The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [25]
Existentialism seems a fitting philosophy to consider alongside the Zelda games because both are largely preoccupied with the meaning—or meaninglessness—of the repetitive and mundane tasks of everyday living. Unfortunately, both videogames and existentialism have suffered from a bad reputation. Both are often viewed negatively by the uninformed, considered to be realms in which disaffected teenagers escape reality in order to celebrate their apathy with conviction. The occasional study reported in the sidebar of Newsweek applauding the hand-eye coordination that comes from video gaming does little to allay the popular image of the loner teen with a bad case of Nintendo thumb20 and a copy of Albert Camus’s The Stranger shoved in the back pocket of his old black jeans.
Though I admit that the picture of a self-absorbed, moody teen does look very much like the one in my eighth-grade yearbook (accompanied by the quote “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”), many years later, as a slightly less apathetic adult, I still really enjoy both Nietzsche and Nintendo.
Jean-Paul Sartre tells us that man creates his own meaning. What interests me in life and in game playing is that process of becoming, that process of self-definition and meaning-creation. I relate to the Link character who’s met with challenges he’s initially unequipped to handle, and though this may be just a part of some usually suppressed shopping instinct, I love making Link go off on his collections, getting the blue swimming coat, the red fireproof coat, the bottles … Every item I collect brings me one step closer to realizing that hero role that, in my eyes, is the true goal of the game. For me, it’s all about finally having the multitude of skills and equipment necessary to be the hero of Hyrule, to realize the maturity that is dramatized so well in Ocarina of Time and in Sheik’s words in the epigram to this chapter.
“Time passes, people move …” Sheik’s advice to Link that he needs to engage in self-reflection demonstrates a keen understanding of the fluidity and instability in life, in which a person (or a Hylian, if that is in fact what Link is) can feel lost and alone. The existential purpose of this game is to take Link out of any initial or nagging sense of isolation and into a life that is intrinsically meaningful (in the sense of his own development into a hero) and also extrinsically meaningful (in the sense of his importance to the world around him). I may even go so far as to call killing Ganon and ending it all an afterthought. Some may say this is simply the rationale of someone who doesn’t have the skills for the big battle; I’d say this is just my existential approach to Zelda.
Finding the Triforce in a Hostile Universe
A defining phrase of existentialism is from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea:21 “Existence precedes essence.” Basically, this means that a person’s life does not have a specific fated meaning at birth. Each person has the freedom and responsibility to create their own life’s meaning. Any notion of an all powerful, all controlling God pretty much gets abandoned here (which may be why so many authority-challenging teenagers take to it).
Part of the reason for existentialism’s questioning of the power of God is in its historical context. Although evidence of existentialism, in some form or another, has been traced as far back as the ancient Greeks, existentialism’s heyday is considered to be the post-World War II period. In a world that had to come to grips with great evil, the concept of god was under serious re-evaluation. If God was supposed to care for everything and everyone how could such a heinous tragedy as the Holocaust have occurred?22 The answer for many was an uneasy one that fluctuated between questioning the very existence of God or at least the reach of God.
For some the answer was simply “God is dead.” This famous phrase can be found in