See-all Walkthrough, with Commentary: “The Little Princess” Chapter (Part 3): The Well
Posted by PokerNemesis in SymbolismGoing down the path that branches to the right from the sign, toward the rickety shed, we see text from the game identifying this area as “Strange Hill, East”.
If Jennifer walks past the rickety shed we will see a well: a large wooden structure that has a metal barrel-shaped bucket. If Jennifer stands near the bucket, and the game-player presses “x”, we are given text from the game that reads:
“It’s a rusted well. Cold air flows from inside it…”
There is rope circling the wooden winding-cylinder of the well, but the rope is not attached to the bucket and there is no handle to turn the cylinder. There appear to be hinges that would allow the wooden flaps, on which the bucket rests, to be opened up to access a hole in the ground. Presumably the cold air that flows from the hole is rising up through the wooden slats of these flaps.
I talked to someone more familiar with wells than I myself am, and he confirmed my suspicion that cold air flowing up from a well is not a usual state of affairs. I think that the well-hole must connect to a cavern which has another opening, and that is why cold air flows from the well. Caverns are formed by underground water, so it seems likely to me that the water that the well accesses is the water of an underground stream that has formed a cavern.
In the “Once Upon A Time” chapter of Rule of Rose, there is no text that comes with pressing “x” at the well.
The authors of the Rule of Rose game made this well an odd thing, something connected to an underground world. What is the significance of this?
On a psychological level, it might be that the well represents an opening to Jennifer’s unconscious mind, where she has buried her memories. Just as air flows up from the well, Jennifer’s buried memories are starting to flow out of her unconscious. Later, in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, maybe there is no more flow of air from the well because all of Jennifer’s repressed memories have come to the surface.
On the other hand, I’ve argued in previous blog-posts that there is an influence on Rule of Rose from Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories.
See:
“Jennifer, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice”
“Jennifer Through the Looking-glass (part 1)”
“Jennifer Through the Looking-glass (part 2)”
Most people know that Alice traveled to Wonderland by chasing a white rabbit into a rabbit hole. But did you know that what Alice fell down was called a well! Here is the text:
…she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.
The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.
Could there be yet another possible significance to the well? I think so. I have argued elsewhere that the airship-world represents hell (see my blog-post Jennifer and the Jesus-mythos), which Jennifer reaches by falling into a coffin… a symbolic death. Hell is often depicted as being underground. Is there a sense in which the airship world may be, as Jennifer’s hell, underground? And the well signify a passage way to hell (the airship world)?
Perhaps you are now thinking: PokerNemesis, you are getting a bit wacky in your ideas. We’ve seen the airship in the air, we’ve looked out its windows and seen the sky. It is crazy to suggest that the airship world is underground!
But consider something that happens in the “Rag Princess Sews” chapter. I’ll quote the description given in TheSinnerChrono’s game-script faq:
As Jennifer climbs up the ladder in the Upper Deck that leads to the topmost
of the airship’s exterior… she finds herself in, of all things, a field.Between two trees that form a shape quite like the vertical part of the
airship that was on its exterior, Amanda is bludgeoning something.
This time, when Jennifer emerges out of the top of the airship, she is emerging from underground into a field! There IS a sense in which the airship-world is underground!
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Perfect! It’s all making sense now!
I think it was more of a transition from the dream [airship] and reality [a field somewhere by the house]. Perhaps, if there was a cavern that lead to a well, the orphans may have used it as a secret passage and climb out of the well using rope [I havent seen the well, so Im not sure if there was rope going down into it, or how deep the well actually is]. I
**it may also be just an “easter egg” or homage [sp?] to Japanese folk lore of a dark well where a dead person crawl outs from
That could support the idea that Jennifer is dead…
But if it’s hell, where is satan? (the imps could be the demons, then!!! Muahahahahahahahaha!!!!)
Satan would probably be Wendy-as-Joshua…
“…If you don’t… I’ll kill you. ^_^-”
But I’m with Maru on this one… We see that the Airship is the Orphanage because of similar elements, (Not to mention the cutscene in the “Bird of Happiness” chapter) and I’m pretty sure underground would be difficult, especially if the well were involved… there is water at the bottom of a well… not a sewer, with the cement walkways, etc, but watery tunnels, not necessarily with headroom at all before the opening.
But really… I think that it’s kind of interesting to think about.
Say you’re get off a bus at the wrong stop and walk up the way, intending to ask for directions or get some idea of where you are, when you begin hearing a familiar noise. You follow said noise and you cross near and old, abandoned well.
When you think of wells… don’t you normally think, “Deep, dank, dark, dismal…”? This one was abandoned, even more in disrepair… Cold air coming from it might not have been just “chilly wind”, but “dark forboding.” If she knew the orphanage, likely she would know the well they depended on for life sustaining water very well.
In the “Rag Princess Sews” chapter, Jennifer sees Amanda in a field bludgeoning a doll.
Can I ask something? Where is that field specifically? Around the orphanage or something? We only see that field in the “Rag Princess Sews” chapter and nowhere else. Did Jennifer wandered far outside the orphanage and arrived in that field by chance to see Amanda?
That does seem like an interesting thought…
Amanda obviously isn’t going to destroy “Joshua” where the other Aristocrats normally haunt… She’d get caught easily. Every kid knows that you stay out of sight when you don’t want to get caught.
We have no justible judge for how far away the feild is from the Orphanage, how far the Orphanage is from civilization and how far the Orphanage is from Gregory, but it seems these places are all very remote… no outsider ever stumbles upon them…
If we were to compare this to Fatal Frame 2 [just because] we can see the idea of a well or well-like opening as a secret passage. When you enter in the sacred tree and open thesecret passage with the family seals, we get a caption that says “cool air can be felt comming up from the dark passage”. It seems to sound a lot like the well caption. Where does the passage in FF2 lead? Out of All Gods Villiage. If we waned to link that to Hell, then the passage is a way out of Hell, into the forest. Here, we find that this [well, as I see it anyway] passage leads out to an empty field, away from “Hell”. Theres actually a lot that Fatal Frame and Rule of Rose share…and both happen to be my favorite games. Just thought it be an interesting idea to through out there, maybe even for a future blog entry
In the first chapter, when we see Wendy-as-Joshua running up the hill, I thought that “Joshua” had fallen down the well and died and that there would be significance to the well later. I was a little disappointed that nothing was ever done with it…
Perhaps the airship could be a symbolic “hell”. I mean, if you take a look at Silent Hill…almost the same concept happens, but instead of Harry falling down a rabbit hole/well…he ends driving off road.
As I mentioned in another comment, this post and its comments have had me thinking a lot about the well. I think you are absolutely right that part of its purpose is to remind us of the Alice stories. A few other things have been rattling around my head. One: your pointing out that the well is on a strange hill and Amaritude’s mentioning of Joshua running up the hill to the well suddenly brought to mind the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme.
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
Up got Jack, and home did trot
As fast as he could caper
He went to bed and bound his head
With vinegar and brown paper.
So we have a hill and an implied well. According to Wikipedia there are a number of interpretations of this rhyme. One is that the first part refers to the beheading of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and the second part is tacked on to make a happy ending as a Nursery Rhyme. Now, I don’t know what happens in RoR beyond the mermaid boss fight, and don’t recall having seen anything thus far that correlates with beheadings, but comments elsewhere of executioners hiding their identities might work with this idea.
Interestingly, this illustration depicts a guilitoine on a little hill. http://www.rhymes.org.uk/pics/french-rev.jpg
Hills as a place of execution are not uncommon in history and literature. Golgotha comes right to mind. And working with biblical imagery, there is lots more to think about regarding wells, especially in light of your Jennifer and the Jesus mythos post and your comments above about Hell. (wow, my brain is firing in all sorts of directions, and I’ve not even finished my coffee!)
I’ll be thinking about all this and looking for more parallels as I play though the game.
LuciusVorenus wrote:
—I’ll be thinking about all this and looking for more parallels as I play though the game.—
I’m looking forward to it.
Sorry your comment got caught up in my spam filter for a while. I don’t know why it did… by the settings I put in place that link you included shouldn’t have made that happen.
For some reason—I don’t know what—RevenantChild always gets caught by it.
Biblical is kind of where I got my hypothosis before. Wells were the centers of life in many towns. (Ever heard of the story of the Samaritan woman? Two people who were, normally, not socially supposed to speak or have anything to do with each other came together and had a nearly pleasant and life changing conversation. ^_^- Jennifer and Wendy?)
Fascinating! I can totally see how that fits. ^_^
And I’ve always felt that the airship world was her Hell. Strangely, even when bad things were happening at the orphanage, the atmosphere while watching those parts didn’t feel as scary as the airship parts. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I felt like I had a sense of where things were much more than in the airship? (Being lost is scary.) But then, that probably comes from actually playing the game…
On that subject, now that I’ve finished watching the game, I’m going to try to play it. It’s strange, but watching it isn’t as scary as reading about it. I guess I have a good imagination! o.O; Anyways, I put in an order at my local Game Crazy for it. I had just missed a used copy of it by a few days! I was shocked that someone had snatched it up! But that’s good, in the end. Maybe we’ll be getting a newcomer soon, eh? ^_^
I was thinking that maybe the field where Amanda is found beating the doll was a real place near the orphanage where Amanda would often go to get away from the other orphans.
Jennifer finds her way there because she’s been there before.
Also I should mention that the first time Jennifer goes up that ladder Amanda is sitting under a tent type thing. The shape of the tent opening reminded me of the opening in the tree. So it’s sort of like Amanda’s special place.
What it all means though I wouldn’t have a clue. Maybe the reason it’s a field the second time is because it’s so close to the end of the game that more of her memories have returned. I didn’t make much sense, did I? lol
Anyway, there is no doubt that the airship is Jennifer’s hell. But I don’t think it’s connected with the well on such a deep level. Nevertheless interesting theory.
frankly, this game IS supposed to be Japanese,,so i think we should maybe really consider if japanese symbolization/ideas/cultures are to appear more common in the game than from other countries,..just my opinion..>.>
Hello
I posted on here a while back. I really love your blog by the way. I found something that agreed with your interpretation on wells. I don’t know if you or anyone else found this, but I decided to post it anyway. I looked up on google on interpretations of a dream that includes a well. I found a link that had this as a interpretation:
“The earth symbolizes the unconscious and the feelings are symbolized by water. A well is therefore a symbol to show how you can access the deepest recesses of the unconscious. From this source may draw up into your consciousness emotions, knowledge, happiness and wisdom. It is the foundations of life, the divine nature.”
http://www.dreamsleep.net/well_dream_meaning.html#Well
Also, I agree on you with the airship being a symbolism of hell, after all, the imp attacks began inside the airship…