[...]Rule of Rose Mysteries » See-all Walkthrough, with Commentary: “The Little Princess” Chapter (Part 3): The Well[...]…

I think that limiting the airship to the basement of the orphanage is a mistake. All of the other floors of the orphanage (and even some areas outside of the orphanage building, in my opinion) are found in a transformed state within the orphanage. See, for example, my YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmGMKnWUtBo
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I wanted to actually register and begin giving some of my own theories as I’ve picked the game up again just in the past few days. I’d been awhile since I last played it, so I’ve just literally passed this part and wanted to put down an observation not mentioned, unless I missed it, which is possible, I tend to skim at times and miss important things.

But, regarding the idea that the Airship is underground, I don’t believe this to be true. I believe PN hit it on the head with this statement:

—————–
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.
—————–

As she is beginning to make her way into her memories, she sees the well and can feel the cold waves of air coming from it, which I believe signifies the cold, cruel and deeply buried memories she is about to encounter. As she continues on and later in the game when she comes across the well again, she doesn’t comment at all.. I believe this is showing her memories are now all around her, so she sees it merely as what it is, a well.

With as deep as this game is.. and considering it focuses on Jennifer remembering these haunting and tragic memories, the well was a forewarning of sorts quite literally right at the beginning of the game. And not to mention, right next to where she found Brown, a dear friend she lost.

Another reason though I believe this is what the well represents is because when you are in the Airship, if you notice in the bathroom and look into the mirror, Jennifer will comment on how the mirror is broken, then say for a second she saw the reflection of the Orphanage. This says to me that the Airship is indeed a place they made up within the Orphanage.

I personally think it’s the basement, since there were generators and such in the Airship, I’m sure a big Orphanage like that had to have some big heaters or other devices to help keep power going to it, and that would be in the basement.

Not to mention, as the children threw Jennifer in the casket and carried her away, you can see she’s outside, being carried around. I can’t imagine those kids walked all the way down to that well but rather to a door leading specifically into the basement from the side of the Orphanage.

I’ll keep my eyes open though to see if maybe the theory of it being somewhere in the well could be it, though I just really believe that well was a sign of Jennifer’s cold and deep memories beginning to surface.

InMemoryOfTheAristocrats asks:

could it lead to the land of the imps

That seems like a possibility.

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…

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.

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!

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? ^_^