I)Introduction
II)Alan Wake Plot
and Gameplay Synopsis
III) Blog Synopsis
and Analysis
1) Cauldron Lake
2) The Dark Presence
3) Deer Symbolism
and Motifs
4) Light vs Darkness
Motif in Media
This is free to
reproduce or recreate. Knowledge is to be shared.
Written by: Chris Strott
I)
Introduction
This
is not a review. The point of this paper is to look at literary and
gameplay motifs as well as symbolism in the Alan
Wake
universe. For this paper, I consider that universe to encompass: the
six episodes that make up the game itself, the two special episodes
that occur after the main campaign, the expansion Alan
Wake: American Nightmare,
the blog
This House of Dreams,
the mini-series Bright
Falls
and The
Alan Wake Case Files
short book that came with the collector’s edition of the game. The
novel has a similar plot to the game, but it differs in some places
from the other media in the Alan
Wake
universe, so I am not going to consider it for this paper.
I am a believer in the death of the author, but I do believe that the author can help provide insight. The final word however goes to the reader (or player in this case). Writer Sam Lake did an AMA (or a Q&A) on Reddit.com in which he partly discusses the meaning behind the ending of the game, as well as some other elements of the game. In addition, a Remedy (the developer of the game) employee responded to forum posts regarding Alan Wake on the Remedy Games message boards. I have read these, but I do not believe either to be a direct part of the universe.
II)
Alan Wake Plot
and Gameplay Synopsis20
Alan
Wake
is a third person shooter in which you play as writer Alan Wake. The
game was released on May 28,2010, and is broken down into six
episodes. Two epilogue episodes were released on July 27,2010 and
October 12, 2010. The gameplay mainly consists of shining a
flashlight on “Taken” (seemingly feral humans who have been
corrupted by the Dark Presence) in order to make them vulnerable to
bullets. Inanimate objects also get possessed and hurl themselves at
Alan; a theme also found in many Stephen King novels. The story of
Alan
Wake
could sit alongside King’s other novels, and King is quoted in the
opening cutscene. Shining light on inanimate objects that become
‘Taken’ is the only thing necessary to eliminate them. Light
posts serve as both checkpoints and safe points.
The
game takes place in the year 2010 in the fictional town of Bright
Falls. The story follows Alan Wake who encounters an evil called the
Dark Presence which can turn fiction into reality. Alan receives aid
along the way from Thomas Zane, a poet who encountered the Dark
Presence in the in the 70’s.
In the game, writer
Alan Wake visits the town of Bright Falls in the hopes of taking a
break from his city life. After struggling to begin his next book,
Alan hopes to clear his mind with a break from writing. His wife
Alice has different intentions however, and has brought Alan to
Bright Falls to see Dr. Hartman, a doctor specializing in helping
artists.
The
Wake’s rent a cabin on Bird’s Leg Isle which lies at the center
of Cauldron Lake. The lake has a rich history of oddities and Native
American Lore surrounding it. Shortly after arrival, the Dark
Presence drags Alice into Cauldron Lake. The Dark Presence is an
evil being that dwells in Cauldron Lake. It has always existed, and
it has the power to make fiction into reality. Real world Native
American culture seems to have largely influenced the lore behind the
Dark Presence. “… [I]n…
Native [American’s] (Cherokee/Creek/Seminole/Choctaw) world view,
any way of speaking, be it in speech or in writing, becomes a living,
breathing entity that once spoken, cannot be taken back”.5
Alan
mistakenly believes at first that Alice has drowned in the lake, but
instead the Dark Presence is holding her captive at the bottom of
Cauldron Lake. Alan tries to wield the Dark Presence’s power to
make fiction into reality to revive Alice. Instead the Dark Presence
takes control of Alan, trapping him in what appears to be the Cabin
on Bird’s Leg Isle. The Dark Presence tries to use Alan to help
release its true power from Cauldron Lake. While under its control,
Alan has no contact with the outside world. After a few days, Alan’s
agent and long time friend Barry Wheeler becomes worried; prompting
him to go to Bright Falls to make sure Alan is okay.
After a week under its control, Alan is able to write just enough to allow him to escape the clutches of the Dark Presence. After Alan frees himself with some help from his ‘mentor’ Thomas. Once free, Alan follows a trail of manuscript pages left by Thomas containing clues on how to stop the Dark Presence. The manuscript pages detail Alan's time in Bright Falls, including things he has yet to encounter. Alan wrote the manuscript while under the control of the Dark Presence. In the end, the compiled pages of the manuscript make up Alan’s new novel Departure. The paranormal events in Departure are coming true, and the Dark Presence is growing stronger by the day.
Seemingly, out of
nowhere, Agent Nightingale of the FBI shows up. It is revealed in
the Alan
Wake Case Files16
that
Nightingale is not on official FBI business, but is there of his own
accord to try to capture Alan. Nightengale's served in New York with
his partner Finn. Finn died under odd circumstances similar to what
is happening to Alan in Bright Falls. Nightingale didn't believe
Finn's crazy stories at the time, and he feels guilty he didn't help
his partner. He isn't sure how Alan is connected, but he knows Alan
is involved with the whatever killed Finn.16
The
Dark Presense seems to have been active for decades. At least since
1970. In 1970 Thomas Zane lost his wife Barbara Jagger when she
disappeared in Cauldron Lake while scuba diving. Thomas also tried
to use the Dark Presence to write Barbara back through his poems.
Thomas grew fearful of using the Dark Presence, but the Alan
Wake Case Files
reveals that his assistant Emil Hartman encouraged him to continue to
write and see the extent of the Dark Presence’s powers.16
Thomas suffered the same fate as Alan however, and the Dark Presence
took the form of Barbara and tried to force Thomas into releasing its
true power from the lake through his poems.
 |
| Cauldron Lake Lodge Sun Dial |
Dr. Hartman later
opened a health center to (he says) treat people who came into
contact with the Dark Presence in The Cauldron Lake Lodge. At the
Lodge, there is a sundial that reads In
Tenebras Cadere
(“Fall into Darkness” in Latin). I believe this illustrates the
idea that Dr. Hartman believed that artists who are able to channel
the Dark Presence should ‘fall’ into the Dark Presence and try to
use its power to its full potential.
Just
before being completely taken over by the Dark Presence, Thomas was
able to write a poem which stopped the Dark Presence by writing
everything he had ever done out of existence (including bringing the
Dark Presence into the world). In the Poem him and Barbara’s souls
end up together in happiness, while their human forms, possessed by
Light and Dark, continue their endless struggle.9
Writing
everything about him, Barbara, and the Dark Presence out of existence
in 1970 also destroyed Bird Leg Isle; the same place that Alan and
Alice stayed in 2010.
Knowing
the Dark Presence might resurface, Thomas left a backup plan to help
anyone else the Dark Presence might use. Thomas ensured that the
contents of any shoebox he leaves in the real world would remain
intact and unaffected by his writing himself out of existence.9
Thomas employed Cynthia Weaver, a fan girl of Zane back in the 70’s,
to guard the shoebox containing a special light switch, called the
Clicker.
Alan’s
mother gave him the Clicker during his childhood to help him deal
with nightmares. Alan had given the same Clicker to Alice before
they came to Bright Falls. This second Clicker in Thomas Zane's
shoebox forms a kind of paradox; it is impossible to know if Alan
wrote that Thomas would leave a Clicker in the shoebox, or if Thomas
wrote that Alan would find a clicker in the shoebox. In the DLC
expansion Alan
Wake: American Nightmare,
a manuscript page reads, “… reality is too complex. Ordinary
questions become meaningless. [Like], ‘Who created who?’ and
‘What is really real?’”21.
It seems when dealing with the magical evil that is the Dark
Presence natural laws and logic don’t apply.
Regardless, Alan follows a trail of pages and clues left by Thomas to reach the Clicker, housed in the power plant of Bright Springs and guarded by Cynthia Weaver. Once armed with the Clicker, Alan makes his way to Cauldron Lake in hopes of destroying the Dark Presence and saving Alice. When Alan emerges from the power plant, it is daytime, even though Alan believed it should have been night. It is implied that the Clicker had something to do with it. However, by the time Alan reaches the Dark Presence at Cauldron Lake it is dark again.
At
Cauldron Lake, Alan is able to get close enough to the embodiment of
the Dark Presence, Barbara Yaggar, to shove the Clicker into a hole
in its chest. This severely weakened the Dark Presence, and greatly
inhibited its ability to manipulate anything outside of the Lake.
During
his adventure, Alan figured out the reason Zane’s attempt to save
Barbara failed. He realized when dealing with the Dark Presence
everything must even out; or that there cannot be a plot hole. To
save someone who the Dark Presence has killed or captured, someone
else must take their place. Alan switches places with Alice,
trapping himself in the Dark Presence’s home at the bottom of
Cauldron Lake. At the end of the original six episodes, Alice safely
emerges from the Lake, as the Dark Presence traps Alan in the
embodiment of its home; the cabin that was on Bird’s Leg Isle. At
the end of episode six, Alan’s last words are, “It’s not a
lake, it’s an ocean.”. I believe this is referring to the fact
that the Dark Presence is more powerful than what occurred during
Alan
Wake at
Cauldron Lake.
This interpretation is the same held by the writer, Sam Lake.9
There
are two special episodes which deal with Alan trying to escape his
imprisonment by the Dark Presence. These episodes are set entirely
inside of Alan’s mind. They revolve around Alan fighting to free
himself while trying to retain what sanity remains after his eventful
two weeks in Bright Falls. At the end of the second episode, Alan
begins typing the apparent sequel to his recently completed novel
Departure,
entitled Return.
Return
tells the story of Alan trying to escape the Dark Place, this time by
writing himself into a Night Springs Episode. These events are played
out in the expansion DLC entitled Alan
Wake: American Nightmare. By
the end of the DLC, it is still not clear whether Alan has escaped
the Dark Place at the bottom of Cauldron Lake. It is evident he has
weakened it though.
III)
Blog Synopsis and Analysis9
The
blog “This House of Dreams,” elaborates on the history of Thomas,
Barbara, and Emil and their time at Cauldron Lake. Fictional
character Samantha Lake from the town of Ordinary buys a new house
which she intends on turning into her dream home. While renovating
she finds a shoebox full of knick-knacks, photos, and a batch of
poems. The photos are of a man and women scuba diving in a lake.
What appears to be black ink has blacked out the couple’s faces in
the photos.
Curious
about who wrote the poems, Samantha contacts the house’s previous
owner’s family. The former owner of the house suffers from
Alzheimer’s, and the daughter isn’t sure how her mother came into
possession of the shoebox. Her best guess is that her mother
probably bought the shoe box at a yard sale. The poems only
attribution is a few initials. T. appears to be the author, while B.
is his significant other, and E. seems to be a friend/editor. It is
safe to assume that T is Thomas Zane, B is Barbara Yagger, and E is
Emil Hartman.
Shortly
after finding the shoebox, Samantha has a nightmare in which an FBI
agent visits her house asking about the shoebox. The agents face,
“was leaking inky smoke so that [Samantha] couldn’t see what he
looked like.” After the dream, the shoebox, including the poems,
went missing. I assert that the FBI agent was Nightingale under the
control of the Dark Presence, trying to find anything else Thomas
left behind that might hinder its quest for freedom from Cauldron
Lake, and the power that comes with that freedom.
 |
| Alan Wake's Jacket |
Samantha
soon has another dream in which she intends to visit the previous
owner of the house in order to learn where the shoebox came from.
Instead, Samantha ends up visiting a man who was, “…wearing a
funny jacket with old-fashioned elbow patches.” This sounds very
similar to Alan Wake’s jacket in the game. I think it is safe to
assume this character is Alan Wake. In the dream, Alan frantically
and continually asks Samantha to turn on the lights. Right before
she wakes up, Alan is shouting at her to turn on the lights. Awoken
and distraught from the dream, she goes to get a glass of water and
sees a man’s black silhouette outside. Alan knows the Dark
Presence can't enter any kind of light, so the dream seems to be some
kind of warning from Alan against an incoming attack. In the end,
she calls a neighbor to check the yard for her, and he finds nothing.
Shortly
after the dream, one night while listening to music at home, Samantha
sees black silhouettes outside of her house. Upon seeing the
silhouettes, the power in the house goes out and Samantha hears a
window break. She runs to hide in the closet and calls 911. The
closet bursts open before “…all went black.” The last thing
she saw before she lost consciousness was the shoebox on a shelf in
the closet. Samantha insists, “There was no way I could not have
seen it before if it had been there since it went missing.” When
the police arrived, they said that there were no signs of a break-in.
After later investigating the newly found shoebox, Samantha finds
six new poems inside of it, a title page, and an old light switch.
The first time Samantha tried flicking the light switch, the power went out in the whole neighborhood. She said a thunderstorm going on outside caused the power outage, but it is possible the switch has a supernatural power to control light similar to the Clicker in the video game. (The first time Alan used the Clicker in the game it became warm and sunny in Bright Falls, and he questioned whether the it had changed night into day.20)
Shortly
after finding the shoebox and the new items, Samantha receives a
phone call from an anonymous person warning her that she should stop
writing about the shoebox and its contents in her blog. The caller
says that the shoebox must remain a secret because there are people
who might want to do terrible things in order to obtain it. Samantha
says, “…in a way it felt a lot like my nightmare about the agent
who came asking about the shoebox.”
Samantha
again has a strange dream, in which she encounters the diver from the
photographs. She says, “He looked nothing like in the photos, but
it was the same man. He was the poet who wrote the poems as well.”
The diver is described as, “…wearing a strange, heavy diving
suit… shining with a bright light”9;
the same way Thomas is depicted in Alan
Wake.
In
the dream, the diver explains how the Dark Presence has taken over
his girlfriend, and that he has figured out how to stop it. The
dream then shifts to Samantha being underwater with the diver, going
into the center of the Dark Place, where anything spoken or written
comes true. As they are descending, things start to surge up from
below; “Things
of darkness, but bright things of light as well”.9
The
diver tells Samantha “…that these things, or these presences,
were forever fighting a war between the forces of light and
darkness”. This presents the idea that the Dark Presence has
always existed. Thomas talks of one last poem about a safe haven
from the darkness, “a ‘baby’ universe”9
where his and Barbara’s essence's, or souls, or whatever you want
to call it can be together. Creating this universe would allow Thomas
and Barbara's souls to rest in peace while leaving their bodies
behind to be inhabited and used in the eternal war of light versus
dark.
After
the dream, Samantha has a feeling of hope; an expectation that,
“…something amazing is coming.”9
(Perhaps setting up Alan
Wake 2?)
1)
Cauldron Lake
Cauldron
Lake is the epicenter of the Dark Presence. It is where Thomas Zane
lost his love Barbara Yagger, it is where Alan lost Alice, and it is
where the Dark Presence is the strongest.
The
real world’s Crater Lake inspired the design of Cauldron Lake.7
Mount Mazama erupted and collapsed in on itself almost 7,700 years
ago to form the foundation for Crater Lake.
Geologically, the name
for the foundation of Crater Lake is caldera, Spanish for cauldron.19
Over time the caldera filled with rainwater and snowmelt to become
the deepest lake in the U.S., and the seventh deepest in the world at
592 feet.12
There
are many myths surrounding Crater Lake. Just as Cauldron Lake houses
the Dark Presence which dragged Alice and Barbara into its depths,
Crater Lake is said to be, “…a haunt of water-devils who [drag]
into it and [drown] all who [venture] near.”15
Native
American myths about Crater Lake seem to have helped to inspire the
Dark Presence. According to Clark’s “The Origin of Crater
Lake,”2
the Klamath
Indian tribe believed the
entrance to the Below World, (more commonly known as the Underworld),
is below Mt. Mazama. The myth says that the Chief of the Below World,
or Llao, got spurned by a beautiful maiden and to get revenge he
starts spewing fire from atop Mt. Mazama. This destroyed the mountain
much in the same way a volcano might. After a few sacrifices from
the village medicine men, the Chief of the Above World, or Skell,
agreed to help the villagers and collapsed Mt. Mazama in on top of
the Chief of the Below World, ideally trapping him there forever.
This also formed the caldera where Crate Lake is in present day. The
bottom of Cauldron Lake in Alan
Wake
may
not be the underworld, but it defiantly houses a terrible evil.
2)
The Dark Presence
The
Dark Presence is the antagonist in Alan
Wake.
It seems to have no form of its own; it can appear in any form it
wants. The Dark Presence draws influence from a few different
cultures’ folktales about “witches,” or women with special
powers. The Dark Presence shares similarities to the Klamath
Indians’ legend of Llao, as well as with Slavic myths of Baba Yaga,
and also to the Deer Woman of Oklahoma Native American lore.
The
Anderson twins, siblings living under the care of Dr. Hartman at
Cauldron Lake Lodge, refer to the Dark Presence as Baba Yaga, which
is very close to Barbara Jagger. The name Baba Yaga is of Slavic
origin. In Russian folklore, Baba Yaga is, “… usually shown as
a…old woman”18.
In most Slavic languages, Baba means “old woman.” Yaga is
generally a feminine name, but it is also possible that it, “…
comes from the old Russian verb yagat which
means to abuse, to find fault.”18
In
some folklore, Baba Yagga lives on a house that stands on chicken
legs.13,18
This could be an allusion to Bird’s Leg Cabin, the cabin on Diver’s
Isle at the center of Cauldron Lake. Diver’s Isle even looks like
a chicken foot.
 |
| Diver's Isle |
The
Dark Presence also shares similarities to Native American legends
surrounding the ‘Deer Woman’. The deer is one of the most
prominent symbols that appear in Alan
Wake,
with banners and floats for the town’s ‘Deerfest’ scattered
throughout Bright Falls.
Among
contemporary Native American people of Oklahoma, the Deer Woman often
plays a “’…bogeyman’ sort of role...”14;
someone who seduces people into doing evil things.3
The Oklahoma Tribal council believes she has always been around, and
that she is a door between life and death. According to lore, it is
a bad omen to see her. In Carolyn Dunn’s “Deer Woman and the
Living Myth of the Dreamtime” she says, “The only way to save you
from the magic of the Deer Woman is to… recognize her for what she
is.”4
This idea is also in Alan
Wake. In
order to defeat the Dark Presence Alan, just as Thomas did before
him, must look past Barbara’s appearance, and recognize the Dark
Presence for what it truly is.
The Deer Woman also
has the ability to shape shift in some legends.29,4
In the Bright
Falls
mini-series, after Jake becomes scared of his black outs, he
handcuffs himself to his refrigerator and sets up a camera to record
himself. When Jake wakes up, he finds his room torn apart. Due to
the jagged edges of the damage in the room, the investigating police
officer infers that a deer did the damage. This damage might be the
result of the Dark Presence, or Deer Woman, possessing Jake and then
shape shifting his body into a deer.
3)
Deer Symbolism and Motifs
The
Deer is an oft repeated symbol throughout Alan
Wake.
The towns annual Deerfest occurred one week after Alan Wake arrived
in Bright Falls. Banners, floats, and billboards of deer are
littered everywhere throughout the town for the celebration. In the
web miniseries, Jake’s first encounter with the Dark Presence is
when he strikes a deer possessed by the Dark Presence with his car.
Even though the deer seemed to suffer fatal injuries, it screeched
and crawled into the woods. In the blog “This House of Dreams,”9
one of the first decorations that Samantha hangs in her house is
antlers. There are many popular deer motifs found in both
Alan Wake
and literature
Legends
often portray deer as victims; as hunted, “…persecuted animals.”5
In the old Buddhist story, “King
Banyan
Deer
“1
the King of Benares has all the nearby deer rounded up and imprisoned
in his park. He has one deer slaughtered per day for his dinner.
There are copious amounts of video games which have the player
hunting deer. In both Deer
Hunter: Interactive Hunting Experience23
and in the Cabela’s
Hunting Games
video game series22
players hunt deer.
People
in
trouble, like Alan during his week in Bright Falls, can often
identify with persecuted and hunted animals.
Another
very popular motif is the idea of the deer as a guide to other
worlds. In the real world, hunter’s follow deer into a world very
different from human life, or city life, into the wilderness. In the
Welsh story Pwyll
Prince of Dyved6;
Pwyll follows a stag deep into the woods. Once he is able to catch
up to the deer, he finds strange looking dogs have downed it. He
drives off the dogs, and claims the deer as his own. Unfortunately
for Pwyll, the dogs belonged to Arwan, King of the Otherworld (or
Underworld) from Welsh mythology. As punishment, Pwyll takes Arwan’s
place as King of the Otherworld. Following the deer guided Pwyll
into an encounter with another world.
In
The
Hobbit17,
white doe’s mark the borders of elven territory, an entirely
different world to that of the protagonist Bilbo. In The
Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe10,
the child-protagonists enter a supernatural wardrobe that transports
them to Narnia, a magical land unlike anything they have ever
encountered. After a few years in Narnia, the now grown protagonists
follow a white stag into a forest which transports them in space and
time; back to their drastically different lives at their normal home
and back to the time that they first found the wardrobe.
Biblical
stories often tell of deer leading people to heaven, or to put it
another way, to another world. Christianity has a much more cheery
outlook on why the deer is luring people into the forest than the
deer in Alan
Wake.
4)
Light vs. Darkness Motif in Media
A
common gameplay element is using light to weaken enemies.
Rock-n-Rope28
is the first game which has the player use a flashlight to daze
enemies. Similar to Alan
Wake,
in ObsCure27
shining a flashlight on enemies weakens them. In
Luigi’s Mansion26,
flashlights weaken poltergeists so that Luigi can capture them with
his Ghost Vacuum. Similarly, during a boss fight in the game Lego:
Marvel Super Heroes25,
a spotlight weakens the otherwise invincible boss so that he can be
hurt. In the Kingdom
Hearts24
series, exposing enemies known as the Heartless to light weakens or
outright kills them.
In
literature, the idea of light weakening or destroying enemies is also
widespread. It is a very common motif throughout the Bible. In
addition, in H.P. Lovecraft’s The
Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath11
bright light kills creatures known as ghasts. Many tales involving
Trolls state that sunlight turns them to stone, such as in The
Hobbit.17
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