#gothicanalysis

I recently finished playing Senua’s Saga, and something fundamentally important revealed itself to me through the game. A pattern that relates to our reality when it comes to using fear as a tool for control. But before I get into it, I want to first say that playing Hellblade was a delicious narrative treat. I didn’t expect a short game to hit so hard with the story of Senua and her journey of dealing with psychosis, overcoming fear, and, most importantly, transformation. 

In the first game, Senua undergoes a life-altering transformation after surviving the trials of Helheim and coming face-to-face with Hela. Just to explain it again, Hela represents death and life as one being, not separate. We have a horrible habit of separating based on the concept of duality or the binary, but it's about the balance of one not existing without the other; she embodies both.

 I did make a video ‌discussing‌ Senua becoming the embodiment of Hela through the acceptance of life and death—mortality.  And I saw the ending of the first game as a death of the old and the renewal of a new being.

In Senua’s Saga, I got to witness how she was able to integrate that into the world and how she was able to help the surrounding people she meets along on her journey… because we are dealing not only with the vicious Draguar and the slavers; we are also dealing with giants. 

We learn as the game moves along that the giants were once people. People who suffered greatly. The first giant is a woman, Ingunn, a mother, who couldn’t protect her infant. So, the child died. 

That one hit the hardest on my heartstrings because she was suffering from that loss. And the trial to free her from her chains, her pain, was impactful to watch, and the music that went along with it dug even deeper into my heart. I wanted to cry on stream, but I kept it focused as I played that section. The best part of that scene was the music tempo. It was in sync with the bursts of flames that would kill us instantly. It was fantastic to experience. But I did cry after that night, especially when I replay the soundtrack on my walks, when I think about that scene, and let it sink in. Because it reminds me of how difficult it is to reach someone who’s suffering internally. It is like navigating a devastating trail, trying to get closer and closer to them, so you can stand before them. But it is like getting burned and being thrown back some paces. 

It takes a certain willpower to push forward to reach that person, and it’s a willingness to accept that the path will be challenging to move through, which is why some do give up at some point. 

But to get back on topic, each giant suffers from something devastating and is seeking peace. However, the last giant, we learn the truth of everything. The core of the curse. I’m gonna put it in terms of a curse or the root of the problem. We learned that the giants were brought into being by a selfish king. I’m saying selfish, because he got addicted to his people clinging to him because of their fear. It’s very important to acknowledge how fear and uncertainty drove his people to cling to him, and he became addicted to that attention. And as his people became less clingy and less worried about the outcome of their lives, that’s when he brought the giants into being to generate that fear again within his people, so they would turn to him for the solution. 

And his solution was to enslave people and sacrifice them to the giants. When that illusion broke… the illusion of a powerful king… was just a weak old man, clinging to his desire for attention. To be loved. To be feared. To be the one his people turned to. To be someone important, acknowledged, and seen. We see that in the media quite often in certain characters. But we also see that in reality as well. 

If you want an example of certain characters of what I mean by this, I’m only going to mention Misty from YellowJackets.

If you haven’t watched that series, I recommend it. It’s one of those shows that opens the eyes to quite a bit of human behavior. But that series is inspired by Lord of the Flies. 

Misty is a teenage girl who clung to the attention of being needed and seen after the devastating plane accident. And, as a spoiler, she sabotaged the beacon, destroying any chance of her and the rest of the soccer team being rescued. Therefore, long-story-short, she is the core reason they ended up being trapped in the wilderness for 19 months. That’s a long time to be around the same group from morning to night. Watch the series. 

So, the king,  Aleifr, generated fear in his people to control them because he wanted to feel important. The tactic of fear was used quite often in history to dehumanize others. When it comes to fear, you need to create an enemy. A villain or a monster for people to focus on. The focus on “who” always changes. And it would all be fiction or lies, because the goal is to control people, not to tell the truth. It functions on misinformation, and it spreads by other means that I don’t want to discuss here. 

But just to point this out, Senua could have chosen the same route as her father, because her father did the same thing, instilling fear in others. And it led to him convincing everyone to burn Senua’s mother at the stake. We saw that in the first game, but Senua convinced herself that her mother had taken her own life, when it was quite the opposite; her father had killed her mother. 

But in the final scene of the second game, when she imagines herself as like her father, marked in red, looking like a warrior, a leader to be feared. That whole look was to instill fear. Intimidate us, but she chose to release that idea by choosing the path of not being like her father and choosing another path. Show them a new path. 

Just to be clear, all the people started to cling to her. She was aware of that. We see that’s what’s happening in the story. The people she was helping were looking towards her, reaching out to her.

All those hands. Because she was ‌seen as someone who could slay deities. The people believed that. They were all following her lead and her commands. That’s when the concept of with great power comes great responsibility. The responsibility is that she has become the leader that the people look towards. To lead by example. Show them a better way. And Senua is not like her father or the self-severing king. All the victims. The people who died on her watch, etched into her. Their death is within her. She carries them with her through her life. And that’s important because it’s most likely going to influence her decisions moving forward. Because it looks like she has become the new leader for the people to follow.