Inside the Heart of Homecoming
Posted by WITA on July 21st, 2009
Many people did not welcome Silent Hill: Homecoming, and it’s understandable considering the odd influence of the film adaptation on the game. Despite the lukewarm reception, I found it to boast yet another psychologically twisted and enjoyable Silent Hill story—if not smoother and better paced than any one before it. While it may not focus entirely on the overwhelming feeling of isolation, the game does something unique to the series: taking a darkly close look at the founding families of Shepherd’s Glen, who are just as deranged as the infamous town from which they came. But most importantly, Homecoming still plays with ideas of personal hell and madness—this time with the protagonist Alex Shepherd.
Warning: SPOILERS!
Homecoming follows the pattern of the previous installments by featuring alternate endings, but the most relevant and rewarding conclusion may be the Hospital Ending. This scene coincides with the revelation that Alex was never wounded in battle as a soldier, but rather committed to a mental hospital after a traumatic accident involving his younger brother. By stopping and taking a look back, there is much to bolster the idea of Alex’s lost grip on reality. The symbolism and story might not achieve the level of James Sunderland’s mental deterioration caused by killing his ill wife in Silent Hill 2, but Shepherd’s crisis achieves the same tormented nature for which the series is known and loved. Alex is continuously reminded of his sins and haunted by that which he cannot change; his nightmare within Silent Hill forces him to endure punishment and condemnation while searching for redemption his delusional mind will not allow him to accept.
Alex’s younger brother, Joshua, continuously runs away from Alex as though in fear. We learn at the end of the game that Joshua died years ago in an accident budded from envy, so he functions similarly to the flirtatious Maria in Silent Hill 2: He stems from a delusion, and only acts to lead the main character toward a dark truth he has repressed. Josh runs not only because Alex unintentionally caused his murder, but also because Alex must repeatedly relive that fateful moment out on the water. Fighting over the family ring which their father had chosen to give to Josh instead of Alex, Josh is thrown back and breaks his neck, consequently shattering the town’s sacred pact with their god. Alex’s desperation to change the past and save his brother explains why he goes after Josh, even though he willingly plunges deeper into madness by doing so.
In the boat flashback at the end of the game, Alex’s treatment toward Josh seems oddly cruel compared to the kindness he strives to show Josh and others throughout the game. You are often given the choice to help people or abandon them; treat them with respect or insult them; save or condemn them. Despite which you choose, Alex nearly always resorts to judging others—oblivious to his own crimes. He snaps at his mother for her helplessness, yells at his father Adam for his weakness, and argues with the mayor over his drunkenness and despair. Yet Alex’s own sins condemn him as well, which we’ll explore later.
At one point in Homecoming, Alex’s home morphs into an Otherworld hell, where he is forced to solve a sequence of puzzles to escape and simultaneously learn truths that relate to his sins as well as the family’s—ranging from deception to atrocity. Ironically, Alex’s home was a hell long before the accident on the lake; in the words of his purposely emotionally neglectful father, Alex might as well have been a stranger living in their home. Close to the end of the game, Alex speaks to an obscured man in the church’s confessional. The following scene indirectly confirms that it was Alex’s father doing the confessing, but the prior scene was set up in a strange, dual way. It is his father who addresses Alex as “father,” albeit in a religious context, but this odd reversal places Alex both as the sinner as well as the forgiver. Alex always sought the approval of his father, but only received disappointment. The confessional scene reflects his desire for forgiveness and love, both as a son and for the death of Josh—whom the family had chosen for safekeeping, thus vowing to sacrifice their other son, Alex, to appease the godly pact. By choosing to forgive his father, Alex says the words he’s yearned to hear from his father for years. After the confessional scene, Alex tells his father, “I’m a soldier, just like you always wanted.” Yet the dog tags actually belong to his father, confirming Alex’s delusion of being a better son than he felt in reality.
Alex constantly reenacts the moment of Josh’s death in two ways: saving or condemning, and falling or descending. For example, the player may choose for Alex to show his mother mercy by killing her, saving her from a more gruesome death—or you can allow her to die painfully. Either way, the futility of his actions and efforts to change the past by reliving it are well noted, for if Alex had only refrained from envy over the family ring, Josh’s death would have been averted. Both Elle and Wheeler are mysteriously taken in three separate instances despite Alex’s endeavors to protect them, and although they reappear, Alex wields no power over their safe return. Elle may have expressed the safety she feels when Alex is around, but ironically Josh felt the same way up until his demise. He looked up to his brother, trusting him completely and seeking out his approval. By the game’s end, you are faced with the option to save Wheeler, but two important things stand in the way of atonement. First, Alex leaves Wheeler’s fate in the hands of Elle, indicating a failure to accept responsibility. In the Hospital Ending, the sanitarium doctor tells Alex that he must accept both reality and responsibility to move forward. It is ironic when Elle tells Alex that he, unlike the rest of them, only continues to move forward, but true when Alex replies that he “has no choice.” Alex is doomed to relive his sins until he can accept them, which he may very well never accomplish. The clocks in Silent Hill have all stopped at 2:06, which is also the room number Alex is assigned in the mental hospital; the number reoccurs throughout the game. Most importantly, in a flashback Adam’s watch confirms the time of the lake incident to be 2:06. The numbers, when individually added up to eight, signify the infinity symbol—accurately describing the stagnant fate of the town as well as Alex’s fragile mental state.
Secondly, when Alex saves Wheeler, he strangely coughs up blood as though he were drowning. Alex is constantly brought back to memories of the lake, whether he realizes it or not. A mysterious, locked door labeled 206 echoes sounds of docks at the beginning and end of the game; Alex’s basement has flooded with water in his time away from Shepherd’s Glen; he must even visit a power and water plant to progress at one point. On the way to Silent Hill with Elle and Wheeler, Alex falls into the water after being ambushed by the Order soldiers in nearly the same way Josh did that night on Toluca Lake.
Alex also ends up falling or descending frequently. Josh does nothing to save him when Alex falls through the hole in the floor of room 206 in the Grand Hotel, crashing to the level below. After slaughtering a vicious monster, Alex sinks through the floor pooled with blood as though he were drowning; he jumps or falls through or into many openings or holes throughout the game. He climbs down a long and winding staircase in the “Hell Descent” chapter, as well. These occurrences simulate the act of drowning and mirror a plunge into insanity—literally falling “down the rabbit hole.” Even the White Rabbit’s watch had stopped in Alice in Wonderland. Strangely enough, Alex is forced to find Josh’s toy rabbit. Josh illustrates himself as a rabbit, flailing in the water, in a series of pictures; Alex even finds a rotting, mold-infested rabbit resembling Josh’s in the blood-filled bathtub of the Otherworld version of their home—as though he were pulling Josh’s own corpse out of the lake.
Clearly, Alex is not exempt from the same damnation the families of Silent Hill must endure. Each family seems to possess an item by which they are linked with their sacrificed children, whom they murdered with their own hands. Judge Holloway has Nora’s necklace, and she meets her death not long after Alex returns it to her. Alex gives Dr. Fitch his daughter Scarlet’s doll, which proceeds to kill him through a sort of voodoo; Mayor Bartlett is killed by a giant monster when Alex brings Bartlett’s son Joey’s engraved wristwatch to him. Plus, although they never actually made a sacrifice themselves, Alex’s parents are both killed in his presence. Perhaps Alex acts as much of an executioner as Pyramid Head, which might explain why the dreaded embodiment and deadly judge of Silent Hill does not attack Alex both times they come in contact. On the other hand, this role may be as much as a delusion of grandeur as thinking himself a soldier and an ideal son in his father’s eyes. Alex’s desire for forgiveness almost paradoxically conflicts with his need for punishment—sending him into Silent Hill in the first place. Alex does not escape damnation, however. At the end of the game, the physical item associated with Josh is not his rabbit or the Shepherd family ring, but arguably the flashlight Alex uses and finally leaves with Josh’s body; after all, flashbacks indicate the siblings’ bond over the item. Judge Holloway, Dr. Fitch, and Mayor Bartlett all killed their children, but since Alex is at fault for his brother’s death, the responsibility and guilt falls with him. Whether he truly accepts it depends on the ending received.
Several small things can be viewed as indicators that Alex is experiencing this as a nightmare inside the mental hospital. In the Hospital Ending, it is revealed that the game’s events were merely a delusion which changes nothing; Alex asks if he “[went] anywhere” and if “Josh is okay,” perhaps suggesting that he learned nothing from the nightmare and may be doomed to forever repeat it. The unexplained screeching sounds that occur a few times in the game, causing Alex to pass out, could be interpreted as the electric shocks he receives in the asylum, and the Order soldiers who kidnap the townspeople—including Alex—throughout the story might be a delusional extension of various staff in the hospital, who keep Alex there against his will.
Homecoming, on a basic level, reveals the damnation and cursed suffering of its citizens for the generations of crimes they have committed, but it also serves as a personal hell for Alex Shepherd. By the game’s finish, he has failed to save Josh and instead relives the scene of Josh’s death in a useless effort to try to correct his mistakes—all while slipping deeper into the heart of insanity, descending quite literally into hell. Much like James Sunderland from the psychologically brilliant Silent Hill 2, whether Alex’s experience teaches him anything or whether he still chooses the comforting embrace of denial depends on the ending the player is given. However, the final experience ultimately relies on individual interpretation. Whatever you believe in the end, Alex is undeniably condemned by his own sins, and he can do no more to escape them than the families of Shepherd’s Glen could.
[Ed. Note: WITA. also known as Stephanie Carmichael, is currently a guest writer at Spawn Kill! We can guarantee you'll want to sink your teeth into more of her work, which you can find here at her personal blog, Batman-On-Film, Impulse Creations, and scattered all over the place at GEN! Thanks for stepping in, Stephanie!]
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