It’s Complicated: Understanding the Hard-boiled Victim in the Grant County Series

Introduction

In 2001, Karin Slaughter published her debut novel Blindsighted, (Slaughter, 2006ed) the first of what has since become known as the Grant County series.  Set in the fictional town of Heartsdale in Grant County, Georgia, the series is primarily a police procedural sequence of novels, featuring the close collaboration of the Grant County Police force and the local coroner in solving a range of crimes within its borders.  Of the novels in the Grant County series, this paper will focus on aspects of the first six, Blindsighted (Slaughter, 2006 ed), Kisscut (Slaughter, 2003), A Faint, Cold Fear (Slaughter, 2004), Indelible (Slaughter, 2005), Faithless (Slaughter, 2006), and Skin Privilege (Slaughter, 2007)[1]; these novels cover a period of six years, with each novel focussing on a small segment of time, ranging from a number of hours, to a week. 

As well as uncovering crimes within each novel, the series follows the experiences of three primary characters: Sara Linton, the town’s paediatrician and pathologist, Jeffrey Tolliver, the Chief of police for Grant County and Lena Adams, a detective working under Tolliver.  Walton and Jones state in their collaborative work Detective Agency, ‘the series structure of detective fiction allows authors room to explore the character[s]…and confront a variety of issues and concerns’ (Walton & Jones 1999, 56) something Slaughter achieves in the Grant County series; for Sara and Jeffrey, this involves rediscovering trust and a rekindled romance, whilst for Lena, her experience at the hands of a sadistic attacker in the first novel, being ‘raped and drugged into a nightmare world of pain and false transcendence’ (Slaughter, 2003, p44) sets off a chain of events which have repercussions reaching far beyond her own life. 

Whilst the series is, as already mentioned, primarily a police procedural, the contents of the novels are intrinsically linked with the characters, particularly Lena Adams.  The crimes being investigated in each of the six novels mirror the events in her life, which the titles of the novels infer, dually referencing both the crime focus of the novel and the personal problems Lena is facing.  Furthermore, the character of Lena Adams can be read as both a hard-boiled detective in the literary noir genre, and as a victim, thereby allowing Slaughter to explore a wide range of issues that might not be readily available through the more traditional police procedural medium, such as domestic abuse and the psychological repercussions of crime both on its victims and on the police officers that investigate these crimes. 

In The Lead?

At the beginning of the series, Sara and Jeffrey are a divorced couple, working together despite the breakdown of their marriage. As the series progresses, they become friends, rekindle their relationship and eventually remarry. The relationship between Jeffrey and Lena is a professional one, with Jeffery acting as a mentor to Lena.  Jeffrey recruited Lena from the Police Academy eight years prior to the events in the first novel, and is grooming her as his successor as the police chief of Grant County.  Whilst the relationship between the two is strictly platonic, something Jeffrey makes clear Skin Privilege, relating that ‘He’d never had a sister, but he imagined the feelings he had for Lena were about the same’ (Slaughter, 2007, p352/353)  Jeffrey cares deeply for Lena, and this is something that causes friction between the women, Sara especially, who understands that for ‘their entire relationship, Jeffrey had been in some state of concern for Lena Adams’ (Slaughter, 2006, p408) an oft repeated sentiment throughout the novels, and one that provides the central narrative thread of Skin Privilege.  Lena is not romantically interested in Jeffrey; instead ‘she had worked her ass off to get his respect’ (Slaughter, 2004, p155).  Slaughter places the three characters in a love/hate triangle, crossing personal and professional lines, with Jeffrey at the apex of this three-way relationship and ensuring that the three characters remain closely linked throughout the series.  This triad also highlights the differences and similarities between Lena and Sara, their relationship with Jeffrey notwithstanding.  Both are strong women who have had to work hard to become successful in the highly conservative town they live in and have both been viciously attacked by a sexual predator: Sara is attacked a number of years prior to the first novel, and Lena in the first novel; Sara’s support network allows her to come to terms with her attack, whilst Lena cannot, through her isolation and somewhat self-imposed alienation from her only family member, an uncle.  Sara, whilst presented as a strong character, is also given a feminine and maternal set of characteristics, something Lena is denied; her abortion when she discovers she is pregnant refuting this traditional maternal and feminine aspect of the female in favour of the hard-boiled detective that is presented to the reader.

Although the series focuses on the three characters throughout, with the lead female protagonist ostensibly being Sara Linton, (Slaughter admits that ‘Grant County began with Sara Linton’ (Slaughter, 2006, p534) and that Lena was ‘almost an afterthought’), there is evidence to support the supposition that it is Lena who is the focus of the novels.  The most apparent way this is indicated is in the titling of the novels; whilst they signal the contents of the police procedural aspect of the plot, each of these titles also inherently linked to Lena Adams.  The first novel, Blindsighted, can be read as a referral to Lena and her twin Sibyl, who is blind and also the first victim of the series.   At the same time, the medical definition of the word as ‘a condition in which the sufferer responds to visual stimuli without consciously perceiving them’ (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2007) also indicates the crime; Sara fails to recognise the killer and his connection to her, (he staged the murder of Sybil Adams to resemble the attack on Sara and deliberately leaves Sybil for Sara to find).  

The title of the second novel, Kisscut, a word as specialised as Blindsighted, is referenced within the text once, when Lena remembers that

‘using a razor blade she had made a kisscut over the image, scoring just the surface of the photograph but not cutting all the way through to the back, and excised Hank from the scene’ (Slaughter, 2003, p199)

whilst looking at old photographs.  However, the definition of the word as a mechanical engineering term, which involves cutting away ‘waste’ to leave a clean surface (as Lena felt she was doing) is also indicative of the first victim in the novel, Jenny, who mutilates her own genitalia to make herself ‘pure’ (Slaughter, 2003, p418) by cutting away her pudenda. 

For the third novel, A Faint, Cold Fear, the author uses a quote from Act 4, scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,

That almost freezes up the heat of life. (Shakespeare, 2005, 4.3:15-16)

to indicate the way that the events Lena suffered in the first novel[2] continues to affect her everyday life, the post traumatic effects of her imprisonment leading to fear dominating her; this quote also intimates the suspicious suicides which are the focus of the police investigation in this novel.  The next novel, Indelible, refers to both the marks that Lena wears on her body as a result of the abusive relationship she is in with her current boyfriend, Ethan, and also to the psychological scars she has as a result of the events in the first book, whilst at the same time referring to an investigation into the childhood friends of Jeffrey, and the faith he has in them being eroded by the investigation.  Faithless, the fifth book in the series, has a dictionary definition of ‘disolyal[ty], especially to a spouse or wife’ (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2007) and corresponds to the way that Lena manages to escape her relationship with Ethan by planting a gun on him and getting him returned to prison for parole violation, and the investigation into a cultlike religious group.  Finally, Skin Privilege, a novel about white supremacy in Grant County, again makes reference to Lena’s abusive partner, Ethan, a threat to her despite being in prison; alongside the antagonist characters in the novel, he calls his race his ‘skin privilege…his white birthright’ (Slaughter, 2007, p257) and as with Kisscut, the only actual reference to the word within the text, is in relation to Lena, whilst remembering him saying this to her.  There is then, a definite relationship between Lena and the titles of the novels, this ambiguity allowing the reader to infer a central importance to Lena’s character that rivals the investigative focus of the novel.

One of the Boys

Slaughter distances Lena from feminism through her representation in the series; but more than that she distances her from femaleness; she is literally one of the boys, with, as Jeffrey Tolliver says, ‘brass balls hanging between her legs’ (Slaughter, 2006, p281)   In a traditional and conservative part of America, she is portrayed as a character who does not reveal her emotions; according to Tolliver, ‘there [is] not a soft side to Lena… [she is] harder than that’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p43/44).  She is as uncomfortable with homosexuality as any of the men around her, (even when it concerns her own sister) some of who are able to say ‘Back when the Klan was doing some good’ and mean it.  Her clothing, is essentially masculine; she wears ‘slacks and a jacket’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p93) to work every day and is ‘strictly a jeans and T-shirt girl, so putting on a dress was a big deal.’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p162)  Even her attitude towards rape victims is considered masculine; when discussing a rape case with Tolliver, her overly masculine words ‘bl[ow] him out of the water.  He would expect this kind of talk from someone like Matt Hogan, but never from a woman.  Not even Lena.’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p201)  There is distinct lack of instances where Lena is placed in a domestic situation; she is not seen carrying out tasks which are considered female, unlike Tolliver, who is shown carrying out domestic duties throughout the series. The exception to this highlights Lena’s masculine outlook; when asked to get coffee for a superior officer, she ‘feels a flicker of anger’ (Slaughter, 2005, p125) at being asked to carry out such a menial (and female) task.  Slaughter is explicitly creating a strong, masculine character in Lena, and one of the reasons for this is to allow her to encapsulate a number of the characteristics of the traditional hard-boiled detective. 

Lena is presented as having a lot in common with the traditional hard-boiled detective.  Firstly, and possibly very obviously, she is a detective, not just a police officer; more than this, though, she is the first female detective on the Grant County police force and the ‘first non-secretarial woman hire in the town’s history.’ (Slaughter, 2007, p53) The reader’s attention is brought back to this point repeatedly throughout the series, so Slaughter is clearly making this explicit for the reader for a reason.  However, there is more to it than just her being a detective; like many earlier hard-boiled detectives, Lena is an isolated character.  Lena is very much as John Scaggs describes the private eye in Crime Ficiton ‘a loner, an alienated individual who exists outside or beyond the socioeconomic order of family, friends, work and home’ (Scaggs, 2005, p59).  She is an orphan whose parents died when she was young[3] and her twin sister is murdered at the beginning of the first novel, leaving her with only her uncle Hank, whom she ‘had never liked’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p61), blaming him for her sister’s blindness.  Lena perceives a level of discrimination, some of which is founded in her background; the twins ‘were considered [white] trash without the benefit of being particularly poor or, courtesy of their half Spanish mother, all that white’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p27) while they were growing up.  Her gender also sets her apart from her contemporaries; as a police detective in the Grant County force, she constantly has to fight to overcome the prejudices of the other police detectives; her partner, Frank is not ‘thrilled to have women on the force, let alone one as a partner.’  (Slaughter, 2006ed, p27)  While this in itself is not enough to qualify Lena as a hard-boiled detective, it is ‘a turn on the trope of the detective as (alien) outsider’ (Walton & Jones 1999, 102).  Lena is, furthermore, a headstrong detective, rejecting the authority of Tolliver on a number of occasions, choosing instead to follow her own instincts.  Throughout the series, she is reprimanded for going against orders; she has a ‘yearning to be the best on the squad no matter what shortcuts she felt she had to take’ (Slaughter, 2005, p408) the end literally justifies the means; this rejection of rules is, according to Sandrine Berges in The Hardboiled Detective as Moralist: Ethics in Crime Fiction another of the tropes of the hard-boiled detective (Berges, nd, p2).

It is clear then, that Lena is functioning in the same way as the hard-boiled detective in at least the first novel in the series; Scaggs sums up Lena’s character perfectly when he says ‘The hard-boiled legacy is clear to see in the marginal and alienated detectives of the procedural.’ (Scaggs, 2005, p96)  However, Slaughter, having created this character, then goes on to explore the way her characteristics are altered as a result of being kidnapped and raped in the first novel, and follows her as she is changed from this hard-boiled detective to being a victim through the subsequent novels.

Noir in the Novels

As well as showing Lena as a hard-boiled detective, there are a number of tropes of literary noir which run through the entire series, both through Lena and through the construction of the novels.  One of the defining features of Noir fiction is a sense of hopelessness and despair, and this is something that is evident for Lena as the series progresses.  In Blindsighted, despite her sister being murdered, she has a good life and career ahead of her; she is being groomed by Tolliver to take over his job and her ability as a police officer is something that ‘both alarm[s] and impresse[s] Jeffrey’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p135).  However, this changes after the events at the end of the first novel when Lena is held prisoner; she becomes ‘damaged’ both physically and psychologically and the repercussions of this are a major factor in the next five novels as Lena struggles to come to terms with her ordeal. In doing this, Slaughter makes use of another known trope of literary noir, psychology; that is ‘rather than exploring the murky underside of the urban world… [exploring] the disturbing depths of the human mind.’ (Horsley, 2006, p93) Whilst the novels are concerned with crimes and the resolution of them, there is also room for Slaughter to explore the way that these crimes affect the people involved; investigating the way that, Lena as the victim, and the people around her deal with the aftermath of the horrific experience.

            Another of the major tropes of noir fiction is the pervading sense of corruption that runs through society and this is an issue that is explored through the novels in the way that the crimes are constructed.  Each of the themes in the series are issues which pervade society and although are ‘solved’ within the context of the series, they are indicative of the viciousness of the wider world of which Grant County is a microcosm; this includes  genital mutilation, sexual abuse, religious cultism and white supremacy. Slaughter’s use of these themes allows her to focus on their presence within contemporary society; in the case of white supremacy, this is especially foregrounded, as the neighbouring police force is deeply involved with the white supremacy movement and instigates a number of murders to cover up their activities.  Like the private eye of hard-boiled fiction, all that can be hoped for in Grant County are ‘small, local and temporary victories’ (Scaggs, 2005, p63) Slaughter is explicit throughout the novels that the themes she is highlighting are indicative of a larger problem in society, having antagonists escaping justice for example, or creating a backstory for the crime that reaches far beyond Grant County.

            According to Lee Horsley in Twentieth Century Crime Fiction (2006, p115)

‘Literary…noir is characterised by…the shifting roles of the protagonist and by the ill-fated relationship between the protagonist and society, generating the themes of alienation and entrapment.’ 

If the character of Lena Adams is taken as Slaughter’s protagonist, then this is certainly the case in the Grant County series; she changes from being a hard-boiled confident character with a chip on her shoulder, to victim and psychologically damaged person whose mental state creates feelings of alienation from the rest of society.  She believes that, once she has been held prisoner, everyone thinks of her as a victim and that they were ‘trying to look at her scars’ (Slaughter, 2003, p54) and that they ‘cast sad, pathetic look[s] her way’ every time she walks past.  It is this that creates the alienation that is indicative of literary noir and, whilst she does not have a good relationship with society, her experience in the first novel causes it to break down even further.

The Hard-boiled Victim

Gender obviously plays a large part in the construction of the series, featuring as it does female taking a traditionally male role, and Slaughter, as with other authors, uses Lena as a conduit to

‘explore issues of female intergration into law enforcement agencies – ingrained sexism, the assumptions about gender underlying institutional politics, the essential maleness of police departments,’ (Horsley, 2006, p105)

something which is pertinent to the fictional setting of Grant County.  Despite its contemporary timeframe, Grant County is a very conservative setting, where men are ‘not thrilled to have women on the force.’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p27) Slaughter creates in Lena a character whose mental strength and determination allows her to overcome such gender inequality and even to some extent to understand and embrace aspects of her colleagues masculinity, creating an ambiguous answer to Alison Littler’s ‘unresolved question, is she a man in woman’s clothing or a woman in man’s clothing?’ (Walton & Jones 1999, 99).    Lena is a mixture of both, at least up to the point she is attacked by the sexual predator in the first novel.

            At the beginning of the series, Lena is ‘a strong woman, muscular from working out in the gym’ (Slaughter, 2003, p108), able to hold her own in a workplace filled with men who believe that a woman’s place is in the home.  As discussed already, she is ‘one of the boys’ – essentially a man without the genitalia; this makes her transition to being a victim of domestic abuse all the more shocking, as she is perceived as being such a strong character, endowed with all the strength and masculinity that her colleagues within the police force have.  Horsley says that ‘late twentieth Century crime fiction has increasingly shown its reader the …psychological exposure of damaged minds and the inscription of personal traumas on the bodies of victims’ (Horsley, 2006, p112) and this is indeed true of Slaughter’s fiction.  The reader is shown the physical and mental scars Lena has, as well as the repercussions of the events which caused them; as Scaggs comments, ‘The lives of the characters are shown continuing after the crime’ (Scaggs, 2005, p108) This is a deliberate decision on the part of Slaughter; she ‘want[s] to show violence for what it is’ (Slaughter, 2010)—something that continues have an effect on its victims, their families and their friends long after the story ends and the police have arrested the bad guy, something Slaughter highlights throughout the novels subsequent to Blindsighted through Lena.

            In Blindsighted, Lena is taken prisoner by a sadistic sexual predator and killer, Jeb McGuire the local pharmacist, who is also responsible for the rape and murder of her twin sister amongst other victims.  Whilst being held prisoner, Jeb drugs Lena with painkillers, crucifies her to the floor in a spread-eagled position, knocks her front teeth out so he can penetrate he mouth with his penis without fear of her biting him and repeatedly rapes her.  However, in addition to this, he drugs her with Belladonna, which gives her hallucinations, then is gentle as he rapes her, behaving like a lover; he also spends a lot of time talking to her, explaining things about his life, so that she knows him as intimately as he knows her.  Physically, Lena recovers from the attack within a few months, after having her teeth replaced and physiotherapy for the scars on her hands and feet; but it is the psychological scars which she struggles to recover from as a result of the gentle treatment of her during her ordeal, and this forms the basis of Lena’s character for the next five novels (and beyond) charting the changes from being a self-confident detective to a victim.

The Changing Role of the Protagonist

            Whilst the novels each have a specific storyline which forms the police procedural aspect of the fiction, the character’s lives take up a significant portion of the narrative, and this progresses through the series, with the characters evolving and changing as a result of events throughout each of the stories, building on the events of previous novels.  Here, the shifting role of the protagonist is foregrounded, an established facet of literary noir.  However, unlike a lot of other crime fiction, this transition from hard-boiled to victim is not resolved at the close of the novel, with the characteristics of the hard-boiled detective reinstated in Lena; instead, the change are ongoing throughout the series, the juxtaposition of the hard-boiled detective and the victim vying for supremacy throughout.  Slaughter signals her intention to do this at the point where Lena is rescued from the room where she has been held captive with the words ‘Jeb (her captor) was part of Lena now.  He would be hurting her every day for the rest of her life’ (Slaughter, 2006ed, p382).  This ending is in keeping with Lena’s function as a noir character; the reader is left with an ambiguous resolution; although Jeb is dead and cannot physically hurt anyone again, there is no happy ending for her. 

             After the events in the first novel, all the characters are changed, but none more so than Lena; she is the character who has suffered the most at the hands of Jeb McGuire, although Sara Linton was a major focus for him.  Lena, however, is adamant that her character has not changed as a result of her experience – at least in public.  In keeping with her hard-boiled persona, Lena refuses to consider that she needs help from anyone, even though the truth is that she is terrified of being on her own; this stubbornness means that given the choice of seeking help or being dismissed, she ends up losing the most important thing in her life; her work.  Lena then takes the (demeaning) job of security guard at the local university.  This job, featured throughout the third novel, is clearly marked as being wrong for Lena; her uniform is ill-fitting, she knows that the ‘clothes…make her feel like she [does] not belong’ (Slaughter, 2004, p341) and she ‘want[s] to be a cop again. (Slaughter, 2004, p344).  It is also at this point in the series that Lena becomes changed the most; she goes from being ‘a cop…Crossing the line into murder, even as an accomplice, was not something she would do, no matter what,’ (Slaughter, 2004, p278) to the intimation that she is, in fact, capable of such a thing; her boss, Chuck, is killed by a knife like hers after he tries to attack her and details of the crime and Lena’s viewpoint makes it implicit that she killed him. 

Vulnerabilities Attract Predators

It is during the events of A Faint, Cold Fear, the third novel in the series, that Lena becomes involved with Ethan White, a white supremacist who pursues her romantically, whilst at the same time physically abusing her; at their first meeting, he grabs her arm so hard he almost fractures it, leaving Lena in pain for days.  Prior to the events in Blindsighted, Lena was a strong character, who would not let a man beat her, even at sports (Slaughter, 2006ed, p316); but Slaughter uses Lena’s character to reflect the way that domestic abuse can, and does, affect wide range of women, allowing the reader to see the change in Lena’s role as the novels progress; her masculine qualities decline and the respect of her contemporaries becomes shattered as her colleagues repeatedly witness the way that she is physically beaten by Ethan; more than this however, Lena’s very personality is changed, almost beyond recognition.  Throughout the novel Faithless Lena is shown struggling with her domestic situation, on one hand clinging to her own understanding that ‘every woman who’d ever been slapped around said she had asked for it [and] justif[ied] having the shit beaten out of them,’ (Slaughter, 2006, p45) does not make it right, but does the same thing herself, saying that ‘she was the one who kept pulling him back in, she  was the one who kept baiting him (emphasis added)’.  Slaughter uses this to explore the psychological reasoning behind Lena becoming a victim of this abuse; after the attack on her.  ‘Lena felt like the person she really was had been erased’ (Slaughter, 2003, p127) and she is afraid of people being tender toward her, as it reminds her of the way she was treated by her captor during her ordeal: ‘the tenderness had been the worst part; the soft strokes, the delicate way he used his tongue and fingers to soothe and stimulate her’ (Slaughter, 2003, p52). Therefore, the pain Ethan inflicts on her is something she can cope with, something that means ‘she felt alive.  She felt reborn.’ (Slaughter, 2006, p45)  However, when investigating a crime which involves domestic abuse, she is forced to face up to the fact that she will end up being killed by Ethan and so engineers his rearrest and incarceration for a parole violation by planting a loaded gun on him and telephoning Jeffrey with the information.  Here, Slaughter highlights the changes that Lena has undergone and the dramatic reversal of her strength and masculinity when she has to get Jeffrey, a man, to help her get Ethan out of her life, rather than doing it herself.

In addition to showing the way Lena’s character changes, Slaughter is also commenting on aspects of society; the hopelessness felt by a substantial group of women, of which she makes Lena representative.  Having Lena, who is initially shown as being strong and able to take care of herself, reduced to being nothing more than a shadow of herself and more of a victim than a role model for women, Slaughter is fulfilling her aim to ‘use violence as a way to open up a dialogue about this sort of violence and why it's happening. Perhaps if we understand it, we can help prevent it.’ (Slaughter, 2010) 

Conclusion

Whilst the novels are indeed primarily police procedural fiction and involve a collaborative effort in solving crimes, there are a number of plot lines and aspects of the series which can be classified as noir; ranging from having a hard-boiled type detective to creating a feeling of hopelessness that can be found in noir fiction.  Slaughters inclusion of a third character in the series allows her to explore some of the tropes of noir fiction; having a major character with a changing role.  Allowing Lena to be both a victim and part of the procedural team, whilst maintaining the sense of ‘social, structural and thematic realism,’ (Scaggs, 2005, p96) through the solved crime that the police procedural novel offers the reader, gives Slaughter the freedom to explore some very uncomfortable themes within the series, such as domestic violence and to highlight the way that anyone could be the victims of these crimes, even a tough hard-boiled detective.  Furthermore, the exploration of these themes allows the author to signal the continuing presence of noir fiction, in that even when the crimes are solved, re-establishing the social order of good triumphing over evil, it is merely a temporary reprieve in a world of darkness.

Bibliography

Berges, S (nd) The Hardboiled Detective as Moralist: Ethics and Crime Fiction in T.D. Chappell (ed) (2007) Values and Virtues, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Horsley, L (2001) The Noir Thriller; Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan

Horsley, L (2006) Twentieth Century Crime Fiction; Oxford: Oxford University Press

Scaggs, J (2005) Crime Fiction; London: Routledge

Shakespeare, W (2005) Romeo and Juliet [Online] Available at: http://www.william-shakespeare.info/act4-script-text-romeo-and-juliet.htm; Last Accessed: 22 April 2011

Slaughter, K (2003) Kisscut; London: Random House

Slaughter, K (2004) A Faint Cold Fear; London: Random House

Slaughter, K (2005) Indelible; London: Random House

Slaughter, K (2006 ed) Blindsighted; London: Random House

Slaughter, K (2006) Faithless; London: Random House

Slaughter, K (2007) Skin Privilege; London; Random House

Slaughter, K (2010) Frequently Asked Questions [Online] Available at: http://www.karinslaughter.com/faq.shtml; Last Accessed: 22 April 2010

Walton, P & Jones M (1999) Detective Agency; Berkeley: University of California Press

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[1] All of the references to the novels use the UK titles, rather than the sometimes different US titles.

[2] She was crucified and held prisoner, at the same time being drugged and raped by her captor; the drugs making her physically responsive to the attacks, thereby leading her to believe she was a willing participant in the rapes.

[3] This is revealed to be erroneous as the series progresses, but is the information Lena believes to be true.

Authorship and Point of View in the Videogame.

In Half Real, Juul distinguishes two types of videogames: games of emergence and games of progression, with emergence games being the historically dominant form. Emergence games use ‘nominally simple rules where it nevertheless requires immense amounts of effort to gain proficiency in playing the game’.  Tetris is a typical example of a game of emergence; it is a puzzle game, ‘with the shapes each consisting of several squares that are falling down the well. When playing a Tetris game, one turns them or moves left and right, trying to arrange the shapes in a line. When a line of squares makes a line from edge to edge, it disappears and all the pieces move down by a square. When the well is filled up, the player loses (Absolutist 2013)’.  Similarly, Space Invaders (Pixeleye Interactive 2012) involves moving the game avatar left and right across a fixed screen, firing missiles at moving targets.

            Narratively, the title of Space Invaders suggests that there are invaders from space and the player is charged with repelling this invasion.  Despite this suggestion, the game is not a narrative driven game.  There is an inferred beginning (the invasion) and a middle (the action of the game), but there is not an ending to this game, however; the invaders move progressively quicker until the player succumbs to the space invaders and the game ends.  Incidentally, this structure is also problematic for Juul’s six point classic game model, which requires a game to have a variable outcome (as discussed in chapter 1), which neither Tetris nor Space Invaders have, with the only conclusion being the player losing the game. 

Opposed to this, narrative games are usually progression type games; games of progression are those where the ‘game designer explicitly determines the possible ways in which the game can progress’ (Juul 2005, 56).  Videogame walkthroughs can vary from being explicitly instructional (‘Climb along the yellow rail to the left to reach the underside of the train’ (Bradygames 2009, 24)) to those resembling works of fiction.  Alan Wake has such a walkthrough, with the action of the game presented as if it were a piece of textual narrative fiction:

Wake left the car in a state of agitation.  He staggered forward toward a rough-hewn wood pole.  He gazed up into the illuminating glow of a lamp on the left side of the road.  It seemed comforting: like a Safe Haven subduing the creeping sensation of fear. (Hodgson 2010, 24)

The Walkthrough is presented almost as a novelisation of the videogame, a third-person retrospective narration of Alan Wake’s quest to save his wife.

Games of progression more closely resemble traditional narrative structures in other media.   The structure of the progressional game is, as its name suggests, a progression—from the beginning, through a middle, to an end, a structure that has characterised traditional media since Aristotle’s famous propounding of it as essential to theatre (Aristotle 2008).  Even videogame franchises that span numerous games, such as Assassin’s Creed have a progressional structure, with many game franchises developing sub-plots or episodes that are self-contained as well as connected.^[1]  Generally, the player can assess the type of game s/he is playing using the following test:

Search for a guide to the game on the Internet.  If the game guide is a walkthrough (describing step by step what to ­­­do), it is a game of progression. If the game guide is a strategy guide (describing rules of thumb for how to play), it is a game of emergence. (Juul 2005, 71)

Whilst the player may feel as though they are influencing the narrative, the ability to create a walkthrough that encompasses all plays of the game refute the players role as the author; instead reaffirming the designer as the authorial presence in the narrative, and the predetermined status of videogame narratives.

Although most discussions of identification in narratives concern identification with characters rather than authors, since videogames are interactive—that is, the player influences the action taking place within the game through play, and this play can change the outcome of the game, both ludically and narratively—players do not simply identifiy with the characters they control, they furthermore take on authorial roles,and videogame authorship is an interactive rather than a dictatorial affair. Janet Murray makes the distinction between the author and the interactor^[2] of a piece of electronic narrative (Murray 1997, 153).  In Hamlet on the Holodeck, she considers ‘authorship in electronic media [to be] procedural’, meaning that the designer is charged with

Writing the rules by which the texts appear as well as writing the texts themselves.  It means writing the rules for the interactor’s involvement, that is, the conditions under which things will happen in response to the participant’s action.  It means establishing the properties of the objects and potential objects in the virtual world and the formulas for how they will relate to one another. (Murray 1997, 152)

Whilst the player of a videogame can put the pieces of the narrative together, sometimes in several different ways, the constituent parts of the narrative are created by the game designer.  It is possible to suggest that the player, then, is a quasi-author, creating a variation of the narrative that may be unique, but nevertheless formed from the game content provided by the game designer.  This is not to suggest this as a precursor to Murray’s holodeck—each of the elements of a game must be created by the designer prior to a game’s release meaning that a truly interactive game, which the player authors as she play, is unlikely for the foreseeable future.  However, there are a rising number of games that use the veneer of choice to allow a player to feel as if she is influencing the narrative, whilst retaining the core elements that all players share.  An example of this can be seen in the Mass Effect franchise (Bioware 2007 - 2012), a futuristic set of games that centres on the character Shepard, a soldier who leads the defence of the Galaxy in a series of missions and quests.  The core elements of the game are fixed; the pursuit and destruction of the ‘Reapers’, a life form that aims to destroy all other life in the galaxy; the player has the option of enlarging the game and the narrative however, through the quests and missions, and through interaction with non-player characters, allowing the player to enter into optional relationships, for example, and to affect the personality of Shepard, and therefore the reactions of other characters to Shepard. 

Heavy Rain is another example of the ability of the player to act as a quasi-author.  Here, the ending of the game depends on the choices that the player makes throughout play, such as whether the identity of the serial killer is discovered, and which characters survive to the end; these combine to give a total of eighteen possible conclusions to the game, ranging from the Origami killer going free, and all other characters being killed, to everyone surviving and the killer apprehended. These options, then, are not minor variations on a theme but significantly contrasting. While the player is instrumental in selecting the composite parts of the conclusion, and so plays an authorial role in the game, even so, each of the endings are predetermined by the designer simply by the fact they are already loaded into the software that is being played.  Thus while the player is free to make choices, s/he may only choose from among what has already been programmed.

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[1] Assassin’s Creed uses the framing narrative of Desmond Miles to allow the franchise to span 5 separate game episodes to date.

[2] Murray uses the term interactor where I use player.  

An Objectivist Nightmare? Political Philosophy in Bioshock

Whilst the validity of narrative in videogames has been contested by academics, ethics, ideologies, and politics have become familiar features of videogame criticism as a growing number of videogame designers experiment with the medium.  These games present a player with situations that ‘represent how real and imagined systems work’ (Bogost 2007, xi) and allow her the potential for the ‘change [of] fundamental attitudes and beliefs about the world, leading to potentially significant long-term social change’ (Bogost 2007, xi).  Author and game designer Ian Bogost suggests that ‘videogames open a new domain for persuasion, thanks to their core representational mode, procedurality’ (Bogost 2007, xi) and it is this that allows the videogame player to actively investigate a particular rhetorical position and to form her own opinions of it, rather than being presented with an ideological standpoint, as is traditionally the case.  Procedural rhetoric, as Bogost labels it, is ‘the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions (Bogost 2007, xi) and is reliant on the ability of the videogame to include the player as part of the execution of a narrative, or game, as a physically active participant.    

            The presentation of rhetoric in videogames can be found in many types of game, not just the narrative driven games that are to be primarily discussed in this chapter.  Bogost cites the game Animal Crossing, an ‘animal village simulator’ (Bogost 2008, 117) as an example of videogame rhetoric; this game, he argues, ‘simulates the social dynamics of a small town, complete with the material demands of keeping up with the Joneses’ (Bogost 2008, 119) complete with an economic system that allows  the player to understand supply and demand, long-term debt, and ‘the repetition of mundane work necessary to support contemporary material property ideals’ (Bogost 2008, 119).  The popular Facebook game, Farmville (Zynga 2009), is also based on economic principles, with the player engaging in farm management, including growing crops, animal husbandry, as well as cooperation, throung trading with other players.  Whilst these ‘casual games’^[1] can be played by young children (Bogost uses his own five year old son as an example of a player of Animal Crossing), there is a sophisticated rhetoric at play within the game, the player is part of ‘a full consumer regimen’ (Bogost 2008, 118), which leads to an economic understanding of wealth and its distribution, as well as sophisticated, yet often unnoticed mathematical principles.

            More recognisable to the narrative driven videogame, is the representation of ideologies, both ethical and political as part of the games construction.  Early videogames, due to technological restrictions, were concerned primarily with ludology; that is the playing of the game.  As the medium has matured, there have been a growing number of games that use narrative and ludology concurrently to examine rhetorical issues within a fictional, and safe^[2], environment.  This scrutiny can take many forms and cover a variety of themes: Deux Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal 2011) interrogates trans-humanism, for example, whilst the Mass Effect (Bioware 2007 - 2012) trilogy considers inter-racial cooperation, through the lens of an interspecies mirror.   Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream 2010) takes a more personal approach, placing the player in the role of a father, who must break ethical and moral constraints in the pursuit of a kidnapped child, prompting the question, ‘How far would you go to save someone you love?’ — the game’s tagline (IMDB 2010).  However, the most famous example of a videogame to use procedural rhetoric is Bioshock (2K Games 2007), which places the player in a specific ideological environment, and then asks her to question her actions, her motives, and the information she receives as she plays the game.

A Man Chooses, A  Slave Obeys: Political Ideology in Bioshock

Bioshock (2K Games 2007) offers a ludological adaptation of the philosophy of the philosophy of Objectivism, as portrayed in the novel Atlas Shrugged (Rand 2007) written by Russian born author Ayn Rand, considering the novel in relation to Rand’s philosophy and criticism, as well as offering a critique of the novel itself.  The interactive elements of Bioshock play a direct role in the understanding of the novel and Rand’s philosophy, especially her understanding of free will; the game is filled with references to the novel and, more widely, to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, on which the novel is based.  This is achieved through direct references, symbolism, and aesthetic allusions within the landscape.  Predominantly a first-person shooter game (FPS), in which the player controls a character, Jack, as he seeks to escape the underwater city, Rapture^[3], Bioshock is concerned primarily with the destruction of enemies, ranging from splicers (humans addicted to ADAM^[4]) to the antagonist of the game, Frank Fontaine.  Alongside this, however, Bioshock provides a critique of Rand’s philosophy via its landscape and dual narrative: that of the game: the search for and the destruction of Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine, and that of the destruction of the City of Rapture.

Originally published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged is a premeditated vehicle for Rand to articulate her philosophy of Objectivism.  This philosophy, she explained in 1962, holds that facts are facts, regardless of the wishes, hopes, or feelings of man; it also maintains that reason is man’s^[5] only source of knowledge, his only means of perceiving reality, and his basic means of survival.  It also teaches that man must exist for his own sake, a quality that she describes as selfishness in which he must put his own interests above all others, but must not do this to the detriment of any other.  The fourth tenet of objectivism describes the political system that this philosophy breeds; that of laissez-faire capitalism, described as

a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be […] a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. (Ayn Rand Institute 1962)

Rand believed that altruism—putting the needs of others before one’s own—was inherently wrong and her fiction is a deliberate attempt to demonstrate this philosophy and to highlight what she believed to be a fundamental truth: that altruism would lead to the downfall of society.  In Atlas Shrugged, Rand charts the decline and fall of alternate version of the United States becoming dystopian through its extreme socialist ideology; she also presents an alternative to this, in the form of Galt’s Gulch, a small, isolated community comprised of those people who believe in her philosophy.

            The juxtaposition of the narrative and the ludology is important in Bioshock; the two elements of the game are reliant on each other to create a representational fictional form, such as those described by Kendall Walton in Mimesis as Make-believe (Walton 1990).  The gameplay is constructed within the narrative: Rapture is the play arena of the game; the player explores the city to find and destroy the splicers in order to reach Ryan (and later Fontaine) and to escape Rapture.  Without Rapture and the narrative structure, Grant Tavinor notes, there would be no game. (Tavinor 2009).  Clint Hocking disagrees with this, instead claiming that the game offers the player two contracts, a ludic contract and a narrative contract.  Hocking sees these two as being mutually exclusive, in that the narrative contract is at odds with the ludic contract, creating what he coins ‘ludonarrative dissonance,’ ‘forcing the player to either abandon the game […] or simply accept that the game cannot be enjoyed both as a game and a story’ (Hocking 2007).  What Hocking sees as ludonarrative dissonance, however, is an integral part of the games questioning of free will, both for Jack and for the player. 

Would you Kindly…

Throughout the first part of the game, the player is given guidance from a character known as Atlas, who prefaces his requests with the phrase ‘would you kindly’, as he leads the player through Rapture via a one way radio.  Partway through the game, the player is led to the office of Andrew Ryan, to kill him in revenge for the murder of Atlas’ wife and child, and it is at this point that a number of critical events take place that question Jack’s role in the game, and the narrative  First, the game takes away all control from the player, rendering her a passive observer of events in a game notably devoid of cut-scenes and reveals that the phrase ‘would you kindly’ has been part of the mental conditioning of Jack and that he is programmed to obey any order preceded with this phrase.  This revelation comes not only as a shock to Jack, but to the player as well.  When asked about this, a group of players responded in the majority that the repeated use of the phrase was not noticed, or that if it was noticed, it was considered part of Atlas character rather than an indication of a sinister purpose (Facepunch.com 2009).  The phrase, which seems to be innocuous until this point, instead begins to ‘inspire a retroactive horror’ in the player (Bossche 2009)  as she is shown a montage of examples of this conditioning, from the opening scene (Figure 1 & 2) to the ‘present’ of the game, illustrating that this has taken place whilst the player has been controlling Jack, and that all the events to date have been devised and carried out with Jack operating as a pawn who must obey the instructions of a higher power.  It also becomes clear that the game is addressing the player and questioning her relationship with videogames. 

Figure 1

Figure 2

     Videogames are teleological; that is, all the events and actions are purposefully designed to work towards an ending; even games that are part of a franchise, such as Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft Games 2007 - 2013) or the Mass Effect trilogy, use this teleological construction, with each ‘episode’ having an ending of its own, as well as being part of the larger structure.  This in turn makes the concept of free will in videogames problematic, as they are predominantly presented as a finished form, with an ending already in place, fully authored by a game design company.  The player is not offered free will at any point in any game, she is merely conforming to a set of predetermined events that dictate her actions, even if she is offered the ability to make choices (Beirne 2012).  Bioshock exploits this determinism through the revelation that Jack has been designed to obey the commands of Atlas, whilst refusing the player the ability to influence this and forcing the realisation, in the player that there is no freedom in videogames: each story has already been written and the player cannot influence that story, despite the game intimating the ability to do so. 

Whilst the player is in the role of observer, during the passivity of the cut-scene, Jack kills Ryan, who makes no attempt to defend himself, his death proving that Jack has been the subject of mental conditioning, with Ryan taunting him repeatedly with ‘A man chooses.  A slave obeys’ as Jack hits him.  Despite Hocking’s assertion that the narrative asks the player to ‘help Atlas and you will progress’ (Hocking 2007) and is thereby a failure to conform to Objectivist principles, the game does not present a scenario as simple as this; at face value, the two men are working towards a mutually beneficial outcome, perfectly acceptable in Randian philosophy as a trade by two men ‘who earn what [they] get and do not give or take the undeserved’ (Rand 2007, 1022).  It is only when it is revealed that Jack has not been operating through free will that this changes, and it becomes evident that Atlas has been acting for his own benefit, and that Jack’s role is that of a puppet as he makes his way through Rapture.

Rapture

As the player and Jack travel down to Rapture in a bathysphere^[6], the graphical abilities of game machines are shown to the player, through the first views of the city (Figure 2), whilst a voiceover tells the player that Rapture was born from Andrew Ryan’s dissatisfaction with American left wing politics in the Second World War, and finding that there was no place for ‘men who believed that work was sacred and property rights inviolate’ (Fuller 2007, 42) decided to create one, following John Galt’s lead, as he created Galt’s Gulch as a place where man ‘hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem’ (Rand 2007, 1018) in a society that requires a producer^[7] or entrepreneur to be both immolated to society and to accept this as fair and just^[8].  Both settings adhere to the policies of Rand’s philosophy, and the freedom that provides for the inhabitants.  However, where Galt’s Gulch remains utopian, Rapture instead becomes dystopian, the freedom of the inhabitants to do as they wish engendering a society of inhabitants addicted to the drug ADAM, and its derivative EVE.^[9]  Grant Tavinor considers that the ‘visual impact of Bioshock […] is striking’ and that the game ‘draws on the architectural motifs and cultural themes of 1930s and 1940s America […] to provide a coherent artistic statement’ (Tavinor 2009, 91) and this setting provides the backdrop for two stories in the game, that combine to produce a narrative, one of the city itself, and the other of the protagonist, Jack and his attempts to escape Rapture.

Figure 3: 'Aerial' view of Rapture

              For the reader familiar with Atlas Shrugged, Rapture is instantly recognisable as a representation of Ayn Rand’s utopia.  Most obviously, both are hidden from the majority of the world; Rapture through its immersion in the sea, and Galt’s Gulch by refractor rays in a remote valley in the US.  More closely signalling the relationship between the two is the presence of Rand’s ideology.  Andrew Ryan of Rapture created his city to be a place ‘where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small.’  Rand uses Galt’s Gulch as an example of a perfect society, founded on individual freedom and where the Government serve as a police service, ensuring that business and individual alike are law-abiding.     

Beyond this initial indicator, there are a number of specific references to the title of Rand’s novel in Bioshock.  During the opening sequence of the game, for example, the player crashes near a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean and the doors to the lighthouse are decorated with a frieze of Atlas holding the world (Figure 3).  Further in the game, the player also comes across a statue of Atlas holding up the world and there are many statues reminiscent of these through the game, men with their hands stretching upwards to the sky.

Figure 3: Atlas holding up the world.

There are several other signals in the game to point to this relationship; the protagonists of both the game and the novel discover this hidden community through crashing a plane, and there are ‘Easter eggs^[10]’ that reveal Rand’s face in photographs (Figure 3), leaving little doubt that Levine used Rand’s fiction in this game, and that he used Bioshock to comment on it, critiquing the practical implementation of her philosophy (just as Rand herself did in Atlas Shrugged through the Twentieth-Century Motor Company and the famous slogan From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, popularised by Marx in 1875), all pointing to the importance of the setting of the game as a critical exploration of Rand’s philosophy.

Figure 4: Ayn Rand Easter Egg

Andrew Ryan – Founder of Rapture

Andrew Ryan, the founder of Rapture, is a key figure in Bioshock.  The narrative indicates that Ryan fled the USSR in 1919 for the USA and, after becoming increasingly disillusioned by US politics, built Rapture in order to house the Atlases^[11] of the world, ‘men who refused to say yes to the parasites^[12] and the doubters. 'Men who believed that work was sacred and property rights inviolate’ (Fuller 2007, 37).  Ryan’s character shares some biographical links with Rand; she fled the USSR during the rise of Communism, eventually settling in the US, where she wrote her novels (Ayn Rand Institute 2013).   Ryan and Rand also share the same attitude to religion; Rand is open about her views on religion, believing that religion and ‘Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason’ (Ayn Rand Institute 2013) and Bioshock shows Ryan to have similar views; throughout his city, banners proclaim that there are ‘No Gods or Kings, Only Man’ (Figure 3) and religious paraphernalia has to be smuggled into Rapture to be enjoyed by the residents.  In naming Ryan, the game designers were explicitly linking the character to Ayn Rand—a masculine version of the novelists name. 

Figure 5: No Gods or Kings.  Only Man

Andrew Ryan is representative of John Galt, one of the three protagonists of Atlas Shrugged, despite spending much of the novel being called ‘The Destroyer.’  It is he that takes away the brightest minds from the world and gives them the individual freedom to follow their own passions in Galt’s Gulch, with no restrictions.  Ryan’s utopia is the same as Galt’s:  a place where a man can be free from censorship and governmental restrictions to use his skills, and Ryan offers a similar freedom.  As well as this, Ryan stands for similar characters of the novel, collectively known as ‘thinkers’, and can be seen through Ryan’s speeches and public addresses.  At one point Ryan details how

I once bought a forest. The parasites claimed that the land belonged to God, and demanded that I establish a public park there. Why? So the rabble could stand slack-jawed under the canopy and pretend that it was paradise ‘earned’. When Congress moved to nationalize my forest, I burnt it to the ground’ (Fuller 2007, 18)

This closely mirrors the actions of oil baron Ellis Wyatt at the end of the first part of Atlas Shrugged (Rand, 2007, p.336); When forced to give the majority of his (pre-tax) revenue to the government because he is ‘best able to bear the brunt of the national emergency’ (Rand, 2007, p334), and still being expected to maintain his employee levels and other costs, sets fire to his entire oil field and disappears, rather than comply with this government directive.

            It appears at first, that Andrew Ryan represents the failure of the Randian ideology at work in Bioshock, as critics such as Joseph Packer consider (Packer 2010) to be the case. As detailed, Ryan represents the ‘thinkers’ in Atlas Shrugged, choosing to leave the world, and to join like-minded people, 'men who believed that work was sacred and property rights inviolate’ (Fuller 2007, 37) to bring to fruition the utopian space that Atlas Shrugged promises; however, this Utopia is flawed and by the time the player enters the story, Ryan’s rule has taken on a number of dystopian characteristics.  As the narrative is uncovered, the player discovers that Ryan, initially, allowed free rein to entrepreneurs and free will to the inhabitants of Rapture, believing that there would be economic self-regulation, as Objectivism preaches.  However, when his position as ruler of Rapture is threatened, he begins creating laws contrary to Objectivist policy, leading to a power struggle that culminates in the New Year’s Eve battle and destruction of Rapture, as well as the apparent failure of Objectivism as a practical ideology.

Even with Rapture in ruins and the Utopian experiment failed, Ryan still adheres to the principles of Objectivism and to one of the clearest themes found in Rand’s fiction – that of the sanction of the victim^[13].  According to Rand’s ideology, the sanction of the victim is ‘the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the “sin” of creating values’ (Binswanger, 2011).  It is at this point Ryan reveals that the protagonist is the product of mental conditioning and has had the phrase ‘would you kindly’ implanted as a trigger for mental control. Furthermore, Ryan chooses to die in order to try to break Jack’s conditioning, citing it as an example of free will: ‘A man chooses. A slave obeys’ (Fuller 2007, 35).  In killing Ryan, Jack proves that he is nothing more than a slave; the words ‘would you kindly’ triggering and enforcing this servitude.  Free will is one of Ryan’s original principles for the city, as an audio file reveals: ‘Free will is the cornerstone of this city. The thought of sacrificing it is abhorrent’ (Fuller 2007, 22).  John Galt is similarly willing to face death as long as his principles are not compromised; in Atlas Shrugged, Galt almost welcomes torture and pain, going so far as to instruct the governmental aggressors in how to fix their broken torture machine so they could resume their cruelty, but refuses to compromise his principles in order to appease the government who want him to save them.  The premise on which the ‘looters’ in Atlas Shrugged depend is the same mental conditioning as Jack is subject to, albeit less explicitly.  This is foregrounded in the novel with the statement ‘You’ll always produce […]. You can’t help it.  It’s in your blood.  Or, to be more scientific: you’re conditioned that way’ (Rand 2007, 984-985).  It is at this point in the novel that Hank Rearden, presented with this knowledge, ‘opts out’ of American society and becomes a member of Galt’s Gulch.

At this point in the game, it seems clear that Bioshock is showing Objectivism in a negative light, with Andrew Ryan’s utopia in ruins showing that this ideology has failed.  It is here also that Atlas is revealed to be Frank Fontaine, Andrew Ryan’s competitor, and Ryan’s position as antagonist is questioned, as well as the premise that the political ideology he represents is adverse to human wellbeing.  It is also here that the game is exposed as not just a criticism of Objectivism, but rather a more rounded critique, using Fontaine as the basis for this.

Frank Fontaine – The Destroyer of a Utopia

Frank Fontaine is a gangster who challenges the rule of Andrew Ryan in Rapture, known in the first part of the game as the amiable figure Atlas.  During the first part of the game, until his true identity is revealed, Atlas appears to be a familiar figure in videogames: a character who gives advice and instructions to the player to allow her to complete the tasks that comprise the game.  The revelation that this amiable character is Frank Fontaine, who has faked his own death in order to take power from Ryan through the mental conditioning of Jack, so he could murder Andrew Ryan, is designed to shock the player and to once again call them to question what they are being told within a game.  Here, the role of the player and the identification the player has with a game becomes foregrounded, as considered in chapter 2^[14].

During the first part of the game, whilst unwittingly helping Frank Fontaine kill Andrew Ryan, the player is shown Ryan’s Utopia as a failed endeavour; Atlas relates how he brought his wife and son to Rapture for a better life, but quickly became disillusioned, as it became clear that there was a Marxist class divide developing and that ‘Ryan's […] up in Fort Frolic banging fashion models; we're down in this dump yanking guts out of fish’ (Fuller 2007, 16).  Atlas openly blames Ryan for the deterioration and destruction of Rapture, saying, ‘He’s the one who built this place, and he’s the one who run it into the ground’ (Fuller 2007, 11).  At this point in the game, the player has no reason to doubt Atlas’s words, and Ryan’s actions appear to validate this.  Once unmasked as Fontaine, this along with the rest of Atlas’s words are called into question; the likeable Irishman was a fiction, making the player question whether Ryan is the megalomaniac that he has been portrayed as being.

            As a character, Fontaine/Atlas should be the perfect objectivist; his ethics are based in self-interest, valuing his own happiness and success above all others, initially earning Ryan’s admiration and respect as a fellow Objectivist.  However, he also personifies several negative aspects of humanity, being manipulative and dishonest in his dealings with others, undermining the principles of objectivism^[15] and a fair society, under the guise of freeing the inhabitants of Rapture from the tyranny of Ryan, thereby calling into question the practical implementation of objectivism.  The narrative details how Fontaine becomes a figurehead for the underclass to revolt, in a clearly Marxist reference to the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat.  Atlas cites Ryan filling Rapture with the best of society as a failing in the City, as there is no-one to carry out the menial work that needs to be done (Fuller 2007, 39) and that the divide between the rich and poor is the fault of Ryan’s political agenda.  After the death of Ryan, the game shows Frank Fontaine as the primary antagonist, placing Andrew Ryan in the role of the victim rather than the antagonist role he has held, and calling into question the supposition that this is a world that portrays the failings of Objectivism, which then opens the player (and Jack) to the notion that is is Fontaine who brings about the downfall of Rapture, investing twelve years in planning and initiating the downfall of Ryan, calling it a ‘long con’ (Fuller 2007, 47) and replacing the Objectivist ideology with a bastardised form of Marxism^[16], resulting in ‘violence, crime, and disrepair replacing the peaceful efficiency Rand attributes to Galt’s Gulch’ (Packer 2010, 215).  More symbolically, the role of the monster is given to Frank Fontaine (Figure 3), showing him, as ‘a menace [that] represents the threat of further chaos emerging’ (Butler 2010, 10) in a city that is already failing to function.

Figure 6: Atlas/Frank Fontaine

Once revealled as the antagonist,  portraying Fontaine as the monster allows the game to present him as the physical embodiment of the ethics and morals he upholds.  Just as Dorian Gray makes the transition to his real self in The Picture of Dorien Gray at the end of the novel, his ‘withered wrinkled, and loathsome’ (Wilde 2006, 188) corpse on the floor, so too does Fontaine’s first taste of ADAM reveal his monstrosity to the player. 

The Great Chain

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck." (Fuller 2007, 24)

The Great Chain is a motif Ryan frequently refers uses in his speeches and musings regarding the economy of Rapture and is consistent with the economic elements of Rand’s philosophy.  Ryan’s own philosophy of the Great Chain of Industry is visible in Rapture through statues (Figure 5), and banners, just as Rand uses her characters in Atlas Shrugged to extoll the virtues of a free economy, and the understanding that all men will participate in this system, providing for themselves, and creating employment for other men, at a fair and just rate of pay.  The idea of industry being the chain that unites all men is, for Ryan, the foundation of Rapture and provides the basis for the City’s economy; the Great Chain of industry is the economic freedom given to the inhabitants of the City in regard to their business and the success of the City.  As long as each person, each link in the chain, is working for their own self-interest (and not contrary to objectivism), then the chain will be level and strong, as each link (business) in the chain is regulated by the principles of the consumer; if there is no demand, or the business is not functioning as the market would wish, they will simply not use it, thereby eliminating it from the economy.  However, when dishonest dealings, such as smuggling or cheating a competitor enters the economy, then this upsets the equilibrium of the Great Chain and the dishonest business becomes a weak link that can then pull the chain apart. 

Ryan's Chain

Jack's Chain

There is also a more personal symbolism associated with the chain; Jack has chains round both of his wrists, (see Figure 6) symbolising his slavery and lack of free will.  The chains are a symbol of this control, a metaphorical joke by Fontaine, that Jack (who is genetically Ryan’s son) is a slave to Fontaine and Jack’s inability to disobey him, his mental chain forcing him to obey commands preceded with ‘would you kindly’.  This makes Jack himself the weak link in the Great Chain, in that he can cause the downfall of Rapture’s economy by causing the death of Ryan.  The chains on Jack’s wrist are also a frequent reminder to the player of their own servitude to videogame design companies.     

            Whilst it seems clear that Bioshock offers a consideration of Objectivism, there is some confusion over whether this is a criticism of the philosophy, or whether the game tries to empower the player into making her own decision about whether she agrees with the philosophy.  It is true that the game shows Rapture, the realisation of the philosophy ,as a dystopia; the game does not, however, simply show this as a result of Objectivism, but rather as a result of the introduction of a destructive force, in the form of Frank Fontaine, that undermines the philosophy.  This is symbolised through the representation of Fontaine as a monster.  However, the game offers the player an exploration of the philosophy from within, rather than from without, and allows her to form a decision based on all the information she collects in the game.

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[1] Casual games are considered to be games that can be played quickly and easily, with little learning curve and generally no need to save the game's progress.Invalid source specified.

[2] The player is physically safe, in that she is interacting with fictional characters and situations, without any real danger.

[3] This is one of a number of religious references in the game.  Here, Rapture is descriptive of the inhabitants being taken from society and led to a better life, just as God is said to intend to do when he causes The Rapture.

[4] ADAM is a drug created from the stem cells of a parasite, which replaces human cells with that of the parasite, causing side effects that act as ‘superpowers’.  However, this also causes cosmetic and mental deterioration in users, resulting in the need for more ADAM.

[5] Rand was a self-professed male chauvinist, who believed that women should engage in male hero-worship, and so the use of gendered terms that favour the male is deliberate in relation to Rand’s philosophy. (Thomas 2013)

[6] An automated submarine that carries the player through underwater areas.

[7] In Randian terms producers are ‘independent, rational and committed to the facts of reality, […] and to their own happiness (Younkins 2007, 14)

[8]This is also the basis of the Randian notion of the ‘sanction of the victim’—being acquiescent to one’s own rights being infringed.

[9] The religious symbolism cannot be ignored here.  Just as Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge causing the Fall, so too does the use of ADAM and EVE cause the society of Rapture to become dystopian.

[10] Content not considered part of the game, or as extra content, and hidden within the game for the player to find.

[11] In the novel Atlas Shrugged, these characters, metaphorically speaking, hold up the world through their creativity and ability.

[12] The use of the word parasite to describe any character that is not of the same ilk as Ryan is taken directly from Rand’s fiction; she postulated, through her fiction, that any person who relied on another to survive was a parasite – and that this reliance on another person was forcing them to live for your sake.

[13]This is a recurring theme in Rand’s fiction, most explicitly found in Anthem and The Fountainhead as well as Atlas Shrugged.

[14] I am not certain whether this is where the discussion will go – maybe Ethics is a better place?

[15] Objectivists believe that whilst they put their own self-interest above others, they do not do this to the detriment of any other person, which is perceived as having another person live for their sake. 

[16] Fontaine does not uphold Marxism; he is working for his own gain, and the lower class inhabitants are useful to his plans to conquer Rapture, rather than for altruistic means.