Here's a fun fact I learned in a random anthropology class I took way back when: Nearly every culture that exists, when you translate the name that people of that culture use to refer to themselves, you get the basic equivalent of "People" or "true people". This makes absolute sense, as our words are typically derived from more mundane things (for example the word 'true' comes from the word 'tree'). So, when naming themselves, they'd just name themselves 'people', whatever the language they have is. Which is all fine and dandy....until one tribe meets another. When you think of yourselves and those like you as the 'real people', then those other people have to be fake in some way. This is a phenomenon known as 'othering', where you are do not regard a certain type of person as a 'real' person. This is not to say that it was necessarily rooted in hatred or fear of the 'other', but in terms of simple differentiation, if you and your culture is what is a 'real' person, then those who are so different than you can't be 'real' as well, because that would just make no sense. Throughout history, the element of being a 'real' person has taken thousands of different forms throughout the world, whether it's a matter of belonging to a particular tribe, or believing in a particular god, or being of a particular sexuality. This process of 'Othering' is something I hypothesis to be an psychologically adaptational trait that helps suspend empathy for what people need to do. I don't know if it has it's roots in evolution, but I wouldn't be surprised. After all, it's very difficult to kill people, but if your just killing an unperson, then it's no big deal. Having empathy toward people is often regarded as an universal good, but in truth, having empathy toward everyone all the time would render society nonfunctional, or atleast chronically depressed. It's much less of a victory for justice, for example, to put away a murderer when you, while fully sympathizing with the victim, also understand and feel compassion for the murderer and you wish you could have comfort them both somehow. It's easier to just say the murderer is a bastard and be done with it.
With the zombie apocalpyse underway, shelter and resources are limited, and larger scale governmental agents are falling apart. This is a situation where empathy toward your fellow man will fuck you right over. Othering is the bread and butter of anyone who lives in a hostile world like the good folk of Last of Us. Because, lets say, if you are going to survive, you need medicine. However, there is another person who also needs it. Do they need it more? What will happen to them if they don't get it? If you catch yourself thinking these empathetic thoughts, you're already hesitating and your chances of getting that medicine are slimmer. Not just because of external forces (like, if you're racing the other person), but you might decide that that person needs that medicine more than you do and freely give it to them, and die. Empathy can be your murderer, if you let it, so you need to be able to other, so that the question of whether they deserve it more doesn't even come up. Of course the other guy doesn't need the medicine more. Only people can deserve or need stuff like medicine, while unpeople are just moving humanoid objects, and there is no inherent wrong to destroying an object.
Which finally brings us to the Last of Us, particularly Joel. Joel is a fun character. When the game first came out, there was a lot of discussion on Joel and whether he was a monster or a respectable man trying to do the right thing in a world gone wrong. Like, it was all but inescapable, since this was one of the best done examples of character development in all of gaming. It's good to come back after those months of debate and confirm that what I thought then is what I think now. What's that you might ask? Well, read and find out.
I should make one thing very clear: I don't think Joel is a sociopath or suffering from some kind of mental illness that limits his capability for empathy. He has psychological issues, but that's due to trauma, rather than anything inherent. I don't necessarily think he is amoral either. However, it should be noted that he was able to other people before he suffered that trauma. One small, but important scene is in the beginning when Joel, Tommy and Sara are driving to the highway they hope they'll be able to use to escape. As Tommy is driving, a family on the side hails them, hoping to catch a ride. For the record, they have plenty of room to fit 3 more people in. Tommy wants to pull over and help, while Joel orders him to drive on. He says they have a kid, while Joel replies with "So do we". Right there, he othered them. Not because of any particular creed or social deviance, but tribal mentality that would later contribute to his survival. He has nothing against this family, and they probably wouldn't lose anything huge in driving them, and if pressed, he'd probably admit that they deserve to live as much as he does. But they're not his people, so they don't fall under his protection, however little it would cost. And when Sara does die and Joel then has to deal with 20 years of infection, that tribal mentality is only amplified.
Joel is somewhat unique in his mentality, because of all the characters, he pursues it strongest of them all except for perhaps David and Bill. He does everything in his power to frame the things he does in terms of survival. Everything else is 'stuff happening', that is neither right nor wrong nor anyone's fault. The first mark of this is when Tess is finally bitten. Tess began the game essentially as a female version of Joel, maybe even moreso. Joel was widely known and feared by most, but Tess was known and feared by all. But when she realizes that she's going to die, she makes it her duty to have Joel guide Ellie to the Fireflies. "Guess what, we're shitty people, Joel. It's been that way for a long time." To which Joel insists, "No, we are survivors..." Tess was a survivor, but she acknowledged that to attain that survival, she had to give up basic human decency to do so. Later on, there is a similar conversation with Tommy. Joel, as he's trying to get Tommy to take Ellie off his hands, remarks that not doing so isn't a way to repay him for what he's done in the past. Tommy angrily tells him that all he has from those days are nightmares, to which Joel practically screams at him "I helped us survive!", to which Tommy said it wasn't worth it, and Joel doesn't reply to that. This contrast is what leads Tommy to join the fireflies, who are a group of idealists who hope to do good in the world, and presumably the reason he left were because the fireflies were not as advertised, and only found happiness in creating a family here, where they boast about being able to recreate a piece of civilization, not just because they have a working generator, but also because they have people who are compassionate and kind toward one another.
This habitual reframe of everything happening into a series of amoral, darwinistic incidents is reflected in how he deals with grief. For the vast majority of the game, he avoids the subject of his daughter like the plague. Tommy offered to give him a photo of Sara, but he declined it, because reminding him of her brings back his strongest center of empathy, the one person who was the most personest person who ever personed. Joel can detach and survive as long as he doesn't think about anything meaningful. It's not that it's impossible for him to form connections, but it's difficult. For example, he connected with Tess, but when she died, he just didn't acknowledge her, not even when Bill badmouthed her to his face. A clearer example (since we see the whole progress from strangers to friends) is his connection to Henry. He and Henry were so very similar to one another, but when Henry crossed the despair horizon and shot himself, months later, Joel still refuses to acknowledge what happened. How unhealthy this is is evident with Ellie, who tries to mourn the loss of her friend, but Joel just shuts her up by writing the whole thing off as "shit happens".
For the record, it's clear that this is a strong coping mechanism. Joel and Ellie come across a dead body of a person who killed themselves, and he made a remark about how difficult it was when ellie said it was the 'easy way out'. This implies that Joel was suicidal at one point too. This makes his coping mechanism make a strong amount of sense. The pain of his lost loved ones aches strongly, but he doesn't have the nerve to kill himself like wants to, so he needs to find a way to avoid the pain. So he just avoids it, refusing to acknowledge not just that the people he cared about died, but how they died. Because thinking about the reason they are all dead requires him to look beyond his amoral, detached framework of survival. Them being bitten by clickers might just be an unfortunate accident of the universe, but that's not what happened. Sara was shot by a soldier whose government was more concerned with containing a threat than protecting innocents. Tess died because she wanted to do something good for humanity with her final breathe. Henry died because he failed in his duty as a brother. Even Bill, who didn't die, is deeply hurt by the fact that the one man who he loved hated his guts specifically because he was purely survival oriented, as Joel strives to be.
So....here comes Ellie.
I think people who just write her off as being Joel's substitute daughter aren't wrong, but they undervalue that statement. Everything I described about how he regards people above is how he initially regarded Ellie, with coldness and indifference, so I won't go over that. What stands out more is the contrast he holds in the latter chapters, particularly Spring, where they've bonded enough to have him be openly affectionate. He responds to questions about his past with more willingness to talk about Sara, finally accepting that photo of her that he rejected from Tommy. Consider what this is doing to Joel. Whereas before, he found the memories of his past to be so painful as to flinch away at the mere mention of their names, he now is able to speak on them. What is happening, here, is that Joel is finally learning to move beyond basic animalistic survival. His life isn't just an organism fighting to continue breathing, it has meaning. And because it does, he can acknowledge the meaning of the life of others. This is why he now takes much more of an interest into the personal happiness of Ellie, rather than just her physical wellbeing.
But that isn't to say that his ability to Other just up and left. You don't just unlearn something like that, and when the fireflies find him and put in him predator situation, all of that comes back, which brings us back to that age old debate: Was it right for Joel to save Ellie at the cost of humanity. For me, this debate always had multiple facets, due to the question of whether the fireflies even can do it or whether one life is worth the rest of the worlds. However, those things always seemed irrelevant from Joel's perspective to me. It's an interesting question, no doubt, but Joel isn't thinking about the moral right to life or consent when they're talking about Ellie dying. When Marlene tells him how it's gonna be, his response isn't "Are you insane, wtf" or "You can't do that to a little girl, your own daughter!"
When confronted with the situation of his daughter dying, he says "Find someone else!" He's indifferent to the idea of a little girl being murdered for community purposes, he's just opposed to it being his little girl. He can't 'other' Ellie anymore, she's too close to him, so his first response is just to find some other Ellie that he doesn't have a personal connection with. That's unfeasiable, obviously, so his next mission is to have all the other fireflies die. He doesn't have anything against the rest of the world, but the rest of the world isn't part of his tribe, while Ellie is. And it is through that survival framework that he is able to choose Ellie over everyone else. It might be that he would agree that the rest of the world deserves life, but it's not about what anyone deserves, it's about protecting whats his. He and Ellie (really) are the Last of Us, but what does that make the Rest of Them? The other survivors, the cannibals, the fireflies, the government? The last of us refers to the last real people, as far as Joel is concerned, himself and Ellie, plus a few others if he's feeling generous, but no more. Everyone else is just an other.
Man, this game. I could probably write as much of an entry on other characters, and I could probably write even more on Joel alone, but I don't want to surpass the number of allowed characters in a post to do so.
Edit: Goddammit, can a mod move this to the game section?
With the zombie apocalpyse underway, shelter and resources are limited, and larger scale governmental agents are falling apart. This is a situation where empathy toward your fellow man will fuck you right over. Othering is the bread and butter of anyone who lives in a hostile world like the good folk of Last of Us. Because, lets say, if you are going to survive, you need medicine. However, there is another person who also needs it. Do they need it more? What will happen to them if they don't get it? If you catch yourself thinking these empathetic thoughts, you're already hesitating and your chances of getting that medicine are slimmer. Not just because of external forces (like, if you're racing the other person), but you might decide that that person needs that medicine more than you do and freely give it to them, and die. Empathy can be your murderer, if you let it, so you need to be able to other, so that the question of whether they deserve it more doesn't even come up. Of course the other guy doesn't need the medicine more. Only people can deserve or need stuff like medicine, while unpeople are just moving humanoid objects, and there is no inherent wrong to destroying an object.
Which finally brings us to the Last of Us, particularly Joel. Joel is a fun character. When the game first came out, there was a lot of discussion on Joel and whether he was a monster or a respectable man trying to do the right thing in a world gone wrong. Like, it was all but inescapable, since this was one of the best done examples of character development in all of gaming. It's good to come back after those months of debate and confirm that what I thought then is what I think now. What's that you might ask? Well, read and find out.
I should make one thing very clear: I don't think Joel is a sociopath or suffering from some kind of mental illness that limits his capability for empathy. He has psychological issues, but that's due to trauma, rather than anything inherent. I don't necessarily think he is amoral either. However, it should be noted that he was able to other people before he suffered that trauma. One small, but important scene is in the beginning when Joel, Tommy and Sara are driving to the highway they hope they'll be able to use to escape. As Tommy is driving, a family on the side hails them, hoping to catch a ride. For the record, they have plenty of room to fit 3 more people in. Tommy wants to pull over and help, while Joel orders him to drive on. He says they have a kid, while Joel replies with "So do we". Right there, he othered them. Not because of any particular creed or social deviance, but tribal mentality that would later contribute to his survival. He has nothing against this family, and they probably wouldn't lose anything huge in driving them, and if pressed, he'd probably admit that they deserve to live as much as he does. But they're not his people, so they don't fall under his protection, however little it would cost. And when Sara does die and Joel then has to deal with 20 years of infection, that tribal mentality is only amplified.
Joel is somewhat unique in his mentality, because of all the characters, he pursues it strongest of them all except for perhaps David and Bill. He does everything in his power to frame the things he does in terms of survival. Everything else is 'stuff happening', that is neither right nor wrong nor anyone's fault. The first mark of this is when Tess is finally bitten. Tess began the game essentially as a female version of Joel, maybe even moreso. Joel was widely known and feared by most, but Tess was known and feared by all. But when she realizes that she's going to die, she makes it her duty to have Joel guide Ellie to the Fireflies. "Guess what, we're shitty people, Joel. It's been that way for a long time." To which Joel insists, "No, we are survivors..." Tess was a survivor, but she acknowledged that to attain that survival, she had to give up basic human decency to do so. Later on, there is a similar conversation with Tommy. Joel, as he's trying to get Tommy to take Ellie off his hands, remarks that not doing so isn't a way to repay him for what he's done in the past. Tommy angrily tells him that all he has from those days are nightmares, to which Joel practically screams at him "I helped us survive!", to which Tommy said it wasn't worth it, and Joel doesn't reply to that. This contrast is what leads Tommy to join the fireflies, who are a group of idealists who hope to do good in the world, and presumably the reason he left were because the fireflies were not as advertised, and only found happiness in creating a family here, where they boast about being able to recreate a piece of civilization, not just because they have a working generator, but also because they have people who are compassionate and kind toward one another.
This habitual reframe of everything happening into a series of amoral, darwinistic incidents is reflected in how he deals with grief. For the vast majority of the game, he avoids the subject of his daughter like the plague. Tommy offered to give him a photo of Sara, but he declined it, because reminding him of her brings back his strongest center of empathy, the one person who was the most personest person who ever personed. Joel can detach and survive as long as he doesn't think about anything meaningful. It's not that it's impossible for him to form connections, but it's difficult. For example, he connected with Tess, but when she died, he just didn't acknowledge her, not even when Bill badmouthed her to his face. A clearer example (since we see the whole progress from strangers to friends) is his connection to Henry. He and Henry were so very similar to one another, but when Henry crossed the despair horizon and shot himself, months later, Joel still refuses to acknowledge what happened. How unhealthy this is is evident with Ellie, who tries to mourn the loss of her friend, but Joel just shuts her up by writing the whole thing off as "shit happens".
For the record, it's clear that this is a strong coping mechanism. Joel and Ellie come across a dead body of a person who killed themselves, and he made a remark about how difficult it was when ellie said it was the 'easy way out'. This implies that Joel was suicidal at one point too. This makes his coping mechanism make a strong amount of sense. The pain of his lost loved ones aches strongly, but he doesn't have the nerve to kill himself like wants to, so he needs to find a way to avoid the pain. So he just avoids it, refusing to acknowledge not just that the people he cared about died, but how they died. Because thinking about the reason they are all dead requires him to look beyond his amoral, detached framework of survival. Them being bitten by clickers might just be an unfortunate accident of the universe, but that's not what happened. Sara was shot by a soldier whose government was more concerned with containing a threat than protecting innocents. Tess died because she wanted to do something good for humanity with her final breathe. Henry died because he failed in his duty as a brother. Even Bill, who didn't die, is deeply hurt by the fact that the one man who he loved hated his guts specifically because he was purely survival oriented, as Joel strives to be.
So....here comes Ellie.
I think people who just write her off as being Joel's substitute daughter aren't wrong, but they undervalue that statement. Everything I described about how he regards people above is how he initially regarded Ellie, with coldness and indifference, so I won't go over that. What stands out more is the contrast he holds in the latter chapters, particularly Spring, where they've bonded enough to have him be openly affectionate. He responds to questions about his past with more willingness to talk about Sara, finally accepting that photo of her that he rejected from Tommy. Consider what this is doing to Joel. Whereas before, he found the memories of his past to be so painful as to flinch away at the mere mention of their names, he now is able to speak on them. What is happening, here, is that Joel is finally learning to move beyond basic animalistic survival. His life isn't just an organism fighting to continue breathing, it has meaning. And because it does, he can acknowledge the meaning of the life of others. This is why he now takes much more of an interest into the personal happiness of Ellie, rather than just her physical wellbeing.
But that isn't to say that his ability to Other just up and left. You don't just unlearn something like that, and when the fireflies find him and put in him predator situation, all of that comes back, which brings us back to that age old debate: Was it right for Joel to save Ellie at the cost of humanity. For me, this debate always had multiple facets, due to the question of whether the fireflies even can do it or whether one life is worth the rest of the worlds. However, those things always seemed irrelevant from Joel's perspective to me. It's an interesting question, no doubt, but Joel isn't thinking about the moral right to life or consent when they're talking about Ellie dying. When Marlene tells him how it's gonna be, his response isn't "Are you insane, wtf" or "You can't do that to a little girl, your own daughter!"
When confronted with the situation of his daughter dying, he says "Find someone else!" He's indifferent to the idea of a little girl being murdered for community purposes, he's just opposed to it being his little girl. He can't 'other' Ellie anymore, she's too close to him, so his first response is just to find some other Ellie that he doesn't have a personal connection with. That's unfeasiable, obviously, so his next mission is to have all the other fireflies die. He doesn't have anything against the rest of the world, but the rest of the world isn't part of his tribe, while Ellie is. And it is through that survival framework that he is able to choose Ellie over everyone else. It might be that he would agree that the rest of the world deserves life, but it's not about what anyone deserves, it's about protecting whats his. He and Ellie (really) are the Last of Us, but what does that make the Rest of Them? The other survivors, the cannibals, the fireflies, the government? The last of us refers to the last real people, as far as Joel is concerned, himself and Ellie, plus a few others if he's feeling generous, but no more. Everyone else is just an other.
Man, this game. I could probably write as much of an entry on other characters, and I could probably write even more on Joel alone, but I don't want to surpass the number of allowed characters in a post to do so.
Edit: Goddammit, can a mod move this to the game section?
