Not finished yet. Attempt to gather ideas on all aspects of RPT, much of which is not new, admittedly. Feel free to tear it apart. Sources of quotes and things can be found at the URL above.
Pyramid Head is the most instantly-recognizable character in the Silent Hill series. Many have argued over what the Red Pyramid Thing symbolizes and what his real role is in the game. Certainly, upon first glance, he seems to be the main villain of the game. After a sighting of him through the bars in the apartments, we witness him abusing and killing other monsters twice, then we face off with him in the staircase area.
However, the encounters with RPT aren’t as straightforward as they seem as first. Though that first encounter feels like a “boss battle†the first time you play, you soon realize that RPT is not your average video game boss. Bosses have to be killed to progress. In order to make progress in Silent Hill, James needs only face the Red Pyramid Thing. He can’t defeat him.
Ito has explained RPT’s main role as follows:
RPT and RapeMasahiro Ito wrote:The Pyramid Head, he is another James and he makes James realize his guilt. So he attacks other creatures on James’s delusion. When James realizes he is guilty from the bottom of his heart, Pyramid Head kills himself because his duty is no longer needed/
Some have suggested the apartment “rape scene†serves only to tell the player of James’ repressed sexuality following Mary’s illness. I disagree. Jeremy Blaustein has stated that the team definitely intended this scene to have sexual implications2. As we know, Mary felt ugly and unattractive, and she was in pain. She didn’t seem particularly pleasant to be around, either, judging from the hallway conversation. We don’t know to what extent James may have been thinking about other women, but we do know it’s unlikely their sex life was that great toward the end. Several of the monsters, especially the mannequins, represent sexual urges. The nurses are sexualized, with their cleavage and short dresses. While there are sexual themes in the game, I don’t think the kitchen scene is all about sex, necessarily. It is also an homage to the film Blue Velvet, but I also think that’s not the whole purpose.Jeremy Blaustein wrote:Ridiculous, the intention is clear and no thinking person would seriously argue that point [that PH didn't rape anything]. The SH team would laugh... [Team Silent] talk about how the Americans ruined the death motifs and sexual motifs by being so overt.... Well in the case of the US Silent Hill games, it is not repression [causing players to deny that it is rape] but a kind of juvenile literalness to it all.
Some have denied the sex theme of the scene because there is no penetration, but this is not a valid rebuttal because they could not have gotten away with showing graphic rape in a video game. The sounds and movements only suggest sexual violence, rather than portraying it graphically.
But why would RPT rape monsters? Some have said it’s just to portray James’ sexual desires, but rape is usually not about lust. James may well have had unfulfilled sexual desires, but I’m not sure it would be portrayed in this fashion. Rape is more often about violence, humiliation, and/or domination. It occurs in the animal kingdom. And primates like baboons will show submission by offering up their backsides to the stronger male in the group. The same goes for mounting behaviors, such as a dog humping your leg. The dog has no sexual desire directed at your calves. It isn’t under the delusion that there are sexybits on your knee. It may be that the dog is just randy, but it is more often a dominance behavior. If it were trying to mate, it would find an appropriate partner and it would not miss its target and mount the wrong part of the other dog. If it were about procreation, female dogs would not mount other females or humans, and they do. Rape and mounting in animals is not about sex at all; it is about showing the other party who’s boss. (And likewise, in humans, if it were about sex, a rapist would probably just hire a sex worker. But it’s not, it’s about dominating the other party against their will.) I think this is what is going on with RPT and the mannequins/lying figure. RPT is not trying to make sweet love to any monsters; he is showing everyone that he’s in charge (his power is also shown in the fact that the monsters die, rather than slinking away with their tails between their legs). And if RPT is in charge, James is really in charge, if he chooses to be. He can come to Silent Hill to face his sins, or to forget everything.
The Spear and Great Knife
Can the Great Knife and spear be seen as phallic objects? Any fan of Freud would tell you that anything longer than it is wide can be interpreted as phallic. Maybe it’s just due to ratings, but we never actually see RPT’s naughty bits. We do, however, see his dominance over other monsters. The words “potence†comes from the Latin for “power,†yet has come to be associated with male sexuality. “Impotence†is more commonly used to refer to “inability to perform sexually†than “lack of power.†Just as men with big or fancy cars are said to be overcompensating for something else, one might see RPT’s enormous knife as a phallic object. But again, it’s not about lust; it’s about violence. It’s been said that RPT abruptly stops doing sexual/rapelike things after the apartments, but that’s not necessarily so. He’s the masculine monster, Maria is the feminine monster, and he keeps thrusting long objects into her (in a rapelike way, that is to say, violent; rather than a lustful way). He’s asserting his dominance as the punisher by overpowering the weaker but more comforting delusion, Maria.
Guilt and Denial
As a sort of mirror image of James, RPT is separated from any other monsters in the game. The other monsters embody aspects of James’ psyche, including his sexuality, but only RPT is helpful to James on his journey through Silent Hill. Besides things like leading him in the right direction through some areas, he helps James to uncover the truth about why he is in Silent Hill. Maria, on the other hand, often only adds to his delusions4.
RPT keeps him moving onward toward his ultimate goal of realizing what he’s done and facing his guilt. RPT leads him through the apartments, the labyrinth, the hotel, and all the while, RPT is also fighting James’ delusions: namely, Maria. Maria, who was “born from a wish,†allows James to live in his more comfortable delusion that Mary is still alive in a way, or that she died from her disease and has been replaced with a “better†version. While he’s around Maria, James cannot come to terms with the events leading up to the game. RPT killing Maria repeatedly parallels James killing Mary, but it also is James fighting off his own delusions or defense-mechanisms and denial about killing Mary. Toward the end, even the Maria manifestation seems to be breaking down. She goes from being flirty and sexy to having a colder personality, and she says things only Mary could know. James becomes confused, asking her if she’s really Maria. “I am, if you want me to be.†It is as though James is making one large, final effort to deny what he did to Mary; to not face his guilt. But as soon as he leaves the room, RPT apparently comes in and kills her again. Even before the final Maria scene, where she’s strung up by two spear-toting RPTs, it’s apparent that RPT is after Maria, not James. Sure, he can kill you in the game, but you’re supposed to survive by avoiding his attacks. He always kills Maria, and he does so again and again.
Why Two Pyramid Heads?
Another subject of debate is why there were two RPTs in the final hotel area. Some have speculated that two have been running around all along, but I don’t see the evidence as being sufficient to prove this. I find it more likely that, until the point James watches the video, there is only one RPT. Then he goes back through the hotel to the final area. It’s worth noting that, right before this room, even the save squares are multiplied. There are nine, where there has only ever been one at a time before. This is undoubtedly to call them to your attention to get you to save then, however. After going through the next door, we view a scene where Maria is strung up upside down. While there have been many monsters in boxes in the game, this is visually closest to the Mary monster we meet in the final area. On either side of her on the platform area, there is a Pyramid Head. She is stabbed with a spear. The two RPTs are then on the ground with James, who must avoid their attacks until they fall on their spears. While it’s possible that one RPT is to represent killing Mary and the other Eddie, this seems unlikely to me. Of course James is conflicted about killing Mary, but he had to kill Eddie, or Eddie would have killed him. While it’s possible he still feels pretty bad about it, I’m not sure it warrants the creation of another RPT. I find it more likely that the multiplying of the RPTs is due to an increase in James’ guilt after viewing the videotape.
It is interesting that the RPTs kill themselves with their spears, similar to falling on one’s sword, which is the Western equivalent of the Japanese hara-kiri. In hara-kira, a samurai would commit suicide by disembowelment rather than surrender. Falling on one’s sword also has the connotation of refusing to be captured or defeated. This may be because James cannot kill RPT. Certainly, by that point, the player has tried to numerous times. All James can do is avoid him. Once he’s avoided him for a while, and since James has admitted his guilt, RPT is no longer needed. Since James can’t kill them, they kill themselves (since they can't be defeated or surrender to James.)
The Eggs
After the RPTs are dead, James will notice two identical locked doors with round holes in them. Examining the dead RPTs will allow James to collect an egg from each of them. The eggs fit in the holes and unlock the doors, but one has to admit that it seems quite odd. Why eggs? And why two doors leading to the same place? James was sort of split before this, Pyramid Head represented an aspect of him that manifested totally externally. Two doors leading to one place could mean that James is just one entity again, without needing external manifestations of his guilt or anything else.
An egg is an odd thing for a Pyramid Head to give you. Eggs could represent birth, or life. There is a rust colored egg and a scarlet egg. It has been suggested that the eggs could represent Mary (the rust-colored one, since she was sick and decayed in a way) and Eddie (scarlet, since he was just killed), but again, I just don’t think Eddie is that important to James. Another theory could be that one represents Mary (rust, same reasons) and the other, Maria (scarlet, because she is more lively and vibrant). I find this more likely to be true, because much of the game centers on the duality of Mary/Maria and the contrast between the two. Mary is sick, ugly, unhappy. Maria is lively, flirtatious, and sexy. Moreover, the fight with the two RPTS allows him to face both what happened to Mary and why he created Maria, and he feels guilt for both. He feels guilty that he killed his wife, and he feels guilty that he created this idealized version of her in Silent Hill. Mary was already dead by this point, but he also needed Maria to be dead, once and for all, to move on.
RPT’s Appearance
Why is Pyramid Head similar in appearance to the executioners of Silent Hill’s past? It may partly be just because he looks scarier that way. Executioners in the past have sometimes worn hoods to retain some anonymity, to protect themselves from the family and friends of those they were executing. A hood (or, in RPT’s case, a helmet) also keeps us from seeing the expression on the executioner’s face; they remain more of a mystery to us. We don’t know if they are calm or angry or sad. In RPT’s case, we don’t even know if he’s human under there. Ito has created a lot of monsters whose eyes cannot be seen, and this tends to increase their monstrousness. “The eyes are the window to the soul.†If we can’t see the eyes, the creature is unreadable, or perhaps soulless.
RPT is an executioner, but he’s not there to execute James. If he were, he’d be a normal video game boss and we’d kill him right there in the apartments and move on. Instead, he is there to execute James’ delusions. He kills Maria repeatedly until James comes to terms with his own guilt. Since James no longer needs RPT’s guidance, the RPTs then kill themselves.
