Neo-Platonism and The Legend of Zelda: Platypus Nostalgia

I mentioned reading a passage from J.R.R. Tolkien's "Leaf by Niggle" several days ago and immediately thinking of "The Legend of Zelda." Now "Leaf by Niggle" is heavily platonic in its conception of the afterlife; advancing toward the divine through an ever more real series of images. We see this also in C.S. Lewis' Narnia where at the end of the ages the cast are invited "further up and further in." Now there's something in this idea of advancing through stages or levels towards a fulfillment or consummation that put me in mind of video games. The player works his way through a series of worlds, or as Miyamoto calls them "gardens," toward some desired object, the goal of the quest and the end of the game. In the Legend of Zelda series, this goal is often the mystic Triforce, a tripartite object representing the balance between wisdom, courage, and power. To master this object, the one who seeks to win it must bring all three forces into balance within himself. If you know your Zelda mythology, the events of the Zelda series are set in motion by Ganondorf's attempt to posses the Triforce when his own soul is disordered. The mystic object responds by shattering and leaving the thief with the third that represents power: Ganondorf's mastering passion. In effect, Ganondorf cannot achieve the blessedness the Triforce offers because he is Plato's tyrannical man, mastered by his passions. To win the Triforce requires a platonic equilibrium within the tripartite soul bringing wisdom (rational), courage (emotional), and power (appetative) together. Thus, Link's quest is really the platonic ascent of the ordered soul allegorized into a quest and commodified as a video game.

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...

Tolkien's Dark Tower: The Platypus Reads Part CLXXXVI

Tom Shippey points out in his Road to Middle Earth that the germ of Barad Dur, Sauron's Stronghold, comes from a scrap of Chaucer where the poet makes an offhand reference to a knight and his approach to "the dark tower." Chaucer expected that everyone knew that story, but somehow in the intervening centuries it has become lost. Using his imagination, Tolkien tried to delve back into the mine of story and imagine what this Dark Tower might have been. We see several tries at this image, or several "accounts" in Tolkien's corpus. The first is Thangorodrim, Morgoth's "dark tower," where he sits "on hate enthroned." The second, and like unto it, is Sauron's original keep at Tol Sirion. This is the dark tower before which Luthien, in all her frailty, stands and lays the deepest pits bare with her song (an image oddly reminiscent of protestant poets like Spenser, Bunyan, and Wesley). Building on these two images, Tolkien constru...

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old. That's a couple years after it first came out. The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer. I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit. It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows. With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play. What was that first game? It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past . Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge. It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing? There were stretches when I didn't. Many times, I've just been too busy. There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....

Platypus of Truth

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