Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts Analysis (Pt.2)

The God Father

"I tell them to read and to learn and to make the most of their new home. I tell them I'm giving them Zion as a gift to make up for all the sorrows of their lives so far and all the sorrows man has visited on man. I tell them to be kind to each other and modest. I tell them never to hurt each other but that if someone else comes along and tries to hurt them to strike back with righteous anger."

 

"The Father in the Caves" who the Sorrows worship isn't a make-believe being; he is very much real but not what you'd expect.

 

The Father was a man named Randall Dean Clark who was a former soldier from the Great War who inhabited Zion Park. He was an American soldier stationed in the annexed land of Canada. When the bombs dropped, he was in the wilderness on a hiking trip. His family no doubt perished and he was left alone. He hiked back to Zion and hid out in a cave. Fortunately, the caves were abandoned by the United States Geological Survey and the leftover supplies helped him greatly. He hid out in the cave systems of Zion Canyon, hiding supplies and booby trapping most of them. The computer terminals in the caves provide the player with information about his life and the troubles in Zion.

 

Randall was a tortured individual. He found his time as a soldier in Canada sickening and was appalled at the "criminality of it." He deeply regrets not being with his family when the bombs hit and suffered guilt until the end of his life. He was also forced to do some ugly things in his life even after his service. After the bombs fell, he was forced to mercy kill an old couple blinded by the flash of the bombs. It didn't stop there. Some time after the bombs, a group of refugees made camp in Zion. He grew to care for them and even secretly left medicine for one of them who broke his leg. Unfortunately, a group of vault dwellers from Vault 22 came in to establish camp too and ended up slaughtering the refugees. Randall then waged a covert war against the vault dwellers and drove them out using explosives and his service rifle. So successful was he, that the vault dwellers ran in terror from the "vengeful spirit that stalked the canyons".

 

Randall developed a relationship with a vault dweller named Sylvie who was caught in one of his bear traps. However, she died in childbirth, pregnant with his unborn son. The death of his second family got him thinking of suicide though he never went through with it.

 

A group of children wandered into Zion Canyon a long time after the Vault 22 incident. Randall decided to help them by leaving them food, medicine, supplies, messages and, as they got older, medical books and weapons manuals. He preached to them the importance of kindness and respect but he did all this in secret. He didn't want to shatter the illusion and for them to see he was just a battered old man who was dying from some kind of lung disease at this point. Near the end, he left each and every child a personal message and tells them though he will be silent, he will still watch over them. When he knew his time was up, he climbed onto the highest peak where none of the children could find him and there he died, overlooking Zion Canyon.

 

These children were the ancestors of the Sorrows and Randall unintentionally became their deity. The religious symbolism is obvious. We find his remains with a crown of leaves on his head producing a kind of halo. When Daniel preaches to the Sorrows, they immediately associate the "God, the Father" of the Christian trinity with the Father in the Caves.

 

Honest Hearts has a pretty strong pro-religion message though not necessarily Christian. The Sorrows were enlightened so to speak. However, it is important to note that the Father was just a man. Maybe this plays into the notion that there is a "necessity to create God" or that our understanding  is limited no matter what because we are, after all, human. But perhaps, whether God exists or the Father is real is ultimately irrelevant. What remains is the message. You decide.

 

Speaking of religion...

Holy Warrior

Joshua Graham has a very simple way of approaching the problem of the White Legs; kill em' all and let God sort them out. This puts him at odds with Daniel, who just wants to leave while it's still possible. Joshua attempts to convince the player many times about how important it is to keep Zion and his charismatic nature does shine through.

 

However, the most interesting part of Joshua is it doesn't seem to be just a war for him. Listening him babble on about doing "God's work", "Yea, we remembered Zion...", dashing babies on rocks and so forth, makes him sound like some kind of crusader from the middle ages. Oh it's not just a war all right. It's a holy war. He's on a mission from God and you're gonna be part of His army!

 

It's easy to dismiss Joshua as some guy who's there to show you how religion can be wrong or bad. What, with gems like: "I don't enjoy killing, but when done righteously, it's just a chore, like any other". But there's more to this character than being a self-righteous zealot.

 

If you take Joshua's path in the story, you, Joshua the Dead Horses and the Sorrows attack the White Legs head on. With Joshua's help, (and yours I guess) the tribes overrun the White Leg encampment. What happens in the camp is the most important event in Joshua's arc. Yes, he has a character arc too in addition to being awesome at everything else.

 

In the camp, the White Leg's chief, Salt-Upon-Wounds, is trapped. Joshua calls him an "animal" and that the only use for animal's in God's temple is sacrifice. The player can make a choice: either he lets Joshua kill the chief in cold blood, fight the chief or be merciful and let the chief go. If the player tells Joshua to let the him go, Joshua admits something he's been hiding the whole game.

 

"I want to have my revenge. Against him. Against Caesar. I want to call it my own, to make my anger God's anger. To justify the things I've done."

 

To say that Joshua is an angry man is an understatement. He's angry at Caesar but most of all, himself. He blames himself for the massacre at New Canaan. He thinks if he hadn't gone with Caesar or if he had chosen differently, they wouldn't have died. See, despite all the bad things he's done as the Malpais Legate, the people of New Canaan still found it in themselves to forgive him and take him back in. They payed the ultimate price for it. So it's understandable why he's frothing mad but the worst part of it is how he justifies his actions with religion and it all comes to a head in the climax of his story.

 

Salt-Upon-Wounds is thoroughly defeated, completely surrounded and utterly helpless. He drops on his knees and begs the player to call off Joshua while Joshua's positions himself to whack the chief like some gangland mob hit. At that point, just how far off the deep end Joshua was became apparent. It wasn't a war anymore, it wasn't even a matter of self-defense or self preservation. Salt-Upon-Wounds was finished but Joshua's bloodthirst hadn't abated. He realizes this and admits that he's been using religion as a crutch, pretending what he was doing was the Lord's work and that it was a righteous war. Well, it stopped being righteous at that moment and it took the player to make him realize that. He must forgive as he was forgiven.

 

Honest Hearts produce honest actions. Was Joshua honest? No, he wasn't. Unlike Randall, Joshua had no good intentions for his religious creed. He went about everything like it was a religious duty. But when you think about it, a lot of the things he did were pretty disturbing. He took the Dead Horses to the park to wage his personal war of vengeance under the claim that he had to protect Zion. He wanted to drag the Sorrows, a peaceful people, into it. He arms the natives and so forth. When the Dead Horses idolize him and his warlike ways, he acts disturbed, like he realizes what he's doing is wrong but he doesn't stop anyway. He's a Christian and probably knows what he's doing is terrible but he continues lying to himself. His dishonesty produced impure actions and thus, was far from the command of a loving God.

 

So that's Joshua's character for you. Originally, I thought Joshua was just there to show the dark side of religion but when you think about it, religion didn't make him do the things he did. He was a liar, we covered that. It was a case of man corrupting religion and using it and twisting it to assuage his guilt. So I guess Honest Hearts really does have an upbeat message hidden beneath the violence and chaos.

 

"Sometimes I tell myself these wildfires never stop burning, but I’m the one who starts them. Not God. Not them. I can always see it in my mind. The warmth, the heat. It will always be a part of me. But not today."

Well, that's about it. At it's core, Honest Hearts is really about religion as a positive force, tempering man's tendency for violence. You're free to agree or disagree but it's a surprisingly upbeat message in a crapsack such as the Fallout Universe.