June 13, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode, I discuss the memento mori wisdom of Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur Morgan and Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich.
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Become a Mythic Mind patron and/or enroll in a course at patreon.com/mythicmind
Provide a one-time tip at https://buymeacoffee.com/andrewnsnyder
Watch the video for this episode here: https://youtu.be/ynV50tCh6oc
Be sure to subscribe to the Mythic Mind and Mythic Mind Movies & Shows podcasts as well!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to Mythic mind Games, where we discuss
video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm
doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. How
To partners recently have been playing through Red Dead Redemption
(00:24):
two as I continue getting my reacquaintance with video games.
As I've mentioned in previous episodes, I took a long break,
I mean like a decade or so when I really
didn't play much of anything, as I just well, I
was engaged with other things, right, I'm engaged with career
or family, education, all sorts of stuff, and so I
really just didn't play video games. But as I've started
(00:47):
to step back into this arena, minding them for the
wisdom that they hold and just engaging with what I
think is potentially a productive avenue of enchantment, I decided
that one of the first new games, this is not
really new, I guess by by today's standards, but it's
new to me. One of the newer games that I
(01:07):
wanted to check out was Red Dead Redemption two. You know,
I've seen the number of clips here and there. I've
I'm drawn in by the esthetic of the wild West.
I mean, you know, the cowboys are like the quintessential
American folk story. I mean, this is this is our mythology. Mean,
it's a better way of saying it that the Europeans
(01:28):
have their Nights and Americans have their cowboys. And so
there's just there's just something about this that connects to
with me on a deep level. And so I played
Red Dead Redemption two, absolutely incredible game. If you haven't
played it, I strongly recommend it you. I know, I
have not played the first Red Dead Redemption yet, although
I did play Red Dead Revolver way back in the day,
(01:48):
which was the kind of spiritual precursor to the series now.
But the second one is a prequel. And so while
I understand that there's probably some enrichments and benefit that
comes through playing the first one first, it's not absolutely necessary.
At least that's what I was told and that's certainly
what I've experienced. It's it's a great story as it
stands alone, and eventually I'll make it to the first
(02:09):
one as well. Well. I Like I said, I was
blown away by this game. One thing is just it's fun,
It's enchanting. I mean, there's just so much that comes
out of just exploring the wilderness, exploring the towns. You know,
whether you're you're you choose to take an honorable path
and you know, be something of a reforming cowboy, or
(02:31):
you play the role of just the dishonorable, hard edged outlaw.
Like either way it's fun. But I definitely came to
find that the honorable path is definitely more satisfying. And
so that's how I decided to play the games, how
I decided to beat the game. Since then, I've also
fiddled around a little bit being more of just a
(02:52):
straight out outlaw, you know, Robin Train's Robin Stores, and
I've definitely come to find that the honorable path is
more satisfying. Even though the dishonorable path is more fun,
you know, it's fund of rob trains and whatnot. Don't
don't take that out of context of this particular focus.
But I knew that this was a game that I
(03:13):
wanted to discuss with you, and this is gonna be
a two parter, and so in this episode is just
me and I want to get into what I believe
are some of the most heartening as well as heartbreaking
elements of the story, and in particular, I want to
be discussing the the role that Arthur Morgan plays or
(03:34):
Arthur Morgan being the main protagonist that your character, and
so I want to talk about the role of Arthur
Morgan in relation with Tolstoy Short story the Death of
evan Iliach. And warning right now there will be spoilers
for both the game as well as Tolstoy story in
this episode, but it's a you can make of that
(03:55):
what you will. But I do think that on the
on the main Mythic Mind podcast some point down the road,
maybe sooner Aroun then later, I'm not not really sure,
but we've been talking about having an episode on the
death of evon Ilioch, who are on the main Mythic
Mind podcast. Episode for now, I'm really just going to
lay out the major outline of the story as a
refresher or if you've not read it before, and then
(04:18):
I just want to draw on some comparisons here between
Arthur Morgan and the titular character of Tolstoy Short story,
evon Iliitch. Now, the death of evon Iliitch begins after
the death of evon Iliach in the first chapter. It's
like a kind of like a prologue where you have
some of evon Ilitch's acquaintances, some of his colleagues at
(04:39):
the courthouse. You know, he works in law. They all
work in law. And they read in the newspaper that
evon Iliitch has died, and they don't break into tears,
that they don't start mourning, and they say some of
the niceties that you might say when somebody you learn
that someone you know dies, but they quickly move on
(05:00):
to what this really means for them practically in regards
to their career, like what it means for them financially,
what it means for them positionally, And so they almost
instantly moved to, oh, it's a shame that he died too, now,
so you're going to get this promotion now you can
take his spot. I'm going to take his spot, And
(05:21):
so that they're more concerned with how is this going
to affect me? How's this going to affect my career
than they are concerned about the death of ivan Ilyitch.
In fact, even Pyodor Ivanovitch, who is the closest to
a friend that evan Iliach has, like even he is
just kind of cracking jokes and he's not deeply moved
(05:42):
and we're told that they all had the same thought,
that none of them expressed it, but they all have
this thought somewhere. Maybe it was thought consciously, maybe subconsciously,
but they all have this thought that it was ivan
Ilyitch who was dead and not me. And so you
have all these people, they have their their good careers
that they're they're you know, financially stable, they are moving
(06:06):
up now in the world, right that a number of
them are going to be getting promotioned with the death
of ivan Iliach. But when it comes to the existential
question of what does it all mean relative to the
fact that just like evan Iliach, I too am going
to die, that's just not something that they're willing to
come to terms with, and so they keep shielding themselves
(06:29):
from that reality. Is he who died, not me? This
death has nothing to do with me, His mortality has
nothing to do with my own. Well, eventually they make
their way over to the funeral service and they pay
respects to his wife, the widow, Proscobia Perovna, and even
then his widow, Proscobia Perovna, she she calls Pyotr Ivanovitch
(06:50):
over for a secret meeting, not secret private meeting, that's
that's what I'm looking for. They have this private meeting
and they both just as in the kind of conversation
that you would expect that ivan Ilyitch's friend and widow
would have, and so they're just chatting. Oh, it's such
a shame. Peter Ivanovitch says, did ivan Iliitch suffer at
(07:13):
the end? And Proskoby Federovna says, well, yes, he suffered.
That he was just screaming incessantly for three days at
the end. And so she is far more concerned with
her own inconvenience that she faced in light of the
death of her husband than she is concerned with the
death of her husband. He was a nuisance to her,
(07:35):
and so just as they are first and foremost, his
friends are first and foremost concerned with just their own
earthly material well being, so too is she. Like she
obviously did not care very deeply for her husband. She's
kind of relieved that he's gone, but she can't say
that because she feels like she's bound by social propriety
(07:56):
to mourn and to say certain things, just as Peter
Vanovitch is saying certain things, but none of them. It's
all on the surface. It doesn't come from the heart.
They're not having a real conversation with each other, and
in fact, we eventually find out through the course of
this phone new conversation that the only reason why Proscobia
Federovna is trying to talk to Peter Vanovitch is because
(08:16):
she is hoping that Peter Vanovitch can get more money
out of the government pension for her. And so Jess says,
with his friends, she's concerned about what is this going
to mean for me materially, And as soon as Peter
Vanovitch says yeah, that's probably not gonna happen, Proscoby Federovna says, okay,
well then I better go and they just leave. And
so just none of that. Neither of them are having
(08:37):
a real conversation with a person. They're both just engaging
in social propriety that's meant to cover up their self centeredness. Well,
toward the end of this first chapter, you have Peter
Vanovitch waiting for a car outside and he's standing there
next to ivan Ilyitch's butler, a guy named Garrison. Now
Garrison who is really the only authentic person for the
(09:00):
majority of the story that he says something pretty profound.
Peter Vanovitch says, you know, it's a terrible business about
evan Iliys dying, and Garrison says, basically, it's going to
happen all of us. This is God's will, and so
he just he recognizes the inevitability of death. He has
this momentum moory idea that even though of all the
(09:22):
main characters and in the story, Garrison is the lowest station,
he is the only one who has actually come to
terms with this mortality. He is the only one who's
living with purpose. And so we come to find that
his life, as lowly as it may be, is far
far more meaningful than these upper middle class lawyers and
government workers. But after Garrison makes this proclamation about the
(09:46):
inevitability of our mortality, Peter Vanovitch just doesn't really have
anything saying. He just leaves right because he's trying to
avoid this reality. In fact, just a little bit ago
at the scene, he's looking at the body, he's looking
at the corpse of Ivan Ilyitch, and he starts to
just kind of panic because he's starting is something's bubbling
up within him. He's starting to look in the face
(10:08):
of mortality. Tolstoy tells us that that the body was
giving the message to Pyotr Ivanovitch that dead bodies always
give right namely that you two will die but were
But instead of taking that message to heart, Pyotr Ivanovitch says, like,
that's terribly inappropriate, and then he just reminds himself, oh wait,
(10:29):
ivan Iliach, who's dead. It's not me, And so he
just keeps fleeing from this reality where if he can,
Garisim is the only person who is a person who
recognizes people as people well, and then we start to
get a backstory of ivan Ilyitch ended up point. We're
going to work our way up for the rest of
the short story up to the death of ivan Ilyitch. So,
ivan Ilyitch, by all estimations, was a mediocre guy. I mean,
(10:53):
he was a middle child. His older brother is very successful,
his younger brother is a deadbee bum, and so he's
right in the middle. He got his first job in
law by essentially his father got him the job. And
so this is the guy who really doesn't have a
lot of agency. And in fact, if you've read that
Hideous Strength, I see a lot of common ground between
(11:16):
Ivan Ilyitch and Mark stutick I strongly recommend reading those
books side by side. And so Evan Iliach he has
a decent job. Eventually as he's just climbing the social ladder,
he you know, he's engaged in all these society parties,
and he meets this woman named Proscobia Federovna, now Proscovia Federovna,
(11:37):
we're told was moderately attractive, she had a decent amount
of money, and she liked Ivon Iliitch and that's enough
reason for Evan Eliage to get married. And in fact,
that's basically a tool toy let it out that she
had this standing, she liked him well enough, and so
they got married, and then which kind of move on
from there. And so obviously Evan Iliach didn't love her.
He didn't even ever really commit himself to her. It
(11:59):
was just this is the next thing that I do
as a member of society. It's time for him to
get married. And so he gets married, and at first
things seem to be going okay, And that's because they're
both able to keep living basically as they were before.
I mean, when you get married before having kids, there's
only but so much life change happening. Now, Okay, don't
(12:20):
misunderstand me. I should be careful when I say that
that obviously there is a major life change to get married,
and that's obviously the case. But at the same time,
when you don't have kids, like there are only but
so many responsibilities that you have as a family, you
can still for the most part, I keep doing the
things that you want to do, right, just do them together.
(12:43):
But eventually Proskoviy Perovna gets pregnant and at this point
their marriage really starts to go downhill because now Ivan
Ilyitch has some real responsibilities and this is not somebody
who's been willing or able to take responsibilities. And so
he basically just continues doing the things he wants to do,
goes all the society parties, hangs out with his friends
(13:04):
all hours, you know, works all the time. He really
doesn't spend any time at home. Well, Prascovia Federovna, especially
as the pregnancy continues, she spends more and more time
at home and you know, she's not feeling well. They
get in a lot of fights and he just thinks
that she just you know, being a nag, and she
thinks that he doesn't care about her, which is largely true,
(13:24):
and so this is just begins, I mean the really
the functional end of their relationship. I mean that they
continue together, but they're just always at each other's throats.
They never understand each other. And this is in large
part I mean, don't get me wrong, She's no heroin here, Like,
she's got her own problems. But the same time, it's
far easier for him to be sympathetic to Proscoya Federovna
(13:47):
because he is such a bad husband and father that
it's natural that resentment would grow in her as they
continue down this path. Now, that doesn't justify her. She
is not going to turn out to be an incredible
wife for her own sake. But again, like, I have
more sympathy for her because I get it, even if
(14:07):
it's not necessarily excusable. And so she continues to get
just embittered toward him, and then he just you know,
return turns around by getting more invested in work and
spending less time at home, and eventually he decides he
needs to make more money, and eventually he gets the
job alongside Peter Vanovitch in Gang. And at one point
when he's setting things up in his new apartment, he's
(14:31):
decorating everything to meet the aesthetics of the upper middle class,
you know, those who want to look far more wealthy
than the actually are. And so, again, lacking agency but
wanting to be noticed, he decorates his house just like
everyone else. Right, in trying to stand out, he ends
up being just like everybody else. And he's trying to
(14:51):
manage this complete control over his life. And all of
this is just because he wants to be somebody. I mean,
he wants to He wants to be noticed. He wants
to be noticed as a person. That's all he's ever wanted.
But he doesn't know how to do that because he's
unable to notice his own self. He doesn't know who
ivan ilyitch is. He spent his entire life building this mask,
(15:15):
this illusion, this caricature of what somebody in society is
supposed to look like, and in so doing, he's failed
to recognize, or he's failed to ask himself the question,
who do I want to be? Right, if you don't
ask yourself that question, what is it that I really want?
Who is it that I really want to be? Then
(15:38):
eventually you'll find that you've spent far too many years
of your life trying to dress up a ghost as
if you could, but every time you put on the
new garments, they just fall to the floor in a
pile of nothingness. But nonetheless, that's exactly what he's trying
to do. And so he's trying to decorate his apartment,
get everything just right. At one point, one of his
(15:59):
servants is hanging some window treatments, but it's they're not
he's not doing exactly in the way that evan Iliach wants.
Evan Iliach has to like micro manage everything about this decorating.
I mean, even when he was at work, he's like
daydreaming about how he's going to decorate his apartment, and
so he has to have everything to the perfect standards
of this image that he's trying to construct. And the
(16:19):
servant's not hanging up the window treatments in the right way,
and so then evan Iliach says, okay, so let me
do it, and so he gets up and he hangs
the window treatments. But then he falls and he hits
his side and he comments that, you know, if you
weren't such an athlete, that might be a major issue.
But I mean, he'll be fine. But of course this
is going to be the beginning of the death of
Ivan Iliach. And so as time goes on, he starts
(16:43):
to feel this pain, this sickness. He's having a hard
time eating, he's getting more irritable that there's obviously something
wrong here, but at first he doesn't want to recognize it,
and eventually he has to recognize it because he's going
to go through these spirals of of kind of debating
with himself, of denial and despairing acceptance. And this happens
(17:05):
on a number of different layers, and so first it's
am I sick? Am I not sick? And eventually the
I am sick that bubbles up and to the point
where he can no longer deny it, and so he
is sick. Well, his wife makes him see a number
of doctors, and none of these doctors really know what's
wrong with him, or rather, they all know what's wrong
(17:25):
with them, but they all know different things to be
wrong with him, and so there's no agreement on what's
wrong with him, let alone what kind of treatment he
should pursue. And none of these doctors really care about him.
None of them are listening to him. They're just concerned
about working out the puzzle. That's what they're interested in.
But they're not interested in him as a person, which
is I guess poetic justice, maybe maybe irony because previously
(17:47):
we're told that what he loved, what evan Ilias loved
about his job as a civil magistrate is that he
was able to pull people into court and that he
could hold their life in his hands and he could
decide whether to let him go or to destroy them. Now,
to be fair, I mean, he never exercises power to
unjustly destroy somebody, but he reveled in the fact that
(18:09):
he could, and so he reveled in this illusion of
having power because he didn't have power over his own life.
He reveled in being able to exercise that power over
other people. But he was too much of a coward
to even play the tyrant. All he wanted was this
illusion of power. His whole life, he's been chasing an
illusion all because he wants to be known and he
(18:33):
wants to be noticed, but he doesn't want to take responsibility. Well,
now these doctors are doing the same thing that they
are reveling in their power over this man, over this case. Rather,
that's even better way of saying it. They're reveled in
their power over this case, but they weren't actually interested
in him, and so he keeps asking this question to
(18:54):
the doctors. He says, is this serious? Am I going
to die? And they just think that's an inappropriate question
and they don't want to entertain it. But that's the
one question that he wants to know that once he
knows for sure, yeah, okay, I'm sick, now he wants
to know the question, am I going to die? This
is the next level of the spiral, And he goes
(19:14):
back and forth. Sometimes he has good days and he
convinces himself that he's getting better. Other days he has
bad days, and he's he comes to the realization that
I'm not getting any better. The treatments aren't working. I
am indeed dying, And so this death just continues to
haunt him. In fact, there's one chapter in particular it's
(19:35):
very haunting, which also I keep talking about how he
would ignore it, but it would keep rising up, it
being his realization of his own impending mortality. And so
the next he goes from the spiral of am I sick?
To I am sick? He goes through the spiral of
am I dying? To I am dying, and now he's
going to go through the deeper existential spiral that's going
(19:57):
to lead him to recognize what it is that he is,
what it is that he's always wanted to be, And
so he begins asking questions like, Okay, what is it
that I want? And he answers himself and he says,
what I want is to be better. What I want
is to live, and then he follows up in his
own internal monologue he says live, how well, how I've
always lived? But then as he says that, that despair
(20:21):
starts to rise up and he's starting to think, like,
wait a minute, how I've always lived? But what I've
always lived is absolutely miserable. And he starts thinking back
over his life, over every major step that he's taken,
and he recognizes, like back in school, that the groups
that he was in that he wasn't in because he
actually wanted to be in those groups or he actually
liked those people. He was in the groups that served
(20:43):
his advancement in society. He was in the kind of
groups that he felt like he ought to be in,
and that's how he navigated every step of the social
ladder that he just he engaged in relationships, the groups,
the outings. He did the things that someone needed to
do in order to be somebody. And again, if you've
read that Hideous Strength, there's some very strong mark stetic
(21:05):
connections here. But eventually he comes to recognize that he
hasn't actually been happy, despite the fact that he's been
pretty successful in his career at least, he hasn't really
been happy for a very long time, not since childhood,
but over time. Who Ivan Ilyitch is as a person
by nature? By nature, I mean like true to what
(21:26):
it is that he's supposed to be, actually supposed to
be as a human. That gets covered up over time
through the artificial construct of societal identity. But at this
point he recognizes that he's always yearned for something more.
He's yearned for something real, and so he goes from
I'm going to die to what do I want? And
(21:48):
now he recognizes what I want is not just to live.
What I want is to live well. And so he's
trying to deal with what that issue is. And you know,
as his disease continues to pick up and he starts
to approach the end, well, now he starts asking the
question of what do I want, not just what do
I want, but what should I want? Right now he
(22:08):
moves on to what should I want? So now he's
engaging in ethical reasoning, he's putting himself under an ethical standard,
and he's recognizing that not all desires are equaled, that
there's certain things that he should want. And this really
develops as he approaches the very end of his life,
and we're told that he suffered for three days, that
(22:29):
his death was carried out over the course of three
days of absolute agony, and that's going to be significant.
But we'll probably get more into that, into some of
the symbolism here when we talk about Evan Iliach on
the main Mythic Mind podcast. But he suffers for three days,
and then at the end he starts to recognize that
he lived his life the entirely wrong way. And so
(22:53):
now that ethical question of what should I want has
gone on to I haven't lived in the way that
I should have. I haven't wanted the things that I
should have wanted. That all along, I've learned I've yearned
to be somebody real. I've yearned to be someone authentic,
somebody who's capable of noticing himself. I've yearned to be
(23:15):
a person, a substantial person, and not just a ghost
of societal standing. But I've wanted, I've yearned to be
a substantial person. And the Lewis connections are all over right.
This is strong great divorce connections. Here we talk about
the difference between his ghosts and the solid spirits, and
so he's yearned to be someone solid, not someone illusory.
(23:38):
And as he approaches his death, he he has this
literal come to Jesus moment where you know that the
this is somebody who hasn't been terribly religious, despite living
in a religious environment, religious culture. He is not somebody
who's been very religious. But right at the end, he
(23:59):
wrecked cognizes that he's lived his life in the wrong
way before the eyes of God. He and he looks
at his son, he looks at his wife really for
the first time, and he recognizes that he didn't do
right by them, and he tries to say that he's sorry.
He tries to say forgive me, but he can't manage
to get the words out, and he consoles himself saying
(24:21):
that it's okay that he couldn't get the words out,
because he who most needed to hear the plea for forgiveness,
heard it, and so at that point he's able to
stop struggling against death, which has described like you know,
somebody who's thrown a sack over his head and dragging
him against his will. Well, no, now he feels peace
because there is no death. Tolstoy tells us he is
(24:42):
now able to be received into the fullness of life.
And as he dies, the final words that he hears
from the room around him are it is finished. And
that's how the story ends. And so what you have
here is a man who is but a ghost of
a man, man who's yearning to be real, yearning to
be someone of substance. He's a bad man who wants
(25:05):
to be good. Now. He's not bad in the sense
of being like a gross villain who's terrorizing the town.
But he's a bad man in that he's not what
a man is supposed to be. He's not authentic to
what it means to be human. He doesn't know who
ivon Iliage is is. He's a bad husband, he's a
(25:26):
bad friend, he's a bad father. And so this is
I think something that Tolstoy does brilliantly in that he
demonstrates what a bad man looks like in the everyday.
It's not always the gross villain. It's not always the
serial killer or the hitler or the stalin that knows.
(25:47):
Sometimes a bad man is actually quite ordinary. In fact,
he may even be you or me. But despite being
a bad man, he's someone who wants to be a
good man but doesn't really know how to do it.
And tell the very end now, as I was playing
through Red Dead Redunction two, there is a certain point
at which Arthur Morgan starts to get sick and eventually
(26:11):
he just collapses in the middle of town and he's
dragged off to the doctor where he finds out that
he has tuberculosis, and he's told us a serious and
that he's probably going to die. And so for the
rest of the game, Arthur Morgan he's dying, and he
increasingly comes to recognize the fact that he is dying.
And this is why, especially from this point on, the
(26:33):
game is so much more compelling when you play an
honorable path, because the story is really trying to push
you in this direction. The story is trying to help
you recognize what Arthur Morgan is, recognizing that the things
that he used to live for that the things that
made him a bad man, that praying on other people,
that even seeking to be somebody in this gang that
(26:55):
he's been running with, this gang that he's been running
with since he was a kid, something like the only
family that he's known, but it's actually a terrible family that,
you know, his whole life has been spent trying to
be somebody in this gang, especially to this terrible mentor
who has a who plays a fatherlike role to him,
but just that father like he's not very fatherly really,
(27:17):
And so Arthur Morgan he wants to be somebody, but
he goes about it in all the wrong ways. He
is a bad man who yearns to be something good,
but he just doesn't know how to do it well.
As he increasingly comes to terms for his own mortality,
he starts to become a good man. He recognizes that
things that he used to want are not what he
(27:38):
should have wanted. Right, He's able to ask himself, have
I wanted the right? Things? Like how do I want
to live? How should I be living? And so now
we get this redemption arc, and hence the name of
the series, right red ed Redemption, And so we get
this redemption arc where now he starts to yearn for
goodness and he starts to get a better sense of
(27:58):
what goodness is. Now, this is not a Christian game,
it's not explicitly and so he's not going to have
this great conversion experience, although there's some degree of religion
that plays into it. But really what you have is
Arthur Morgan looking at the light that he's led, recognizing
he's been a bad man, and now he's understanding a
goodness is. I'm going to start moving in a different direction,
(28:19):
the opposite direction of that, which is I mean, if
you don't know what goodness is, that's not a bad
way to go about it. Because I'm an often badness
is more easily recognizable than goodness. Like I talk about
this a lot in my philosophy classes, you know, when
I teach them in the public university. That as much
as everyone claims to be a relativist, like, we all
recognize gross evil when we see it. We all recognize
(28:42):
that it's bad to commit murder. It's it's bad to
do any number of things, right, I mean, push an
old lady into the middle of the road, Like there's
a lot of things that everyone recognizes are just bad.
And so you know, if we don't have a firm
understanding of goodness, as you know, I would propose and
moving in the direction of the beatific vision, the font
(29:03):
of all goodness, Like if you don't have that, then
at the very leads you can start to move in
whatever direction is the opposite of what is clearly bad
like that, that's at least a start. And so that's
really what Arthur Morgan does. And I mean it's short
of playing the game yourself, it's hard to communicate just
what a strong, compelling job the writers of this game
(29:26):
do in portraying that redemption arc and helping you to
really feel it, to experience his sense of regret and
longing to make things right with the final bits of
breath that are quickly being expelled from his lungs. It's
not a one to one connection between the story of
Ivan Ilyitch and Arthur Morgan, but I do think that
both of them are approaching the same basic archetype of
(29:48):
coming to terms with mortality and letting that renew the
way that you're engaging with the world around you. I mean,
there's this medieval phrase, medieval Latin phrase memento mori remember
that you will or remember your death. And it's important
to always have this reminder in front of us, not
in a morbid sense that causes us to forego our
(30:10):
responsibilities and our enjoyment in life, but actually this reminder
to embrace the responsibilities and enjoyment we can have in
this life, because this life is fleeting in many ways,
like in the long run, it's already forfeit. And so
what we need to do is to redeem that life.
(30:32):
Redeem that life by living well, redeem that life by
being a good person. And I don't just mean that
in sort of like a generic subjective, you know, be
good according to your you know, whims of morality. What
it mean is live in the way that a person
is meant to live. You know. Aristota would say what
that means is you live a life according to reason
(30:54):
and virtue. The Westminster Catechism says that the chief end
of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him
for and so when I talk about being a good person,
what I mean is you fulfill the form of what
a person is supposed to be. And I think that
this game does it very provides a very strong, very
compelling case for arguing that video games can deal with
(31:19):
significant existential issues, significant issues that the very least approach
the literary, or maybe we even want to say that
they can echo the literary, That they are artistic endeavors
that can connect us to things that are true, good,
and beautiful. And that I think is where I'm going
to leave this off for now. Next time we'll have
(31:41):
more of a just general paneled conversation on this game.
What's enjoyable about it, what's enriching about it, what wisdom
we can mind from it, and it's kind of wherever
things go from there. As a reminder, this is only
one branch of the Mythic Mind fellowship. We also have
our main podcast simply called Mythic Mind, which takes primarily
(32:02):
a literary focus, but it's also kind of a staging
ground for trying out new ideas that potentially move into
more branch shows like this. It's really just the main
hub of what we do, and so make sure you
subscribe to the main Mythic Mind podcast. And also we
recently launched the Mythic Mind Movies and Shows podcast, which
does exactly what it claims to do in the title,
(32:23):
it's much like this show. We're looking at more popular
medium through the lens of the Christian humanities. But for
that show, it's obviously dealing with movies and shows. And
right now we're working on a Star Wars series, and
after that we'll go, I don't we'll see where we go.
We'll kind of popcorn around a little bit with ideas
on that within the Fellowship. And if you enjoyed this episode,
(32:46):
you enjoy the broader work that we do any all
some of it, and you want to see more of
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(33:07):
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(33:29):
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(33:50):
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(34:10):
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time we will return with more Red Dead Redemption two,
but until next time, God speed. The Elder Scrolls in
(34:34):
Philosophy is six week course beginning in September twenty twenty five.
I don't play many video games these days, but there
are certain titles that have stuck with me, enchanting the
mind of my youth and never entirely fading away. One
of the chiefs among these titles is The Elder Scrolls,
namely Moruin, Oblivion and Skyrim. The level of artistry, mythology,
(34:57):
and lore of this universe is vast and provide is
a strong representative for asking the question as to how
video games might relate to literature as an art form,
Where might it rise to such a level, where must
it fall short? And what unique advantages does it possess.
For this eight week study, we'll be seeking to answer
these questions while analyzing various elements of this franchise, specifically
(35:19):
focusing on content related to Morrow and Oblivion and Skyrim.
Will be taking a look at the philosophy of RPGs
and considering the philosophical implications of character creation and formation
in an open ended series such as this, and will
be looking at the relationship between in game religion, lore,
and ideas with our primary world philosophical and religious concepts.
(35:40):
Each week will include one to two videos addressing these topics,
ongoing discord conversations, and live meetings. You are also encouraged
to spend at least a little time playing one of
these titles each week as a launching pad for conversation.
Join us in Tamreil that we might better understand our
primary life here on Mundus. Enroll today by going to
patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and checking out the shop,
(36:03):
or you can access all courses at begin during your
subscription period if you purchase a Tier three annual subscription.
Get that Tier three annual subscription and I'll give you
that special code for your all access pass. I hope
to see you there.
Hello, and welcome to Mythic mind Games, where we discuss
video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm
doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. How
To partners recently have been playing through Red Dead Redemption
(00:24):
two as I continue getting my reacquaintance with video games.
As I've mentioned in previous episodes, I took a long break,
I mean like a decade or so when I really
didn't play much of anything, as I just well, I
was engaged with other things, right, I'm engaged with career
or family, education, all sorts of stuff, and so I
really just didn't play video games. But as I've started
(00:47):
to step back into this arena, minding them for the
wisdom that they hold and just engaging with what I
think is potentially a productive avenue of enchantment, I decided
that one of the first new games, this is not
really new, I guess by by today's standards, but it's
new to me. One of the newer games that I
(01:07):
wanted to check out was Red Dead Redemption two. You know,
I've seen the number of clips here and there. I've
I'm drawn in by the esthetic of the wild West.
I mean, you know, the cowboys are like the quintessential
American folk story. I mean, this is this is our mythology. Mean,
it's a better way of saying it that the Europeans
(01:28):
have their Nights and Americans have their cowboys. And so
there's just there's just something about this that connects to
with me on a deep level. And so I played
Red Dead Redemption two, absolutely incredible game. If you haven't
played it, I strongly recommend it you. I know, I
have not played the first Red Dead Redemption yet, although
I did play Red Dead Revolver way back in the day,
(01:48):
which was the kind of spiritual precursor to the series now.
But the second one is a prequel. And so while
I understand that there's probably some enrichments and benefit that
comes through playing the first one first, it's not absolutely necessary.
At least that's what I was told and that's certainly
what I've experienced. It's it's a great story as it
stands alone, and eventually I'll make it to the first
(02:09):
one as well. Well. I Like I said, I was
blown away by this game. One thing is just it's fun,
It's enchanting. I mean, there's just so much that comes
out of just exploring the wilderness, exploring the towns. You know,
whether you're you're you choose to take an honorable path
and you know, be something of a reforming cowboy, or
(02:31):
you play the role of just the dishonorable, hard edged outlaw.
Like either way it's fun. But I definitely came to
find that the honorable path is definitely more satisfying. And
so that's how I decided to play the games, how
I decided to beat the game. Since then, I've also
fiddled around a little bit being more of just a
(02:52):
straight out outlaw, you know, Robin Train's Robin Stores, and
I've definitely come to find that the honorable path is
more satisfying. Even though the dishonorable path is more fun,
you know, it's fund of rob trains and whatnot. Don't
don't take that out of context of this particular focus.
But I knew that this was a game that I
(03:13):
wanted to discuss with you, and this is gonna be
a two parter, and so in this episode is just
me and I want to get into what I believe
are some of the most heartening as well as heartbreaking
elements of the story, and in particular, I want to
be discussing the the role that Arthur Morgan plays or
(03:34):
Arthur Morgan being the main protagonist that your character, and
so I want to talk about the role of Arthur
Morgan in relation with Tolstoy Short story the Death of
evan Iliach. And warning right now there will be spoilers
for both the game as well as Tolstoy story in
this episode, but it's a you can make of that
(03:55):
what you will. But I do think that on the
on the main Mythic Mind podcast some point down the road,
maybe sooner Aroun then later, I'm not not really sure,
but we've been talking about having an episode on the
death of evon Ilioch, who are on the main Mythic
Mind podcast. Episode for now, I'm really just going to
lay out the major outline of the story as a
refresher or if you've not read it before, and then
(04:18):
I just want to draw on some comparisons here between
Arthur Morgan and the titular character of Tolstoy Short story,
evon Iliitch. Now, the death of evon Iliitch begins after
the death of evon Iliach in the first chapter. It's
like a kind of like a prologue where you have
some of evon Ilitch's acquaintances, some of his colleagues at
(04:39):
the courthouse. You know, he works in law. They all
work in law. And they read in the newspaper that
evon Iliitch has died, and they don't break into tears,
that they don't start mourning, and they say some of
the niceties that you might say when somebody you learn
that someone you know dies, but they quickly move on
(05:00):
to what this really means for them practically in regards
to their career, like what it means for them financially,
what it means for them positionally, And so they almost
instantly moved to, oh, it's a shame that he died too, now,
so you're going to get this promotion now you can
take his spot. I'm going to take his spot, And
(05:21):
so that they're more concerned with how is this going
to affect me? How's this going to affect my career
than they are concerned about the death of ivan Ilyitch.
In fact, even Pyodor Ivanovitch, who is the closest to
a friend that evan Iliach has, like even he is
just kind of cracking jokes and he's not deeply moved
(05:42):
and we're told that they all had the same thought,
that none of them expressed it, but they all have
this thought somewhere. Maybe it was thought consciously, maybe subconsciously,
but they all have this thought that it was ivan
Ilyitch who was dead and not me. And so you
have all these people, they have their their good careers
that they're they're you know, financially stable, they are moving
(06:06):
up now in the world, right that a number of
them are going to be getting promotioned with the death
of ivan Iliach. But when it comes to the existential
question of what does it all mean relative to the
fact that just like evan Iliach, I too am going
to die, that's just not something that they're willing to
come to terms with, and so they keep shielding themselves
(06:29):
from that reality. Is he who died, not me? This
death has nothing to do with me, His mortality has
nothing to do with my own. Well, eventually they make
their way over to the funeral service and they pay
respects to his wife, the widow, Proscobia Perovna, and even
then his widow, Proscobia Perovna, she she calls Pyotr Ivanovitch
(06:50):
over for a secret meeting, not secret private meeting, that's
that's what I'm looking for. They have this private meeting
and they both just as in the kind of conversation
that you would expect that ivan Ilyitch's friend and widow
would have, and so they're just chatting. Oh, it's such
a shame. Peter Ivanovitch says, did ivan Iliitch suffer at
(07:13):
the end? And Proskoby Federovna says, well, yes, he suffered.
That he was just screaming incessantly for three days at
the end. And so she is far more concerned with
her own inconvenience that she faced in light of the
death of her husband than she is concerned with the
death of her husband. He was a nuisance to her,
(07:35):
and so just as they are first and foremost, his
friends are first and foremost concerned with just their own
earthly material well being, so too is she. Like she
obviously did not care very deeply for her husband. She's
kind of relieved that he's gone, but she can't say
that because she feels like she's bound by social propriety
(07:56):
to mourn and to say certain things, just as Peter
Vanovitch is saying certain things, but none of them. It's
all on the surface. It doesn't come from the heart.
They're not having a real conversation with each other, and
in fact, we eventually find out through the course of
this phone new conversation that the only reason why Proscobia
Federovna is trying to talk to Peter Vanovitch is because
(08:16):
she is hoping that Peter Vanovitch can get more money
out of the government pension for her. And so Jess says,
with his friends, she's concerned about what is this going
to mean for me materially, And as soon as Peter
Vanovitch says yeah, that's probably not gonna happen, Proscoby Federovna says, okay,
well then I better go and they just leave. And
so just none of that. Neither of them are having
(08:37):
a real conversation with a person. They're both just engaging
in social propriety that's meant to cover up their self centeredness. Well,
toward the end of this first chapter, you have Peter
Vanovitch waiting for a car outside and he's standing there
next to ivan Ilyitch's butler, a guy named Garrison. Now
Garrison who is really the only authentic person for the
(09:00):
majority of the story that he says something pretty profound.
Peter Vanovitch says, you know, it's a terrible business about
evan Iliys dying, and Garrison says, basically, it's going to
happen all of us. This is God's will, and so
he just he recognizes the inevitability of death. He has
this momentum moory idea that even though of all the
(09:22):
main characters and in the story, Garrison is the lowest station,
he is the only one who has actually come to
terms with this mortality. He is the only one who's
living with purpose. And so we come to find that
his life, as lowly as it may be, is far
far more meaningful than these upper middle class lawyers and
government workers. But after Garrison makes this proclamation about the
(09:46):
inevitability of our mortality, Peter Vanovitch just doesn't really have
anything saying. He just leaves right because he's trying to
avoid this reality. In fact, just a little bit ago
at the scene, he's looking at the body, he's looking
at the corpse of Ivan Ilyitch, and he starts to
just kind of panic because he's starting is something's bubbling
up within him. He's starting to look in the face
(10:08):
of mortality. Tolstoy tells us that that the body was
giving the message to Pyotr Ivanovitch that dead bodies always
give right namely that you two will die but were
But instead of taking that message to heart, Pyotr Ivanovitch says, like,
that's terribly inappropriate, and then he just reminds himself, oh wait,
(10:29):
ivan Iliach, who's dead. It's not me, And so he
just keeps fleeing from this reality where if he can,
Garisim is the only person who is a person who
recognizes people as people well, and then we start to
get a backstory of ivan Ilyitch ended up point. We're
going to work our way up for the rest of
the short story up to the death of ivan Ilyitch. So,
ivan Ilyitch, by all estimations, was a mediocre guy. I mean,
(10:53):
he was a middle child. His older brother is very successful,
his younger brother is a deadbee bum, and so he's
right in the middle. He got his first job in
law by essentially his father got him the job. And
so this is the guy who really doesn't have a
lot of agency. And in fact, if you've read that
Hideous Strength, I see a lot of common ground between
(11:16):
Ivan Ilyitch and Mark stutick I strongly recommend reading those
books side by side. And so Evan Iliach he has
a decent job. Eventually as he's just climbing the social ladder,
he you know, he's engaged in all these society parties,
and he meets this woman named Proscobia Federovna, now Proscovia Federovna,
(11:37):
we're told was moderately attractive, she had a decent amount
of money, and she liked Ivon Iliitch and that's enough
reason for Evan Eliage to get married. And in fact,
that's basically a tool toy let it out that she
had this standing, she liked him well enough, and so
they got married, and then which kind of move on
from there. And so obviously Evan Iliach didn't love her.
He didn't even ever really commit himself to her. It
(11:59):
was just this is the next thing that I do
as a member of society. It's time for him to
get married. And so he gets married, and at first
things seem to be going okay, And that's because they're
both able to keep living basically as they were before.
I mean, when you get married before having kids, there's
only but so much life change happening. Now, Okay, don't
(12:20):
misunderstand me. I should be careful when I say that
that obviously there is a major life change to get married,
and that's obviously the case. But at the same time,
when you don't have kids, like there are only but
so many responsibilities that you have as a family, you
can still for the most part, I keep doing the
things that you want to do, right, just do them together.
(12:43):
But eventually Proskoviy Perovna gets pregnant and at this point
their marriage really starts to go downhill because now Ivan
Ilyitch has some real responsibilities and this is not somebody
who's been willing or able to take responsibilities. And so
he basically just continues doing the things he wants to do,
goes all the society parties, hangs out with his friends
(13:04):
all hours, you know, works all the time. He really
doesn't spend any time at home. Well, Prascovia Federovna, especially
as the pregnancy continues, she spends more and more time
at home and you know, she's not feeling well. They
get in a lot of fights and he just thinks
that she just you know, being a nag, and she
thinks that he doesn't care about her, which is largely true,
(13:24):
and so this is just begins, I mean the really
the functional end of their relationship. I mean that they
continue together, but they're just always at each other's throats.
They never understand each other. And this is in large
part I mean, don't get me wrong, She's no heroin here, Like,
she's got her own problems. But the same time, it's
far easier for him to be sympathetic to Proscoya Federovna
(13:47):
because he is such a bad husband and father that
it's natural that resentment would grow in her as they
continue down this path. Now, that doesn't justify her. She
is not going to turn out to be an incredible
wife for her own sake. But again, like, I have
more sympathy for her because I get it, even if
(14:07):
it's not necessarily excusable. And so she continues to get
just embittered toward him, and then he just you know,
return turns around by getting more invested in work and
spending less time at home, and eventually he decides he
needs to make more money, and eventually he gets the
job alongside Peter Vanovitch in Gang. And at one point
when he's setting things up in his new apartment, he's
(14:31):
decorating everything to meet the aesthetics of the upper middle class,
you know, those who want to look far more wealthy
than the actually are. And so, again, lacking agency but
wanting to be noticed, he decorates his house just like
everyone else. Right, in trying to stand out, he ends
up being just like everybody else. And he's trying to
(14:51):
manage this complete control over his life. And all of
this is just because he wants to be somebody. I mean,
he wants to He wants to be noticed. He wants
to be noticed as a person. That's all he's ever wanted.
But he doesn't know how to do that because he's
unable to notice his own self. He doesn't know who
ivan ilyitch is. He spent his entire life building this mask,
(15:15):
this illusion, this caricature of what somebody in society is
supposed to look like, and in so doing, he's failed
to recognize, or he's failed to ask himself the question,
who do I want to be? Right, if you don't
ask yourself that question, what is it that I really want?
Who is it that I really want to be? Then
(15:38):
eventually you'll find that you've spent far too many years
of your life trying to dress up a ghost as
if you could, but every time you put on the
new garments, they just fall to the floor in a
pile of nothingness. But nonetheless, that's exactly what he's trying
to do. And so he's trying to decorate his apartment,
get everything just right. At one point, one of his
(15:59):
servants is hanging some window treatments, but it's they're not
he's not doing exactly in the way that evan Iliach wants.
Evan Iliach has to like micro manage everything about this decorating.
I mean, even when he was at work, he's like
daydreaming about how he's going to decorate his apartment, and
so he has to have everything to the perfect standards
of this image that he's trying to construct. And the
(16:19):
servant's not hanging up the window treatments in the right way,
and so then evan Iliach says, okay, so let me
do it, and so he gets up and he hangs
the window treatments. But then he falls and he hits
his side and he comments that, you know, if you
weren't such an athlete, that might be a major issue.
But I mean, he'll be fine. But of course this
is going to be the beginning of the death of
Ivan Iliach. And so as time goes on, he starts
(16:43):
to feel this pain, this sickness. He's having a hard
time eating, he's getting more irritable that there's obviously something
wrong here, but at first he doesn't want to recognize it,
and eventually he has to recognize it because he's going
to go through these spirals of of kind of debating
with himself, of denial and despairing acceptance. And this happens
(17:05):
on a number of different layers, and so first it's
am I sick? Am I not sick? And eventually the
I am sick that bubbles up and to the point
where he can no longer deny it, and so he
is sick. Well, his wife makes him see a number
of doctors, and none of these doctors really know what's
wrong with him, or rather, they all know what's wrong
(17:25):
with them, but they all know different things to be
wrong with him, and so there's no agreement on what's
wrong with him, let alone what kind of treatment he
should pursue. And none of these doctors really care about him.
None of them are listening to him. They're just concerned
about working out the puzzle. That's what they're interested in.
But they're not interested in him as a person, which
is I guess poetic justice, maybe maybe irony because previously
(17:47):
we're told that what he loved, what evan Ilias loved
about his job as a civil magistrate is that he
was able to pull people into court and that he
could hold their life in his hands and he could
decide whether to let him go or to destroy them. Now,
to be fair, I mean, he never exercises power to
unjustly destroy somebody, but he reveled in the fact that
(18:09):
he could, and so he reveled in this illusion of
having power because he didn't have power over his own life.
He reveled in being able to exercise that power over
other people. But he was too much of a coward
to even play the tyrant. All he wanted was this
illusion of power. His whole life, he's been chasing an
illusion all because he wants to be known and he
(18:33):
wants to be noticed, but he doesn't want to take responsibility. Well,
now these doctors are doing the same thing that they
are reveling in their power over this man, over this case. Rather,
that's even better way of saying it. They're reveled in
their power over this case, but they weren't actually interested
in him, and so he keeps asking this question to
(18:54):
the doctors. He says, is this serious? Am I going
to die? And they just think that's an inappropriate question
and they don't want to entertain it. But that's the
one question that he wants to know that once he
knows for sure, yeah, okay, I'm sick, now he wants
to know the question, am I going to die? This
is the next level of the spiral, And he goes
(19:14):
back and forth. Sometimes he has good days and he
convinces himself that he's getting better. Other days he has
bad days, and he's he comes to the realization that
I'm not getting any better. The treatments aren't working. I
am indeed dying, And so this death just continues to
haunt him. In fact, there's one chapter in particular it's
(19:35):
very haunting, which also I keep talking about how he
would ignore it, but it would keep rising up, it
being his realization of his own impending mortality. And so
the next he goes from the spiral of am I sick?
To I am sick? He goes through the spiral of
am I dying? To I am dying, and now he's
going to go through the deeper existential spiral that's going
(19:57):
to lead him to recognize what it is that he is,
what it is that he's always wanted to be, And
so he begins asking questions like, Okay, what is it
that I want? And he answers himself and he says,
what I want is to be better. What I want
is to live, and then he follows up in his
own internal monologue he says live, how well, how I've
always lived? But then as he says that, that despair
(20:21):
starts to rise up and he's starting to think, like,
wait a minute, how I've always lived? But what I've
always lived is absolutely miserable. And he starts thinking back
over his life, over every major step that he's taken,
and he recognizes, like back in school, that the groups
that he was in that he wasn't in because he
actually wanted to be in those groups or he actually
liked those people. He was in the groups that served
(20:43):
his advancement in society. He was in the kind of
groups that he felt like he ought to be in,
and that's how he navigated every step of the social
ladder that he just he engaged in relationships, the groups,
the outings. He did the things that someone needed to
do in order to be somebody. And again, if you've
read that Hideous Strength, there's some very strong mark stetic
(21:05):
connections here. But eventually he comes to recognize that he
hasn't actually been happy, despite the fact that he's been
pretty successful in his career at least, he hasn't really
been happy for a very long time, not since childhood,
but over time. Who Ivan Ilyitch is as a person
by nature? By nature, I mean like true to what
(21:26):
it is that he's supposed to be, actually supposed to
be as a human. That gets covered up over time
through the artificial construct of societal identity. But at this
point he recognizes that he's always yearned for something more.
He's yearned for something real, and so he goes from
I'm going to die to what do I want? And
(21:48):
now he recognizes what I want is not just to live.
What I want is to live well. And so he's
trying to deal with what that issue is. And you know,
as his disease continues to pick up and he starts
to approach the end, well, now he starts asking the
question of what do I want, not just what do
I want, but what should I want? Right now he
(22:08):
moves on to what should I want? So now he's
engaging in ethical reasoning, he's putting himself under an ethical standard,
and he's recognizing that not all desires are equaled, that
there's certain things that he should want. And this really
develops as he approaches the very end of his life,
and we're told that he suffered for three days, that
(22:29):
his death was carried out over the course of three
days of absolute agony, and that's going to be significant.
But we'll probably get more into that, into some of
the symbolism here when we talk about Evan Iliach on
the main Mythic Mind podcast. But he suffers for three days,
and then at the end he starts to recognize that
he lived his life the entirely wrong way. And so
(22:53):
now that ethical question of what should I want has
gone on to I haven't lived in the way that
I should have. I haven't wanted the things that I
should have wanted. That all along, I've learned I've yearned
to be somebody real. I've yearned to be someone authentic,
somebody who's capable of noticing himself. I've yearned to be
(23:15):
a person, a substantial person, and not just a ghost
of societal standing. But I've wanted, I've yearned to be
a substantial person. And the Lewis connections are all over right.
This is strong great divorce connections. Here we talk about
the difference between his ghosts and the solid spirits, and
so he's yearned to be someone solid, not someone illusory.
(23:38):
And as he approaches his death, he he has this
literal come to Jesus moment where you know that the
this is somebody who hasn't been terribly religious, despite living
in a religious environment, religious culture. He is not somebody
who's been very religious. But right at the end, he
(23:59):
wrecked cognizes that he's lived his life in the wrong
way before the eyes of God. He and he looks
at his son, he looks at his wife really for
the first time, and he recognizes that he didn't do
right by them, and he tries to say that he's sorry.
He tries to say forgive me, but he can't manage
to get the words out, and he consoles himself saying
(24:21):
that it's okay that he couldn't get the words out,
because he who most needed to hear the plea for forgiveness,
heard it, and so at that point he's able to
stop struggling against death, which has described like you know,
somebody who's thrown a sack over his head and dragging
him against his will. Well, no, now he feels peace
because there is no death. Tolstoy tells us he is
(24:42):
now able to be received into the fullness of life.
And as he dies, the final words that he hears
from the room around him are it is finished. And
that's how the story ends. And so what you have
here is a man who is but a ghost of
a man, man who's yearning to be real, yearning to
be someone of substance. He's a bad man who wants
(25:05):
to be good. Now. He's not bad in the sense
of being like a gross villain who's terrorizing the town.
But he's a bad man in that he's not what
a man is supposed to be. He's not authentic to
what it means to be human. He doesn't know who
ivon Iliage is is. He's a bad husband, he's a
(25:26):
bad friend, he's a bad father. And so this is
I think something that Tolstoy does brilliantly in that he
demonstrates what a bad man looks like in the everyday.
It's not always the gross villain. It's not always the
serial killer or the hitler or the stalin that knows.
(25:47):
Sometimes a bad man is actually quite ordinary. In fact,
he may even be you or me. But despite being
a bad man, he's someone who wants to be a
good man but doesn't really know how to do it.
And tell the very end now, as I was playing
through Red Dead Redunction two, there is a certain point
at which Arthur Morgan starts to get sick and eventually
(26:11):
he just collapses in the middle of town and he's
dragged off to the doctor where he finds out that
he has tuberculosis, and he's told us a serious and
that he's probably going to die. And so for the
rest of the game, Arthur Morgan he's dying, and he
increasingly comes to recognize the fact that he is dying.
And this is why, especially from this point on, the
(26:33):
game is so much more compelling when you play an
honorable path, because the story is really trying to push
you in this direction. The story is trying to help
you recognize what Arthur Morgan is, recognizing that the things
that he used to live for that the things that
made him a bad man, that praying on other people,
that even seeking to be somebody in this gang that
(26:55):
he's been running with, this gang that he's been running
with since he was a kid, something like the only
family that he's known, but it's actually a terrible family that,
you know, his whole life has been spent trying to
be somebody in this gang, especially to this terrible mentor
who has a who plays a fatherlike role to him,
but just that father like he's not very fatherly really,
(27:17):
And so Arthur Morgan he wants to be somebody, but
he goes about it in all the wrong ways. He
is a bad man who yearns to be something good,
but he just doesn't know how to do it well.
As he increasingly comes to terms for his own mortality,
he starts to become a good man. He recognizes that
things that he used to want are not what he
(27:38):
should have wanted. Right, He's able to ask himself, have
I wanted the right? Things? Like how do I want
to live? How should I be living? And so now
we get this redemption arc, and hence the name of
the series, right red ed Redemption, And so we get
this redemption arc where now he starts to yearn for
goodness and he starts to get a better sense of
(27:58):
what goodness is. Now, this is not a Christian game,
it's not explicitly and so he's not going to have
this great conversion experience, although there's some degree of religion
that plays into it. But really what you have is
Arthur Morgan looking at the light that he's led, recognizing
he's been a bad man, and now he's understanding a
goodness is. I'm going to start moving in a different direction,
(28:19):
the opposite direction of that, which is I mean, if
you don't know what goodness is, that's not a bad
way to go about it. Because I'm an often badness
is more easily recognizable than goodness. Like I talk about
this a lot in my philosophy classes, you know, when
I teach them in the public university. That as much
as everyone claims to be a relativist, like, we all
recognize gross evil when we see it. We all recognize
(28:42):
that it's bad to commit murder. It's it's bad to
do any number of things, right, I mean, push an
old lady into the middle of the road, Like there's
a lot of things that everyone recognizes are just bad.
And so you know, if we don't have a firm
understanding of goodness, as you know, I would propose and
moving in the direction of the beatific vision, the font
(29:03):
of all goodness, Like if you don't have that, then
at the very leads you can start to move in
whatever direction is the opposite of what is clearly bad
like that, that's at least a start. And so that's
really what Arthur Morgan does. And I mean it's short
of playing the game yourself, it's hard to communicate just
what a strong, compelling job the writers of this game
(29:26):
do in portraying that redemption arc and helping you to
really feel it, to experience his sense of regret and
longing to make things right with the final bits of
breath that are quickly being expelled from his lungs. It's
not a one to one connection between the story of
Ivan Ilyitch and Arthur Morgan, but I do think that
both of them are approaching the same basic archetype of
(29:48):
coming to terms with mortality and letting that renew the
way that you're engaging with the world around you. I mean,
there's this medieval phrase, medieval Latin phrase memento mori remember
that you will or remember your death. And it's important
to always have this reminder in front of us, not
in a morbid sense that causes us to forego our
(30:10):
responsibilities and our enjoyment in life, but actually this reminder
to embrace the responsibilities and enjoyment we can have in
this life, because this life is fleeting in many ways,
like in the long run, it's already forfeit. And so
what we need to do is to redeem that life.
(30:32):
Redeem that life by living well, redeem that life by
being a good person. And I don't just mean that
in sort of like a generic subjective, you know, be
good according to your you know, whims of morality. What
it mean is live in the way that a person
is meant to live. You know. Aristota would say what
that means is you live a life according to reason
(30:54):
and virtue. The Westminster Catechism says that the chief end
of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him
for and so when I talk about being a good person,
what I mean is you fulfill the form of what
a person is supposed to be. And I think that
this game does it very provides a very strong, very
compelling case for arguing that video games can deal with
(31:19):
significant existential issues, significant issues that the very least approach
the literary, or maybe we even want to say that
they can echo the literary, That they are artistic endeavors
that can connect us to things that are true, good,
and beautiful. And that I think is where I'm going
to leave this off for now. Next time we'll have
(31:41):
more of a just general paneled conversation on this game.
What's enjoyable about it, what's enriching about it, what wisdom
we can mind from it, and it's kind of wherever
things go from there. As a reminder, this is only
one branch of the Mythic Mind fellowship. We also have
our main podcast simply called Mythic Mind, which takes primarily
(32:02):
a literary focus, but it's also kind of a staging
ground for trying out new ideas that potentially move into
more branch shows like this. It's really just the main
hub of what we do, and so make sure you
subscribe to the main Mythic Mind podcast. And also we
recently launched the Mythic Mind Movies and Shows podcast, which
does exactly what it claims to do in the title,
(32:23):
it's much like this show. We're looking at more popular
medium through the lens of the Christian humanities. But for
that show, it's obviously dealing with movies and shows. And
right now we're working on a Star Wars series, and
after that we'll go, I don't we'll see where we go.
We'll kind of popcorn around a little bit with ideas
on that within the Fellowship. And if you enjoyed this episode,
(32:46):
you enjoy the broader work that we do any all
some of it, and you want to see more of
it happen, maybe even want to participate in some of it,
then I welcome your support over on Patreon, Patreon dot com,
slash mythic mind. Any level of support, even five dollars
a month, we'll give you early in ad free episodes
of all these different podcasts shows, all delivered into one
(33:07):
single patron feed. You also get full access to our
discord server, which which is where most of our in
house conversations take place, and that's where we do a
lot of our planning that are just general conversation about
different topics. And also you get it as a patron,
you get open invitation to any episode of any of
these shows that interests you, and so you get all
of that just for subscribing at five dollars a month. Now,
(33:29):
if you subscribe at a Tier three annual level, then
you get all of that, plus you get admission to
all of my courses that begin within that term, and
so right now that includes Plato Stoicism until we have Faces,
which is coming up next in the fall. We have
the Elder Scrolls and Philosophy, and at the beginning of
twenty twenty six we have these Summarillion, and we may
(33:50):
have one more course than that term at this point
as well, but definitely those three. And so if you're
interested in one or more of those, as well as
everything else we have to offer, that's going to be
the best deal for you to get the Tier three
annual patronage. But again, if you don't want to go
that far, if you just want to give me five
dollars a month to get plugged into this community, then
I definitely appreciate that I could not do all this
(34:10):
stuff without patron support. So patreon dot com slash mythic mind,
and if you want to provide me with a one
time tip, you can use the buying me a coffee
platform final link for that in the show notes. Next
time we will return with more Red Dead Redemption two,
but until next time, God speed. The Elder Scrolls in
(34:34):
Philosophy is six week course beginning in September twenty twenty five.
I don't play many video games these days, but there
are certain titles that have stuck with me, enchanting the
mind of my youth and never entirely fading away. One
of the chiefs among these titles is The Elder Scrolls,
namely Moruin, Oblivion and Skyrim. The level of artistry, mythology,
(34:57):
and lore of this universe is vast and provide is
a strong representative for asking the question as to how
video games might relate to literature as an art form,
Where might it rise to such a level, where must
it fall short? And what unique advantages does it possess.
For this eight week study, we'll be seeking to answer
these questions while analyzing various elements of this franchise, specifically
(35:19):
focusing on content related to Morrow and Oblivion and Skyrim.
Will be taking a look at the philosophy of RPGs
and considering the philosophical implications of character creation and formation
in an open ended series such as this, and will
be looking at the relationship between in game religion, lore,
and ideas with our primary world philosophical and religious concepts.
(35:40):
Each week will include one to two videos addressing these topics,
ongoing discord conversations, and live meetings. You are also encouraged
to spend at least a little time playing one of
these titles each week as a launching pad for conversation.
Join us in Tamreil that we might better understand our
primary life here on Mundus. Enroll today by going to
patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and checking out the shop,
(36:03):
or you can access all courses at begin during your
subscription period if you purchase a Tier three annual subscription.
Get that Tier three annual subscription and I'll give you
that special code for your all access pass. I hope
to see you there.
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