Started working on my retrospective/theory of Silent Hill a long time ago, so this is just some part, maybe I will post the whole thing
PART 1: MECHANICS
_______________________________________________________________________________
Silent Hill - a town, where strange events happen more often than anywhere
else… Other worlds… Eternal memories… Birthing of Gods and mysterious
disappearances… Is there any logic to these seemingly unexplainable
things?
What is the driving force behind them? Are they interconnected?
The primary goal of Part 1 is to try and give a logical explanation to
all the supernatural events, basing all conclusions on official info from the
games or other sources. But remember, that everything here is THEORIES, so you
are not supposed to see it as the one and only true explanation. I hope these
explanations help you to understand the plot of the series better.
1. The Concept.
1-1. Power of the Mind.
The main ideas of the Silent Hill series are closely connected with
parapsychological and philosophical theories in the real world. It is
considered, that every human thought and emotion possesses a certain
amount of force, which can be characterized as "psychic energy". And the
stronger this thought or emotion is, the greater it's psychoenergetic
potential. In a nutshell, this energy allows the feeling to affect the
world around the person in general and other people in particular. In
other words, the products of one's psychic activities are not limited to
their own inner self, but can have outside effects.
That is exactly what the book in the school library of SH1 was supposed
to relay: "...Poltergeists are among these. Negative emotions, like fear,
worry, or stress manifest Into external energy with physical effects" -
thus, inner psychic activity can have outside effects of physical nature
and can even create such phenomena as poltergeists. That is a good
example of psychic energy. According to the mentioned book, negative
emotions (like fear, worry, pain or hatred) experienced by teenage girls
have the highest psychoenergetic potential. Nevertheless, we have seen
strong manifestations of this energy in various people in the games - be
it a middle-aged clerk, mourning the loss of his wife, a desperate and
suicidal girl, who murdered her father, or an orphan boy, who wants to
find his mother more than anything else in the world.
Another good example would be a particular girl, whose psychic energy was
so strong, that an entire town called Silent Hill was devoured by the
darkness of her inner world ("Due to the power of Alessa's thoughts, the
town is transfigured into the otherworld" - the role of *thoughts* is
noted in Lost Memories). We can also recall the negative feelings of the
prisoners of the Toluca Prison and the victims of the plague. These have
twisted the "power of the town" ("because of the unforeseen deaths of the
town's population, as well as the thoughts and feelings of the prisoners,
the original power that the town held was gradually distorted" - LM), but
that we'll discuss a bit later on.
any thoughts?
PART 1: MECHANICS
_______________________________________________________________________________
Silent Hill - a town, where strange events happen more often than anywhere
else… Other worlds… Eternal memories… Birthing of Gods and mysterious
disappearances… Is there any logic to these seemingly unexplainable
things?
What is the driving force behind them? Are they interconnected?
The primary goal of Part 1 is to try and give a logical explanation to
all the supernatural events, basing all conclusions on official info from the
games or other sources. But remember, that everything here is THEORIES, so you
are not supposed to see it as the one and only true explanation. I hope these
explanations help you to understand the plot of the series better.
1. The Concept.
1-1. Power of the Mind.
The main ideas of the Silent Hill series are closely connected with
parapsychological and philosophical theories in the real world. It is
considered, that every human thought and emotion possesses a certain
amount of force, which can be characterized as "psychic energy". And the
stronger this thought or emotion is, the greater it's psychoenergetic
potential. In a nutshell, this energy allows the feeling to affect the
world around the person in general and other people in particular. In
other words, the products of one's psychic activities are not limited to
their own inner self, but can have outside effects.
That is exactly what the book in the school library of SH1 was supposed
to relay: "...Poltergeists are among these. Negative emotions, like fear,
worry, or stress manifest Into external energy with physical effects" -
thus, inner psychic activity can have outside effects of physical nature
and can even create such phenomena as poltergeists. That is a good
example of psychic energy. According to the mentioned book, negative
emotions (like fear, worry, pain or hatred) experienced by teenage girls
have the highest psychoenergetic potential. Nevertheless, we have seen
strong manifestations of this energy in various people in the games - be
it a middle-aged clerk, mourning the loss of his wife, a desperate and
suicidal girl, who murdered her father, or an orphan boy, who wants to
find his mother more than anything else in the world.
Another good example would be a particular girl, whose psychic energy was
so strong, that an entire town called Silent Hill was devoured by the
darkness of her inner world ("Due to the power of Alessa's thoughts, the
town is transfigured into the otherworld" - the role of *thoughts* is
noted in Lost Memories). We can also recall the negative feelings of the
prisoners of the Toluca Prison and the victims of the plague. These have
twisted the "power of the town" ("because of the unforeseen deaths of the
town's population, as well as the thoughts and feelings of the prisoners,
the original power that the town held was gradually distorted" - LM), but
that we'll discuss a bit later on.
any thoughts?
