Skip to main content

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.    
Labels:

Comments

Social Scientist said…
Nice to come across a blog by such an articulate monotreme.

Interesting point about Leaf by Niggle. Plato never seems far from Tolkien to my mind.
1:47 AM
Gabe Moothart said…
Link's quest is really the platonic ascent of the ordered soul allegorized into a quest and commodified as a video game.

Jim, this is why I like your blog so much!!!
10:47 PM
James said…
Historyscientist: glad you like the post. I'm curious as to why much of the scholarship on Tolkien that I've come across ignores his Platonism. Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien are all pretty heavily influenced by Plato and Plato-influenced forms of Christianity. Maybe Tolkien's Catholicism puts people more in mind of St. Thomas, and his job as a philologist causes them to focus on the linguistic and literary, rather than the philosophical, roots of his books. What seems to get glossed over is that Tolkien carved out his own linguistic path. The original expectation was that he would become a Classicist and therefore he was officially learning Greek language and literature until Sophomore year of college; all that Gothic and Anglo-Saxon stuff was done in his free time until he made the formal switch.
10:40 AM
James said…
Hey Gabe! Glad you liked it. As Hans Gruber observes in Die Hard: "benefits of a classical education."
10:43 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane: The Platypus Reads Part CCLII

I needed a break from A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (too many authors and too many styles coming in too fast) so I decided to turn back to an author whose work I've enjoyed exploring: Robert E. Howard.  This time, however, I decided to skip over Howard's famous Conan yarns and instead take a look at one of his earlier creations, Solomon Kane.  The idea of a puritan occult detective was too intriguing to pass up.  I have the whole collection of Kane's tales and I do intend to blog them all.  Right now, my little literary detour has only encompassed the first two short stories so I'm going to record my thoughts on them right away and get back to the rest as I have time. Skulls in the Stars Solomon Kane makes his debut with this classic bit of English Gothic including a haunted moor, a vengeful ghost, and a solitary miser.   Howard's Kane fits the portrait of the archetypal puritan: grim, principled, metaphysical, with an iron sense of right and wrong.  I h...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (Cont.): The Platypus Reads Part CCLI

Wow, it's hard to read anthologies at anything other than a slow crawl.  The change from author to author and style to style is exhausting.  Slowing down is a good thing, though, if it makes time for reflection.  That seems like one good reason to create an anthology: to force readers to slow down and reflect. With that as a preamble, let's move on to today's selections. The Black Ferris by Ray Badbury I didn't expect to see this Sci-Fi heavy hitter in a Fantasy collection, but there you go.  I've tried to get into Bradbury once or twice and failed.  His Martian Chronicles , in particular, resisted all my best efforts.  This short story, however, worked like a charm.  The sense of atmosphere in particular is masterfully done (a sort of Tom Sawyer strays into Edgar Allan Poe).  My only complaint is that there isn't more of it, but apparently Bradbury already fixed that by expanding the story into Something Wicked This Way Comes. This raise...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Broken Wings: The Platypus Watches Trinity Blood

My questions were not all answered.  That's par for the course when dealing with anime.  Most anime is based on manga.  That means that an immense amount of plot and character development from a 24+ volume series must be condensed into 24 30 minute episodes.  In many cases, the anime is produced before the manga is even finished.  Thus, not having a satisfactory conclusion to an anime series is par for the course.  Most times, I accept this and shrug it off.  In the case of "Trinity Blood," however, I found its incomplete ending oddly fitting.  Let me explain. "Trinity Blood" is chiefly about brokenness.  The ending song with its chorus of "my broken wings" gives it away.  The setting, a post-apocalyptic Europe, gives it away as well.  In fact, every one of the characters in the world of "Trinity Blood" is broken in some way.  We see a young Pope, broken by the political machinations of his older siblings.  We see a y...
1 comment
Read more