The main reason that I postponed finishing up my series of blog-posts on The Goat Sisters storybook of Rule of Rose for so long was that I discovered that the story told in this storybook seemed to veer off into the subject of the orphanage massacre. So I decided to do some thinking and writing on the topic of the orphanage massacre first. Now, with some of that groundwork done, let’s go ahead and look at the ending of The Goat Sisters storybook.
~~~
Turn the page again and the text reads:
But with big sister dead in a pool of amber blood, who is there to read the letter to? Bah bah.
The drawing shows a goat on the left, lying on its back, with lots of blood on the abdominal side of its body. There is also lots of blood nearby on the ground. Diana’s kerchief is on the ground near this goat. On the right side of the page, near Meg’s glasses, is the other goat. She is lying face down on the ground and also has what appears to be a large bloody wound at the abdomen. Her right hand holds the love letter. Both the Meg goat and the Diana goat appear to be dead. There is something drawn in the foreground by the Meg goat, but I can’t make out what it is. In the background, behind the Diana goat, is the figure of Stray Dog, standing on two feet like a man.
Turn the page to the final page and we get the moral of the story:
Even “true love” is quickly shredded by conflict.
The accompanying drawing shows the love letter torn into two parts.
Unfortunately, the page with the moral, and the right side of the previous drawing (the part showing the dead Meg Goat), are not shown in the download-able pdf file of the Goat Sisters storybook (which only gives us the storybook in its condition before the missing portion has been obtained).
~~~
In the context of the over-arching story of Jennifer needing to recover her memory of the vow that she made to Wendy, the moral of The Goat Sisters storybook provides Jennifer with the words “true love”, which is a part of her vow.
So part of what is supposed to be a story about Meg and Diana, and their relationship, is actually a message from Jennifer’s subconscious dreaming mind (which has “written” the storybooks) to Jennifer about her vow to Wendy. The storybook is, in this respect, a mixed message.
Could there be more about this storybook that is a mixed message?
I think so.
The moral, “Even ‘true love’ is quickly shredded by conflict” doesn’t really seem to me to fit what we know about the relationship between Meg and Diana. They definitely had conflicts, but do we see their relationship shredded? At the end of “The Goat Sisters” chapter of Rule of Rose, we see Meg clasping Diana while Diana strokes Meg’s hair. They seem to me to be as tightly bonded to each other as ever.
The moral of the story was produced by Jennifer’s dreaming mind for Jennifer’s own benefit, so could it be that the moral is truly more about the relationship between Jennifer and Wendy than about the relationship between Meg and Diana? It was, after all, the relationship of true love between Jennifer and Wendy that was truly “quickly shredded by conflict.”
And is there really any part of the story of Meg and Diana’s relationship that corresponds to the symbolism of Meg-goat disembowelling Diana-goat in order to read her a love-letter? We see Diana acting hurtfully towards Meg in “The Goat Sisters” chapter of Rule of Rose, but not anything hurtful done by Meg towards Diana.
And what about the drawing of Stray Dog with the mutilated dead bodies of Meg-goat and Diana-goat? Stray Dog has no role in the conflict between Meg and Diana. Doesn’t this seem to be an image from the orphanage massacre?
In the next installment of this series of blog-posts on “The Goat Sisters” storybook, I’ll relate this storybook to Grimm’s fairytale “The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids” and look into the possible connections linking the storybook, the fairy tale, and the the events of the orphanage massacre.
Related posts:
The Goat Sisters Storybook (Part 1), The Cover
The Goat Sisters Storybook (Part 2), Love and Conflict
The Goat Sisters Storybook (Part 3), Scissors, and Cut-open Abdomen
Tags: Diana, Gregory, Meg, StrayDog
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Wendy and Jennifer seem to fit Diana and Meg’s roles perfectly. Jennifer plays the role of Diana, while Wendy seems to play the role of Meg.
Diana is sick of Meg’s clingyness, and wishes to be free from Meg’s love. So, she hurts her to distance Meg from her. Their relationship seems to resemble Jennifer’s and Wendy’s to some level, though, it is much more unintentional.
The arrival of Brown hurts Wendy, even though Jennifer doesn’t seem to realize how much. And yet, no matter how much Wendy protested to Brown, Jennifer kept him, even though she knew she was hurting Wendy. I don’t believe she may have known the extent of that pain, but Jennifer still continued to care for Brown. Then Wendy, playing the role of Meg-goat in the story, ‘disembowelled’ the Jennifer-goat to give her the love letter. This, however, actually may represent the death of Brown. Wendy wanted to forcefully show Jennifer how much she loved her, how much she wanted to be tied together, by killing Brown. This is what I believe the love letter may represent. Wendy’s love for Jennifer.
However, I don’t think that Wendy’s ‘message’ she was trying to get to Jennifer actually got to her. Because, Jennifer became, ‘dead’ in the relationship. Wendy has done something horrible to Jennifer, and no amount of words and hugs was going to make it any better, only time. Thus, Wendy also became ‘dead’, and brought Stray Dog to the Orphange. Stray Dog was the final straw that utterly destroyed their relationship, because with Wendy dead, there was no chance for possible a possible make-up.
Also, ‘Even “true love” is quickly shredded by conflict.’ line really strikes me. It makes me think, more than anything, that Wendy’s and Jennifer’s ‘love’ for each other wasn’t really love. More so a crush or puppy love sort of feelings. Because, if it was, true love, then I think Jennifer would’ve forgiven Wendy within a good amount of time. They would’ve made-up and everything would become better once again.
The problem with both relationships, Meg’s and Diana’s, as well as Jennifer’s and Wendy’s, is that one of the two got too clingy, and didn’t give the ones they loved enough freedom. This is where the rope representation that you had posted about earlier comes in. In both the Goat storybook and the Wendy- Joshua bear, both parties were tied together, rather forcefully, by rope. Wendy and Meg didn’t want the ones they love to drift away, so they ‘tied’ themselves to the one they loved. However, that was the problem that eventually lead to everyone’s demise.
…I really hope that made sense.
dont worry this made perfect sense. And it led me deeper into the story and symbolism that i hadd never thought about before. I can tell that you put alot of time anf effort into writting this and I thank you. It really cleared stuff up about both the megxdiana and wendyxjen relationships for me. I just got this game last week and automaticaly fell in love with it. The sad part is there nobody in my school that knows what it is. So I dont have anybody to talk about it with
I think it’s comparing the two relationships kind of like an example or a type of foreshadowing. The image of the dead Diana and Meg goats is from the massacre, they’re relationship is ended by outside forces, Wendy and Jennifer’s conflict. Diana and Meg are a more….disturbed mirror of Wendy and Jennifer.
I disagree with Tidbits, I think Wendy’s counterpart is Diana and Meg is Jennifer ,or at least how Wendy wants her to be. I say this because of Diana having ripped up the letter and stuffing it in the goats, in Jennifer’s reality, she purposely hurts Meg only to comfort her. This is like Wendy having the RCA treat Jennifer like crap and then she comforts Jennifer. At first Jennifer comes crying into the arms of Wendy as Meg does to Diana at the end of “The goat sisters” chapter
Mostly it’s a type of foreshadowing for Wendy’s and Jennifer’s relationship. And the conflict that can tear “true love apart” in both cases is Wendy and Stray Dog
Welcome sam!
sam wrote:
—I dont have anybody to talk about it with—
I hope this site will help satisfy this desire!
Interesting ideas Tidbits and Darla. You’re giving me a lot of food for thought.
Tidbits wrote:
—if it was, true love, then I think Jennifer would’ve forgiven Wendy within a good amount of time. They would’ve made-up and everything would become better once again.—
In my blog-post, “The Spontaneity of the Massacre” (October 18), I present some evidence that seems to indicate that the orphanage massacre occurred a very short time after the incident during which Jennifer slapped Wendy. If correct, there wasn’t much time for Jennifer to get over Brown’s death, and forgive Wendy, before the death of Wendy and the other orphans in the massacre.
In the final chapter, “Once Upon a Time,” if you take Jennifer to Wendy and press “x”, they curtsy to each other, and Wendy kisses Jennifer on the cheek and Jennifer kisses Wendy on the forehead. This suggests to me that Jennifer DOES forgive Wendy.
Sorry about the time mistake. There are just so many posts to keep up with…
Tidbits wrote:
—Sorry about the time mistake. There are just so many posts to keep up with…—
No problem.
I don’t expect anyone to read, or remember, all, or even most, of my archive of blog-posts before making comments. So I don’t mind posting links to previous blog-posts that I think are relevant (and such responses by me shouldn’t be taken as a rebuke). Hopefully such links make it easier for readers in general to familiarize themselves with previous posts, so I enjoy these opportunities to cite previous blog-posts.
The line true love is shredded by conflict does represent wendys love for jennifer. well done Tidbits. However, this was true love because all i have to do to prove it is recite this line: EVEN TRUE LOVE IS QUICKLY SHREDDED BY CONFLICT. Wendy and jenifers true love was shredded by the conflict between them about wendy murdering brown. Also, please tell me Punchlines website name
The inquisitive prince wrote:
—please tell me Punchlines website name—
There isn’t much there: http://www.punch-line.org
Thank you pokernemesis. Funny, i thought there would be more there.(sigh).
I never doubted that at least the “even true love is easily shredded by conflict” was about Wendy and Jennifer.
Also, I think there must be a parallelism between “Jen and Wendy” and “Diana and Meg”.
Even the unused cutscene/ promotional cutscene/opening shows us a Meg/Diana scene, and the Meg/diana love would not be that important to the story, unless it was there to suggest something about Jen/Wendy.
I know I should not be citing the promotional cutscene/opening too much, but I can’t help thinking back to it. Is it my impression, or the Meg/Diana scene is strangely long? This may show it is important (Or maybe it is only because many things happen there).
Also, we see Meg and Diana in a bathroom (is the strong willed princess sitting on a toilet?) doing something that makes us think “WHAT!?!” and then we see Jen and Wendy in a garden of roses acting innocent and sweet, can this mean something I can’t quite explain, but could be clear from what I already wrote?
One last thing: when I played the goath sisters chapter, at first I hated Diana for being mean to Meg (not keeping her letters, not even answering, and basically not returning her affection) and then discovered that “I” (Jen) was doing the same thing to Wendy, making her feel lonely, and forgetting the promise! So it was like “Uggh, I’m not better than Diana after all!”
Do you think the player is meant to feel that way (or maybe it is only me)?
I don’t know, but it’s true when you say that Diana and Meg really louse the control… i think this go on… and it’s a love so strong, meg and Diana can be girlfriends or just lovers, but really have some think in this. Well…. good look.
by
Hi guys! i really think meg’s love to Diana it’s true.. see, look the game’s music ( …when i’m in bed, i can be so mean, you can beat me, i will like to shame you, i will like to blame you, just because of my love to you…) this can be a prove of the lovers in the game, when i’m look this music i really think this is for Diana and Meg… if you no’t belive in me, look the music “A love suicide” and tell me wath you think… but, Diana and meg gona be start in something? Who know? well…. good by
Welcome, Jody!
I favor the idea that the “Love Suicide” song is Wendy’s song for Jennifer, and not a song about the relationship between Meg and Diana.
I think the line “I can be so mean, you can beat me” fits Wendy better than anybody.
It is true that Meg accepts violence from Diana (Diana pressing Meg’s finger into a rose thorn). But is it true that Meg “can be so mean” to Diana? I don’t see evidence of that.
Would Diana let Meg beat her? I don’t see evidence of that.
Wendy, however, DID actually let Jennifer beat on her (without offering any resistance) at the end of “The Funeral” chapter. And presumably Wendy accepted Jennifer’s violence because she knew she had indeed been “so mean” to Jennifer, when she brought about Brown’s death.
Also, Jennifer and Wendy are more central to the Rule of Rose story than are Meg and Diana, and hence it is more appropriate (I think) to expect that the theme song of Rule of Rose to be about Jennifer and Wendy.