What is Red Dead Redemption 2 Right to Have a Terminal Illness?

There are not many good examples of what life with a terminal respiratory illness is in the world.

In fact, I learned to avoid characters with whom I could have a relationship when growing up with cystic fibrosis because they never seemed to exist as such. people. They were rather used as props, tragic plot points for the real hero. I had long since given up on seeing something close to an emotionally accurate representation of the terminal illness in pop culture.

[[[[Warning: The following contains the main spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2.]

I was only a few hours in Red Dead Redemption 2The Western epic of Rockstar, when I discovered how it would end: not with our hero Arthur Morgan riding the sunset, but with his slow and heartbreaking disappearance while the sworn proscribed succumbed to tuberculosis.

This was obviously not what I was hoping to find when I turned to the Internet to find the best way to start a money lending mission.

I understood the sinister poetry of such an end, of course; that it would be both inevitable and ironic. I was not sure if I wanted to attend a match with this particular point, after almost dying myself of cystic fibrosis. More than once, same.

My desire to pretend to be a cowboy and revenge murder all the cougars I saw for what they did to my horse at the beginning Red Dead Redemption, has proven stronger than my fear of being triggered in a spiral of post-traumatic anxiety. In addition, it was a video game. How her description of a life-threatening bacterial disease could be real?

Red Dead Redemption 2 presents the most nuanced and accurate representation of life with a terminal illness that I have never seen, regardless of the medium used.

The devil is in the details

The attention to detail in Red Dead Redemption 2 borders on the implausible. Even a "quick" analysis of the game requires the player to spend 60 good hours with Arthur and the rest of the Van der Linde gang; it's about the equivalent of 20 or more narration movies. 60 hours, it's a lot of time to spend with only one character, and this space allows many small moments of realism; the kind of things that would be silenced in other games or stories.

And when it comes to a terminal illness – the reality of an omnipresent disease that reminds you daily of its existence – the devil is very a lot in the details.

Tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis are very similar symptomatically. Constant fatigue, loss of appetite and inability to gain weight, even keeping it, breathing difficulties, persistent cough, expectoration of mucus and lung blood and, of course, an abbreviation of two letters. Both diseases are progressive, which means that they will worsen with time.

They are also both mortal, if the disease progresses far enough. The two diagnoses are so alike, in fact, that there is still some confusion as to which one killed the famous Polish pianist Frédéric Chopin.

I am do not dead, of course, but I approached. I was about as sick as a human being could be without dying. At one point, I had only 12% of my optimal lung function, I was unable to move from bed to couch without help and I spat out enough blood to warrant surgical intervention. # 39; emergency. and a written in a medical paper.

Then I had a double lung transplant and everything went away. So I do not know exactly A cowboy of the turn of the century dying of consumption, but I would say that I have a pretty good idea of ​​what it could have been.

When you do not have the luxury of forgetting that you are sick

The most striking aspect of the representation of Arthur's disease in Red Dead Redemption 2 was his constancy and total disorder. Portraits of people suffering from chronic diseases in popular culture tend to present a romantic and immaculate version of the experience.

Everyone is always handsome in Hollywood, after all, and the violent expulsions of fluids from their bodies are kept to a minimum, relegated to a scene here or there to remind the public that this person is sick. Sometimes small amounts of blood are revealed in a handkerchief after someone coughs a bit, and we are trained to understand that it means that they are doomed.

Take Red Mill!, for example:

Red Dead Redemption 2, meanwhile, is not more than showing Arthur falling off his horse or ruining a reunion with his hacking until he is escorted. But the true weight of his health stems from his constant wheezing in subsequent chapters and the way he will just sit and try to catch his breath for an extremely long time after some missions. I am not placed in a place where I can forget his suffering.

The detail that struck the most, however, could not be explored other than through a video game: Arthur is not able to adequately replenish his resources in Chapter Six, which is nearing the end of Thu.

The nuclei are essentially Red Dead Redemption 2's version of health points or energy meters. Arthur's health problems collapse when he suffers damage and he dies if he is completely exhausted. Major efforts, like important actions like running and fighting, drain his core of endurance and an exhausted core of endurance greatly limits what he can do in the game in general.

I know how it is. I ate maybe a handful of fish sticks a day while I was waiting for my surgery. I could not eat anything more; my body did not want food and could not metabolize it. The only way to replenish myself – at least as best I could – was to sleep. The races became almost impossible, and I spent most of my days napping to try to recover some of my energy. It was the only thing I could do to help myself, to try to restore my failing body.

That's what's remarkable, that's exactly how the game deals with Arthur's illness. L & # 39; current amount authorized foods and beverages are suddenly limited in this last chapter, as is its remedial impact. Arthur has to sleep to find his hearts. There is no other way. I am forced to decide what is worthwhile if I try to act beyond the missions of history. Obligations become oppressive and saying yes to one thing means saying no to everything else for the rest of the virtual day.

I also notice that other characters comment on Arthur's disease as it evolves, and not always in a pleasant way. Rockstar understands that relationships change after this type of diagnosis and that some people may start treating people with either sympathy, contempt, or a combination of both. That is, if they do not react with absolute fear. And other people may not be interested in hiding these reactions.

I hid my illness as much as I could when I was growing up, at the time when hiding my illness was still possible. I never knew how someone would react. A severe cough could make foreigners shudder and make them rush to ask if everything was fine, always in the same pampered tone. Some people would get angry if I coughed too much and told me directly that I should have stayed home.

Perhaps they thought that cystic fibrosis, a non-infectious genetic disease, was contagious. Maybe they thought I should have resigned myself to resting and giving up. Or maybe they thought I had something else and that I was careless. What they rarely was asking or trying to know the reality of the situation before rushing to some sort of judgment.

Foreigners are not the only ones who have reacted badly, which is something else Red Dead Redemption 2 just get it.

The other members of Arthur's gang change their behavior when Arthur became seriously ill. Some people mean well, like Tilly, but even she still seems to blame me for my condition. She will say that she worries about my health when I tried to talk to her at the camp, but she is also unhappy that I am not taking better care of myself.

The gang member Micah Bell, meanwhile, becomes more and more hostile towards me and throws the nickname "black lung" on every occasion. He considers Arthur's tuberculosis as a weakness and Arthur as weak to contract it. Javier Escuella, a gang member, suddenly becomes reluctant, telling me to stay out of gang business and "not worry" about this cough. "

Although there are obviously other intrigues involved in this part of the game, it should be noted that Micah and Javier attack Arthur more aggressively. after his diagnosis. These characters announce their turn to the evil by reducing Arthur to his illness.

The disease is part of you and not the opposite

And that's the bottom line of it all: Red Dead Redemption 2 never defines Arthur Morgan by his tuberculosis. It is shown that he is more than his illness, despite the omnipresence of his symptoms and the fully realized world that reacts to his illness that worsens more and more. He has power over his own life and his personality does not begin or end with his illness.

Arthur is allowed to be angry, even at the most blatant and "transparent" moment of the game. Arthur falls into the doctor's office at the end of chapter five and is undoubtedly told he has tuberculosis . He curses the doctor and it becomes obvious that he is still Arthur. He still has to do what needs to be done. Her illness complicates things, but she does not define who he is or what to do.

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Arthur's story does not depend specifically on his tuberculosis. He evolved from loyal Dutch lieutenant to his rash rival over time, and this story could still exist even though there was a way for Arthur not to contract the disease. Arthur's TB is a detail of the story, not the story itself.

And this is the part on which most other representations of chronic illness are mistaken. A person does not lose their power because of the diagnosis of a terminal illness and not having to focus on your health does not mean that the rest of your problems will go away, or even give you a break.

While tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis can be devastating, just as caring for you seems to be the most important thing, the world does not stop simply because you do not feel well. Most of us do our best in situations that are often beyond our control. Our lives continue.

I've worked with less than forty percent lung capacity for yearssitting at a desk and answering the phone until I could not literally speak. Arthur does not take a day off either. There are still people who need savings, squirrels who need to hunt, bridges that need to explode and stagecoaches that need to fly. Arthur spends his last moments fighting and gaining time to help his friend escape. He always looks at the world and thinks about what he can do instead of focusing on his own limits.

I have finished Red Dead Redemption 2 A few weeks ago, I left Arthur on top of a bloody and broken mountain. But Arthur Morgan is always with me. Me, a skinny kid from suburban New York, saw me him, a tired, insolent cowboy, in a way I have never seen before.

Arthur will always be there to remind me that I am more than my illness. That there are still things to do. Even though I'm not always here, I'm still there, which means there's still time to get to work.