Fallout: New Vegas - Father Elijah: An Archetypal Tragedy

in the past month i experienced two eerie events events that i and some of my regular viewers might refer to as synchronous the first event happened during the last week of june i was trying to decide what the subject of my next video should be but as per usual i was overwhelmed by the number of subjects to choose from i was leaning towards doing a video on the game manhunt because a patron of mine recently recommended it to me yet i was hesitant because i didn't think i had that much to say about that game

i was unsure if researching the game's development and lore would yield anything of value but then something happened that made me believe manhunt would be the right choice that very same week another patron of mine recommended that i check out the works of david cronenberg a movie director whose films i have appallingly never watched the first movie this patron recommended i checked out was videodrome after watching this movie i knew manhunt would be the right choice because videodrome and manhunt deal with the exact same subjects the production of snuff films the patron who recommended me

videodrome did not know about my intention to do a video on manhunt yet he recommended that movie to me and i watched it that same week that siri event number one eerie event number two has to do with the video you're watching now ever since i announced that i started playing fallout new vegas for the first time i've had people recommend certain characters for me to analyze one of which is father elijah from the dead money dlc after i did my video on joshua graham i intended to do father elijah next but it was just

a matter of when i knew this week would be the right time because again one of my viewers sent me something at just the right time a man going by mr fuggles asked me if i had ever considered analyzing the character of captain ahab from the classic herman melville novel moby dick now before i explain what this has to do with fallout i will quickly say that i never read moby dick until a week ago nor did i know anything about elijah until a week ago so just keep that in mind when i read moby

dick i found out that captain ahab the books felon was likely named after the tyrannical king of the same name from the bible and what was the name of the man who fought against dahab in the bible elijah consider also that captain ahab and fallout's elijah are virtually the same captain ahab is villainous because of his obsessive pursuit of the titular whale father elijah obsessively pursues the treasures of the sierra madre casino that's the primary similarity but there are many other shared patterns ones that i will outline in a few minutes although i will say

one thing in regards to those patterns at the outset they are archetypal just as the great hero stories follow the archetypal patterns of the hero's journey both elijah and ahab follow archetypal patterns that elevate them beyond mere well-ridden villains those patterns are what make elijah as revered a villain inside the fallout canon as captain ahab is in the realm of global literature we will discuss those shared patterns in a moment but before we do i will recap the relevant moments in elijah's life for those who have never played fallout new vegas or who never played

the relevant dlc needless to say there are spoilers ahead before he became father elijah a high-ranking elder in the brotherhood of steel he was a scribe one of the lowest ranks in the brotherhood he like other scribes were tasked with maintaining records of old world technology unlike other scribes who advance through the brotherhood's hierarchy by progressing from one level to the other elijah was able to jump from scribe to elder on account of his unique talents his greatest talent was being able to determine how a piece of technology worked by just looking at it such

a talent was invaluable to an organization like the brotherhood of steel following this promotion elijah began to display certain eccentricities unlike the brotherhood which sought to only recover and preserve technology elijah wished to iterate and improve technology though not technically illegal within the brotherhood it was considered unorthodox and unethical rather than deal with elijah's behavior the other elders sent him to the mojave desert to start a new chapter of the brotherhood after arriving in the mojave elijah quickly turned his sights to hoover dam one of the most if not the most substantial piece of technology

in the region unfortunately another prominent faction in the mojave the new california republic claimed it before he could this infuriated elijah he compared the ncr's hold on the dam to that of children playing with a bomb he still intended to take the dam for the brotherhood and himself but to do that he would need the pre-war solar power plant known as helios one this plant not only had the potential to generate and store enough energy to power the new vegas strip it also had a super weapon one named archimedes this weapon was an orbital space

laser one that would give whoever wielded it the ultimate edge in any battle naturally the eccentric elijah wished to claim this weapon to take on the ncr elijah's obsession with helios one and archimedes led him to neglect his core duties as a brotherhood elder he was no longer concerned with the retrieval and preservation of technology which invoked the muted yet furious ire of his subordinates the ncr quickly caught wind of the brotherhood's activities at helios one though they did not have the power and equipment that the brotherhood had they had the manpower to negate the

looming threat of elijah and the archimedes weapon and so they initiated operation sunburst a plan to send in troopers that would outnumber the brotherhood defenders by a factor of between 15 and 20 to one though elijah could have saved a substantial number of his subordinates by retreating he chose to stay if only he could get archimedes up and running he could win the battle but his hopes were in vain the ncr took over helios one and wiped out a significant amount of the brotherhood including over half their knights and paladins luckily for elijah though he

somehow evaded capture and disappeared into the wastes such a horrendous defeat would induce reflection in a more reasonable human but not elijah he surmised that the right course of action would be to find something else that would fight back the ncr after years of roaming the wastes he found his coveted prize in the sierra madre resort and casino it had everything money and resources to found a small nation invincible security holograms that could take on armies of men vending machines that could generate any type of resource you want and a cloud that while toxic to

humans could keep the sierra madre's technology in pristine condition the inexhaustible nature of the sierra madre's treasure naturally evolved elijah's plan no longer did he wish to push back the ncr for the glory of the brotherhood now he wished to wipe the mojave clean of all its inhabitants leaving him as the sole occupier wipe the slate clean make the mojave like it was meant to be undisturbed by man i'll send the cloud the holograms bring moon in my hands until only i stand atop the helios one tower again i'll scour the damn with the cloud

rain its walls with spears from the sun with an army of old world ghosts behind me holograms all i'll kill them until it's only me me alone in a quiet world in a world that's nothing like what happened at helios one at this point in the video i will reinvoke the notion of elijah's story being archetypal to demonstrate what this means i will shorten the exposition i normally provide and instead present the striking comparisons between elijah and the aforementioned captain ahab that will help me make my point faster first elijah and ahab have a tendency

to self-isolate unless it's absolutely necessary to be around his crew ahab will lock himself away in his quarters elijah locks himself away from everybody throughout the dead money dlc only appearing in person at the end both ahab and elijah required flat obedience from those serving them and were deaf to any calls for mercy or reason ahab would invoke his rank and threaten the jobs of those who would disobey his rule elijah employed the use of explosive collars to coerce obedience elijah's single-minded pursuit of helios one and the sierra madre caused his subordinates to lose their

lives just as ahab's crew lost their lives in pursuit of moby dick and of course the result of ahab's failure to kill moby dick reflected the result of elijah's failure to fight back the ncr both failures left an irreparable scar on their souls one which would forever make them subservient to their base instincts of greed obsession and the desire for revenge i argue that the similarities to captain ahab are not just there for the sake of tribute they are there because they need to be there if they weren't elijah would not have been as effective

a villain as archetypal a villain even something as seemingly trivial and unrelated as self-isolation is quintessential in forming the archetype to prove this i will cite two other examples of archetypes one is the birth myth for whatever reason the greatest birth myths of legendary heroes involve having one's life threatened as an infant for the biblical moses it was the threat of death by the egyptians for jesus it was the threat of death by king herod for the greek gods apollo and artemis their lives were threatened by hera when she sent the monstrous python after them

the egyptian mother god isis had to protect her son horus from his hostile brother set though the details of these stories are different they all follow the same archetypal pattern the second example of an archetypal pattern i will cite is the tendency for the most frightening villains to wear masks for example why does pyramid head from silent hill 2 have such long lasting appeal why are villains like darth vader michael myers and jason held up as the scariest in cinema while it is not solely due to the masks it is a consistent element the collection

of traits that ahab has for whatever reason makes him the archetype of obsession herman melville could have given ahab other villainous qualities but there's something about the ones he included and the ones he omitted that elevates not only ahab but elijah as well but the most important trait that both characters share the thing that elevates their villainy to the highest level is not their possession by their base instincts rather it is the symbolic reward they hope to receive from accomplishing their goal the nature of that reward was hinted at when i played an audio quote

from elijah earlier on when he talked about wiping the slate clean such an ability would normally be reserved for a godlike entity and that's exactly the point i will argue that elijah and ahab's primary goal is to spite and surpass god in order to make my point best i will cite a clip that mr fuggles sent me in this clip ahab explains to a second in command starbuck why he is seeking revenge on moby dick starbuck chastises ahab for wanting revenge on an animal that is not capable of malevolence but only blind instinct yet ahab

does not see it this way lookie starbuck all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features the white whale tasks me he keeps me yet he is but a mask does the thing behind the mask i chiefly hate the malignant thing that has plagued and frightened man since time began the thing that mauls and mutilates our race not killing us outright but letting us live on with half a heart and half a lung god what ahab is referring to in this scene the inscrutable yet

reasoning thing the malignant plague on humanity is the nature of existence which ahab likens to an evil deity mother nature if you will humanity like all living things is subject to the random whims of mother nature in the worst circumstances mother nature will literally tear us a limb from limb but not even give us the mercy of death ahab suffered the same albeit lesser fate when he lost his leg to moby dick he was never able to come to terms with the random cruelty that nature heaped upon him that it heaps upon all mankind the

only way he figured he could is if he in some way triumphed over nature and the only way he figured he could do that is if he had his revenge on moby dick by triumphing over mother nature over this deity's personification in this whale he himself would have demonstrated the power of god for only a god has the power to take on another god the same is true for elijah elijah could have wielded the power of the sierra madre with the sole intention of bringing the ncr to its knees but that would lack the symbolic

satisfaction that both he and ahab craved just as ahab would have his revenge against the nature of existence vis-a-vis moby dick elijah would have his revenge against existence by wiping the slate clean by cleansing the mojave desert of its inhabitants just as god cleansed the earth with the flood in genesis their victories would symbolize not only their elevation above other humans but the forces of nature that all lowly humans are slavished too these men would not be slaves to authorities that they believe do not deserve their power including mother nature they must be victorious but

the ironic thing is that even if they achieved their goal they would still be slaves mother nature would still have control over them in one way they would still be slaves to instinct which nature gave them specifically those aforementioned instincts of greed obsession and the desire for revenge and the most terrifying thing of all is that we like these two characters must contend with those same instincts while the archetypal nature of this material would alone be enough to make elijah and the dead money dlc brilliant it is still only half of the equation the other

half is the solution this story offers to those of us who deal with our own deleterious obsessions that solution comes in the form of the character known as god slash dog who i will be referring to from now on as god dog god dog is a mutant nightkin that serves elijah he was the one that brought the player character and so many others to the sierra madre to help elijah secure its treasure god dog's name references his dual personality disorder one personality is of a lower more beastly intelligence known as dog and the other personality

is of a higher more reasonable intelligence named god in my recent video where i linked freudian psychological theory to video games i likened the dog personality to the freudian id the part of the human unconscious that houses our libidinous instincts i likened the god personality to the freudian superego which is basically another term for our conscience the part of our mind that gives us moral guidance where god dog differs from most minds is that he does not have an ego in the freudian model the ego listens to the prompts from both id and superego but

ultimately makes its own decisions god dog does not have an ego that chooses he doesn't even have a central personality he is simply an avatar for the id and superego where god dog and elijah are similar is that they are both puppets of their base instincts they are both slaves to nature where they differ is how they ultimately respond to their situations in respect to goddawg fallout new vegas to something that i've only seen a couple of games do it makes the most ethical ending to his story really difficult to achieve in order to help

god dog overcome his instincts in order to help him create his own ego you have to have your speech level at 85. if you're like me and you like to take your time and diversify your skill tree it will take you at least 50 plus hours of gameplay to reach that level but as with life if you put in the blood sweat and tears you're more likely to achieve the most desirable and most ethical outcome with respect to god dog the player character speaks to the dog personality and asks him to picture the god personality

as if it were water the god personality does the same in reverse then we ask both god and dog to step into the water and merge thus the new personality is born if only captain ahab could have done the same thing when looking into the vast ocean surrounding him he would have found the solution to his problems not with moby dick but with his reflection he would be able to free himself from the shackles of instinct and let go unfortunately for elijah he could not do this depending on which ending you choose you can either

kill elijah during a battle or you can go for the more symbolic ending you can lure elijah into the sierra madre vault the place where his desired treasure rested and then shut the door behind him or you can take over the mojave desert with him and learn nothing at all so i have to ask you guys which character should i analyze next i've been hearing a lot of good stuff about a character named ulysses is he the next one or is there someone i should cover before him let me know in the comments section please

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