Manchester University Press
11 ‘I will abandon this body and take to the air’
Abstract
Gothic themes, tropes and narrative converge in the 2012 videogame Dear Esther. Set in perpetual twilight, on a deserted Hebridean island, this game is part of a growing sub-genre known as the ‘first-person walker’, which involves the player exploring a typically Gothic space – a setting as evocative as that of Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights. Through a subversion of gaming expectations and tropes, this chapter argues that Dear Esther's control system and lack of interactivity with the game’s landscape allows the player to take the role of a ghost, haunting the island, as she uncovers a narrative of loss and suicide. The chapter further argues that through the game’s construction, the player forces the narrator – an unnamed male whom the player hears as she walks across and even inside the island, delivering fragments of letters to the titular Esther – to endlessly repeat his suicide and the events that lead to it.
Abstract
Gothic themes, tropes and narrative converge in the 2012 videogame Dear Esther. Set in perpetual twilight, on a deserted Hebridean island, this game is part of a growing sub-genre known as the ‘first-person walker’, which involves the player exploring a typically Gothic space – a setting as evocative as that of Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights. Through a subversion of gaming expectations and tropes, this chapter argues that Dear Esther's control system and lack of interactivity with the game’s landscape allows the player to take the role of a ghost, haunting the island, as she uncovers a narrative of loss and suicide. The chapter further argues that through the game’s construction, the player forces the narrator – an unnamed male whom the player hears as she walks across and even inside the island, delivering fragments of letters to the titular Esther – to endlessly repeat his suicide and the events that lead to it.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Series editor’s preface xiv
- Acknowledgements xvi
- Introduction 1
- 1 Scottish revenants 18
- 2 Male and female Werthers 36
- 3 ‘The supposed incipiency of mental disease’ 52
- 4 ‘The body of a self-destroyer’ 66
- 5 ‘To be mistress of her own fate’ 81
- 6 Suicide as justice? 96
- 7 Gothic influences 110
- 8 Better not to have been 124
- 9 Vampire suicide 139
- 10 Under the dying sun 160
- 11 ‘I will abandon this body and take to the air’ 176
- Index 189
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Series editor’s preface xiv
- Acknowledgements xvi
- Introduction 1
- 1 Scottish revenants 18
- 2 Male and female Werthers 36
- 3 ‘The supposed incipiency of mental disease’ 52
- 4 ‘The body of a self-destroyer’ 66
- 5 ‘To be mistress of her own fate’ 81
- 6 Suicide as justice? 96
- 7 Gothic influences 110
- 8 Better not to have been 124
- 9 Vampire suicide 139
- 10 Under the dying sun 160
- 11 ‘I will abandon this body and take to the air’ 176
- Index 189
