those 3 years of sickness?