Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

James got a letter. From a dead person. Oh dear.

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Frackers
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Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by Frackers »

In room 109, there are two doors side by side. One is colored dark blue, with stains along the paneling and large boards nailed across. A teddy bear lies to the right of the door. The other door is just a plain white door. Entering it brings you to Angela, lying on the ground with a ripped picture of her family, a knife, and facing a large mirror. We know that she is contemplating suicide.
But what do the doors mean?

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There has to be some deeper meaning to these doors. Here is what we know, and what we can use to evaluate the symbolism.

-Angela may have lived in apartment 109, in Silent Hill

-We know that she had a brother, and was looking for him and her father in the cemetery. What this says to me is that Angela’s brother may be dead, due to natural causes or otherwise.

-Angela was being sexually abused by her father.

-Angela’s mother knew of the abuse, and didn’t try to stop it, instead saying that Angela deserved it.

-Angela killed her father prior to coming to Silent Hill, by stabbing him repeatedly in the neck. The murder occurred long ago enough to be documented in a newspaper (although this may have been part of Angela’s Otherworld, reminding her of what she had done).

My own theory from this information is this:

The boarded up door with the teddy bear is Angela’s childhood bedroom. It is the place where her sexual abuse took place. The door is dirty, symbolizing the defilement of an innocent child, and it is boarded up, referring to Angela’s enduring of the ordeal, or her “shutting up about it.”

The white door leads to Angela’s salvation; through suicide she can go to heaven, where her soul will be clean and her murder will be forgotten (or so she thinks). By escaping her physical life, she can be “reborn” or purified in the afterlife, symbolized by the clean white door.

This is only a theory, and I would really love to hear what you guys think, or if you have any other evidence.
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by SilentWren »

I like your avatar for some reason. Is it Alice?

But on topic; There were a couple of white doors throughout the game, weren't there? I don't remember what the official statement was, but thought it symbolized her opinion of herself: she was completely innocent (white, pure. blah, blah) and justified in killing her pa. I pretty much agree with the way you presented this. The purity of the afterlife never occurred to me before, which is surprising considering that whole knife business. :D
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by Frackers »

SilentWren wrote:I like your avatar for some reason. Is it Alice?

But on topic; There were a couple of white doors throughout the game, weren't there? I don't remember what the official statement was, but thought it symbolized her opinion of herself: she was completely innocent (white, pure. blah, blah) and justified in killing her pa. I pretty much agree with the way you presented this. The purity of the afterlife never occurred to me before, which is surprising considering that whole knife business. :D
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That's interesting, I never thought of the doors as a sort of self-reflection; what would the nasty door be then? How she viewed her father, maybe? Or maybe it could be like how she views herself now and then: back when she was a child she felt dirty and boarded up, but now as an adult, having killed her father, she understands it wasn't her fault and she was innocent...?

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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by Monster »

The boarded up door could be symbolic of what dark secret she's still hiding at that point in the game. Perhaps behind it is the Abstract Daddy she faces later on in the labyrinth? Who knows. The designers of this game were brilliant, each room in the apartment building had strange and unique things about it instead of just being the same. They really went out of their way to make this game a work of art.
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by Frackers »

^ That's a really great point, Monster. What do you think of the teddy bear next to the door though? Just further evidence that Angela's sexual abuse was when she was a child?
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by Doctor Eggnog »

I think that the point of having two very different doors, one you can enter and one you cannot, is that you are being given a very rare visit into someone else's psychological world manifestation thingie. That door and that room were not meant for James, but for Angela. I believe that if Angela were not in that room, James would not have been able to get inside and it's quite possible the door wouldn't even have been there. It's similar to how when the hotel stairs are on fire you're seeing Angela's version of Silent Hill, but the flooded stairs are James' version. The door you can't enter is for James. The mirror room door is for Angela. Why are you allowed to see a bit of Angela's world? Umm ... makes the story less confusing? :)
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by Frackers »

Huh. I never would have thought of it like that, Doctor Eggnog. So if Angela's door is open, and James can't get through the other door, would that door be *SPOILER* an intrusion into his mind, telling him that he killed Mary?*SPOILER*

So the doors act kind of like psychological blocks, and while James can't enter his own, he can enter Angela's. Would that mean he enters Eddie's in the meat locker?
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by nobody »

http://silenthillforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=60

A thread by MMF that appears in the quicklinks post.
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by The Adversary »

MMF is way better. Sounds like a grumble.
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by nobody »

Whoopsy daisy. Changed your name again, anyways :)
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by LeriSuccubus »

Pretty sure the white is innocence and the dark is corruption
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by lain of the wired »

You make a very good assessment, actually. The boarding up may be less about hiding her abuse and more about protecting her childhood self, hence the teddy bear's placement. It's boarded up to keep the predators out and keep the little girl safe, but as you say, dirty for all the terrible things that happened to her.

Gotta go read through that linked thread now.
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by Doctor Eggnog »

lain of the wired wrote:You make a very good assessment, actually. The boarding up may be less about hiding her abuse and more about protecting her childhood self, hence the teddy bear's placement. It's boarded up to keep the predators out and keep the little girl safe, but as you say, dirty for all the terrible things that happened to her.
That sounds really promising too. The thing that made me believe my idea over this is that the white door just looks so out of place in that rundown apartment, it looks too perfect. Maybe the room is supposed to look a little like her bedroom when she was little in some ways. I'm sure her mirror wasn't that big, but I bet her self-image felt THAT important.
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by LaraeGunn »

I always thought the way we see Angela is very interesting. Her surroundings led me to notice that her home was her own personal purgatory, but only after a few plays of the game. Reading the theories on here brought even more light to it. I didn't really notice the white door in the apartment as being white, only that I had trouble finding it. The opening sequence where Angela is shown running through a house was very interesting as well, since we don't actually see that in the game.
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by PoemOfTheLastMoment »

What do you guys think about the mirror inside the room with the white door?
i always found it weird that she would her time looking at herself like that right before James showed up...
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Re: Doors in Room 109 - Signifigance/Symbolism to Angela?

Post by pinkandblack84 »

interesting theory about the two doors, pretty much what i always thought that the blue door is her childhood boarded up and protected.
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