Is Mary's Body in the back of James car?(Spoilers)

[captain crowbar]

Silent Hill is magic. Discuss.

[astro]

It's probably a lot easier to believe stupid shit when you're in a place where logic has almost entirely ceased to apply and crazy is normal.

I'm pretty sure that the passage there does not really mean he was delusional before he even left. It would completely contradict the fact that he came to town to commit suicide, a fact which has no place in his delusion.

As he says in the In Water ending, he remembered why he came. If he was delusional from the start, then suicide is not the reason he came. Therefore, we can disregard that as questionable phrasing.

He says "now I understand the real reason I came to this town" not "now I remember why I came to this town". Maybe James thinks that every guilty person came to this town to self-punish and die, it isn't like he has any knowledge of anything else happening in that ending, hence his reasoning for saying that he now (mis[?])understands. During the end parts of the game James comprehends that his delusions are designed to punish him, so it could easily be interpreted as "now I understand the real reason I came to this town [the town called me here to punish me for my sins and make me realize my delusions which would eventually end in my suicide because I'm not going to live without Mary]". Not that I'm saying it should be interpreted that way, but it's also a possibility, and although the phrasing in what I linked from LM is slightly dodgy, but it isn't that dodgy. Even with slightly poor English it's hard to write things in non-chronological order.

[NarooN]

I seriously doubt he was delusional before he got in the town.

[Devoured]

You're talking about it as if should be the logical and default assumption though, which it isn't. I didn't care about it before I found that people were assuming it was fact, but if it's going to be the go-to answer, it's worth noting that it isn't a perfect one.

I don't see why it wouldn't be, I fail to see the ambiguity in going there to "take his own life in a place of memories". If that's what he went to SH for at that point, and it obviously is, there's no logic in him constructing his delusion before that.

"OMG I got a letter from my wife that died 3 years ago, which I had no fault in whatsoever, I'd better go kill myself. Let me just take this 130 lbs pack of meat and stick it in the trunk and I'll be on my way!". He was obviously rather messed up already to be able to do what he did to Mary in the first place, but the actual delusion of her dying 3 years ago and the manifestation of the letter was without a doubt constructed in that rest stop.

So, the town caused memory loss in James while he was in the bathroom, but it wasn't full memory loss as the exit of the hospital proves, so on some level he knew that he killed Mary.

He never suffered from actual memory loss, he blocked and altered a bunch of memories. He knows his own identity as well as Mary's, he knows he's been to SH before, that the 3 year period holds some relevance and there's nothing to indicate he forgot anything that isn't directly related to his murdering Mary. I don't want to argue about semantics here but if you ask me there's a very large difference between real memory loss and oppressing memories.

The exit to the hospital is about halfway through the game and comes loooong after that bathroom scene. Prior to that he's had a letter and a radio broadcast from a dead wife, killed tons of monsters, chatted to a suicidal Angela and a homicidal Eddie, found a newspaper clipping about a brutal murder, met a doppelganger of his wife, encountered Pyramid Head twice, heard a bunch of talk from Laura implying the contrary and has just wandered around a hospital for about 2 hours reading notes about mental illness.

Also note that the memo regarding the door to the basement is the first real indication of James admitting to sin in any way, since it's quite obvious this door doesn't exist in the actual real life hospital and is therefore a manifestation of James' imagination as well, along with its implications. The second part IMO alludes to obtaining the key / ring, since James needs Maria to obtain it [Maria 'saving' him] :

She is an angel no one knows [Maria]
Only I can see the Lady of the Door [Maria's relation to James]
They cannot walk along her Bridge of Thread [Maria getting left behind]
They fall from the weight of their crimes [James killing Mary]

Like bloated and ugly corpses
Their sins, she devours them
Sin and sinner alike
She saves me, she is an angel

And straight after that it's jail for Jimbo.

Afterwards James went into Silent Hill to redeem himself despite having no knowledge of the power of the town at that point, and he had a map in his car for the hell of it because he came to the town to kill himself, not enter Silent Hill, which he didn't forget about until he went to the bathroom arbitrarily.

He didn't go there to redeem himself, he went there to kill himself, I don't see how that's the same thing. The fact that James has a map of Silent Hill proves or disproves nothing to me. It's just sloppiness and even aside fom that, one can argue that it's very close to where he lives, he's been there before and lots of people keep all kinds of maps in their cars, because that's where they would need them. Not at home in the kitchen or the bathroom at work or whatever, but driving in their car. It's such a tiny factor anyway that IMO holds no importance whatsoever, and it was even alluded to in SH4 with Frank saying he knew James went to Silent Hill, indicating he planned to take Mary there again to begin with. James sure as hell didn't call his father to say he killed Mary and he's jumping on the bandwagon, or Frank wouldn't have said they were missing.

If you're going to believe that Silent Hill caused his memory loss, it would be a better assumption that the town was blocking his car from location that would allow him to drive into the lake, and that he had a map to navigate where he was going because he was planning to enter the town in order to get to that point, then he went into the bathroom because the town was blocking his entry and he couldn't continue. I can't see how he would figure "going into the town to chase an obviously ridiculous fantasy will somehow redeem me because the town might have powers I don't know about or something" though. Also, if we're assuming the town can just wipe his memory, why not assert that it wiped it instantly instead of having to wait for him to enter the bathroom?

Surely his memory can be wiped in non-bathrooms, it would make more sense for him to enter the bathroom in that case too. Not that you're arguing for What's interpretation, but if this (how the memory loss happened) is a singular point for you, it's just unnecessary in order to explain what's happening. It might still be the correct answer, but I don't think it can be argued as the correct interpretation any more than Silent Hill didn't wipe his memory.

First of all, I never once said the town wiped his memory, especially in the way you describe it. I said the delusion kicked in not before, and because he went to Silent Hill. People are very much capable of this themselves, and most psychotic people I've encountered don't exactly have a perfectly painted picture in front of them. It's lots of wild suspicions and yeah, but what if's accompanied by a strange tendency to believe these most incredible and extreme possibilities in order to accommodate whatever their delusion may be, and a refusal to accept the much more logical possibilities that are being handed to them. Like I said, I'm with "what" on this and also believe it's whatever's left of James' own will to live that triggered his delusion.

However, it's rather rare for psychotic people, especially ones 'only' prompted by trauma or stress and not so much because of a chronical chemical imbalance or drug abuse or whatever, to hallucinate monsters all around them, road blocks to the extent of the road actually having caved in, defying laws of gravity and nature [such as horizontally dropping down corridors or walking through lakes] and ruined buildings appearing in their original states for you to traverse. So it goes both ways, just as psychosis always does and is described in the memo we find in the hospital. James is fragile and suicidal and although having made a decision, at the actual point of arrival in the town he's very much prepared to accept another reality, as far-fetched as it may be, that does not involve him having been an alcoholic dickhole for 3 or so years, then having killed his wife and now wanting to die himself as well.

I've said this before but IMO it makes perfect sense that upon arrival James hangs around a little to reminisce and goes into the bathroom to freshen up and collect his thoughts when push actually comes to shove. The game also states that the town's strange power stems from the lake and so there's nothing illogical about its influence also becoming active at that point. This is not something it likes to do, it just happens to react to people's state of mind.
You really think it's just a silly coincidence that he's looking into a mirror the way he does in the very beginning of the game?



@astro...

I know you were just putting some thoughts out there but there's nothing substantial to indicate that the town actually wants to punish James, he himself has that desire. I'm not saying that it's actually as cut and dried as that, and that there's no possiblity whatsoever that the town does have some sense of justice like that but what can actually be concluded from the game is that it wants James to break from his delusions and simply realize the truth about his own actions. Any other theory is just that, a theory.

This may seem to contradict the theory that the town also causes James' delusions to the extent it does, but no one ever said Silent Hill follows any kind of logical reasoning, or that it's 'pure evil'. Most of the strange deaths and disappearances in the past were people more or less bringing it on themselves, compromising the town in one way or another such as development for tourism and the like. And even then, we know at least a bunch of these cases were caused by the cults and not even the town itself.

IMO the town does not actively call out to people with darkness in their heart, people are simply drawn to it now as a result of it having been tainted by Alessa's whole ordeal and it's not something it consciously does. The town did not erase his memories or create the delusions for him, James did this himself. What the town did do, IMO, is 1) push him over the edge to become delusional [in the sense that I don't believe a trip to Missouri would've resulted in a similar psychosis], 2) physically manifest these illusions and 3) tried to make him see the truth.

The town itself has no influence, let alone knowledge on how the ending unfolds, this is up to the player with some pointers from the characters we encounter. So it does not 'know' that James will kill himself eventually anyway, or will leave with Laura, or will find the dog or whatever. It just knows that James is not being true to himself and, more or less at his own request, is working to rectify that. It could care less if James kills himself or not, that's all James - it simply never asked for James to be there and get his filthy delusions all over its nice parks, hotels and hospitals.

[astro]

Like, almost all of your post was to do with What's interpretation and not things I was saying specifically about what you said. I mostly agree with everything you're saying, but I still don't think it's automatic that James constructed his delusion in the bathroom, as there are at least three problems with the idea.

I don't like calling it memory loss either, I stated that in this thread, I was just calling it that because that's how Devil Hunter (I think it was him) referred to it and I was arguing with multiple people at the same time.

I don't think he went there to redeem himself either, I haven't checked but I think that might have been me talking about a part of What's theory.

I think the mirror is meaningful, but I don't think it supports either theories.

[Devoured]

Huh? It's not just the terms you used, it's also the context...not calling it memory loss doesn't change the way you describe it and the same applies to the guilt / punishment / redemption aspect of the town. For instance, James clearly says to Maria "why I needed you", not "why Silent Hill got all pissed off and decided I needed to be punished" or anything like that. It's not Silent Hill that's punishing James, James is punishing James. SH is just providing the tools that he subconsciously asked for.



If it was of any relevance to James specifically that the road was already blocked, we'd start the game with a video sequence of James sitting in the car not being able to proceed and turning back, not first on-screen inventing the letter and then finding the road to be blocked. It's been a few years since I've played it so I'm a little sketchy on details like this but as far as I can remember Eddie's car is right at the path leading to the cemetery, indicating the road was already blocked through Eddie to begin with.

As I said before the hospital has no bearing on this at all.

There's no reason whatsoever it would be illogical for James to have a map or to reflect looking at Toluca before the deed, or go to the restroom. I may be presumptuous here, I don't know how many people you've been and how many of them have committed suicide but I wasn't aware that there was an etiquette on it concerning how long you get to take to do it and whether or not you get to think twice about it and take a piss first. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't really see how any of this poses much of a problem to anything at all but your standpoint, which IMO seems to be based on nothing other than trying to make the far-fetched seem probable and the probable far-fetched.

As opposed to the much more direct problems paired with James concocting everything before entering the town such as, I dunno, having a dead wife in the back of his car, taking a long look at his zombified face in the mirror which otherwise contradicts his initial immaculate self-perception through refusal to look at himself in any way as is heavily implied by the way he judges Angela and Eddie before going through the hospital, inventing the letter right there on the spot, as well as every official source including one of the endings of the game itself clearly confirming the reason James went there was to kill himself...?

[astro]

The part you quoted about the memory loss thing was me going through the interpretation of other people that I don't believe, I was pointing out the issues I had with it.

I don't deny that he went to Silent Hill with the intention to kill himself, or that it was the real reason for being there, but that doesn't mean he lost his memory in the bathroom. I'm not even saying that I'm correct, everything I've said has been "it's not valid to base anything off the assumption that James lost his memory in the bathroom" because we basically don't know, and there's evidence which implies that he didn't. If nothing else, BoLM should be taken seriously. Someone should just ask Ito though.

[devil hunter]

I think I mentioned in one post that he didn't lose all of his memories. Besides, it doesn't matter if he lost the memories in the bathroom, what matters is that he lost it when he arrived in SH.

[what]

He didn't actually lose a single bit of his memories. He just pretended that things happened in a different way. The truth is always behind that facade, and that facade is very flimsy and weak.

That's why I am nearly certain the facade did not exist until he reached town. Once he is in Silent Hill, he has plenty to distract him from exploring his false memories too closely. Without the constant fear and threat of the town to deal with, not to mention the provocative magic letter to drive him, his delusion would likely dissolve in minutes.

We all know that he believes he came to town to find Mary because he got a letter from her implying that she was here, waiting for him. We also know that the letter itself is a Silent Hill trick, by the end of the game it disappears. So, ask yourself this: how could he have formed the delusion of the letter before reaching town when the letter itself, the physical foundation of his entire fantasy, could not have actually existed before he got there? Remember, the actual content of the letter is an excerpt of something Mary actually wrote, so he could not possibly have just imagined the words.

If you insist the delusion started before he reached town, you're insisting B comes before A.

[astro]

He didn't actually lose a single bit of his memories. He just pretended that things happened in a different way. The truth is always behind that facade, and that facade is very flimsy and weak.

That's why I am nearly certain the facade did not exist until he reached town. Once he is in Silent Hill, he has plenty to distract him from exploring his false memories too closely. Without the constant fear and threat of the town to deal with, not to mention the provocative magic letter to drive him, his delusion would likely dissolve in minutes.

We all know that he believes he came to town to find Mary because he got a letter from her implying that she was here, waiting for him. We also know that the letter itself is a Silent Hill trick, by the end of the game it disappears. So, ask yourself this: how could he have formed the delusion of the letter before reaching town when the letter itself, the physical foundation of his entire fantasy, could not have actually existed before he got there? Remember, the actual content of the letter is an excerpt of something Mary actually wrote, so he could not possibly have just imagined the words.

If you insist the delusion started before he reached town, you're insisting B comes before A.

Can't really answer this. The only evidence to go on is the default 'only inside the town manifestations occur' stuff that we see in the game, I don't remember anything that might suggest differently except the BoLM thing, which probably shouldn't be disregarded anyway, even though it's contradictory.

[Oomi]

If you go off of the official Silent Hill 2 novel then Mary was definitively in the car.
"James remembered. That’s right…after I strangled her, I…I lifted her from her bed, and carried her to the car… That was just a few days ago…"
Sorry if this was mentioned before. Didn't want to read through 17 pages. :P

http://otakunoeiyaku.blogspot.com/2011/ ... apter.html

[Floodclaw]

We've brought this up before with the SH1 novel; it can't really be considered canon.

[MaVeRick]

OT -> Mary was in the trunk. No why or reason for it, it's just my personal opinion. It just adds a little more creepy to James, since by the end of the game you understand what he's done and everything you've done thus far to progress has just been a cruel joke.

This thread is wildly derailed, but I love all the details and everything people have added, it fleshes out the games psychological aspescts. But really the game goes off on personal intereptation, depending on what the player prefers versus what James was really up to before reaching SH. The In Water ending seems most comfortable to accept, because who really could resume a normal life after killing their wife? Not James, I guess. And where he lost or reconstructed his memories up to the point of reaching the town, I think it occured when he was staring into the mirror of the restroom and ran his hand across his face, maybe it wasn't intentional and perhaps the town had nothing to do with it. It could've been self hypnosis, it is possible to stare at your reflection and go a little mad.

But to get technical on the events, it might've occured that James went a little over edge one day, murdered his wife, then when he realized what he'd done, he took a moment to calculate what steps needed to be taken. He wasn't in the best condition for problem solving, but that might've been why he took her to SH, and intending to end his own life. But one of the reasons James murdered Mary was due to his lack of freedom, being caged, loosing choices. He wasn't totally surrendered to his decision of suicide and began working in his mind possible escapes, excuses to be exact. Why is Mary then in the trunk if he loved her? It's the best place to keep her safe, you're not going to buckle up a corpse and you're not going to let it flop around on the floorboard. So without visual aid of what he'd done, his damaged psyche begins to reconstruct events. It doesn't take a grand deal to trick the mind, and there's no recognition in one's thoughts between days or years, there are only images and the familiarty of events.

Thus when he finds the road blocked, he steps out to examine and kind of takes a breather. His mind somewhat resets itself when he sees his reflection (and the urinal in the players PoV), and the phantom letter comes into existence. It's the icing on the cake. After Eddie is dealt with, the fragile pieces of his memory begin to work free and the truth is revealed.

None of this long post is meant to be taken seriously, I just wanted to add a portion of intrepetration I received from the game. In fact, another game might come out later and completly diss SH4 reference to Sunderland's son vanishing in SH, and it might mention that James was shipped to the funny farm, or works at the local Happy Burger. I hope in the least this was entertaining <3