Majora's Mask Grief Theory

First of all, happy Back to the Future day! Now that's out of the way I thought the perfect thing for the Festival of Horror was to look back at the game that provided the scariest story on this entire page! BEN Drowned takes place in a haunted Majora's Mask cartridge, the game itself is dark and eerie, but could the game be spelling something darker out? A Nintendo title where the main character is... dead?

The Kubler-Ross model of grief states that a person will transition through five phases: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. These phases are seen in Majora's Mask and each is represented by the various locations that Link visits. You know the moon hanging dangerously close overhead? In Clock Town, the first place you visit, the people of the town are holding a carnival. They seem to be in complete denial of the fact they have just three days left to live, one NPC, Mutoh the Carpenter, calls those afraid of the moon a coward! Here we see our first phase of grief, in the first place that Link visits!

Next Link ventures to Woodfall in the Southern Swamp and we find the Deku Tribe. However, all is not well as their princess has gone missing and they're blaming the disappearance on an innocent monkey! The Deku King is angry and lashing out against anyone and anything! It's Link who pacifies the Deku King and frees the monkey. Next Link finds himself in Snowhead, the third major destination in the game. Here we find the Gorons who are mourning the recent loss of their leader Darmani. After poking around in Snowhead Link will meet Darmani's ghost who pleads to Link to bring him back to life! Darmani is bargaining, when Link tells him he can't do anything to help him we see Darmani become depressed.

Depression is shown more so, however, at the Great Bay: the fourth major in game location. Link meets the dying Zora Mikau, his dying words tell of his girlfriend Lulu's missing eggs. Lulu shows a deep depression, she is a mother who has lost her eggs and her boyfriend. Lulu retreats inwards and feels like there is no escape, much like depression. Finally the game brings Link to Ikana Valley: land of the dead. The dungeon in this area takes you to the heavens as if you are making the journey to the after life, acceptance. But there's more in this final area as we turn to Garo Masters. These beings are described as "emptiness cloaked in darkness" and only accept death on their terms. When you defeat one they will kill themselves rather than let Link kill them.

By the end of the game Link's passed through the five stages of grief, but is the game the journey of Link accepting his own death? The start of the game sees Link searching for Navi who went missing at the end of Ocarina of Time and finds himself in a foggy forest riding Epona. He finds a tree and falls into its depths. He falls a long time before finding himself in Termina. Termina, awfully similar to Terminal! Even if Link survives this how does Epona appear later in the game, shouldn't Epona be with you? Maybe dead because of the long fall but at least where you landed! Another point of note, to get here you enter a tree in Hyrule but where you land there is sky above you! If you fell to the other side of, assumedly Earth albeit a fictional version, why has Link never encountered this moon before?

The people you meet throughout Majora's Mask are the same as those Link meets in Ocarina of Time! The final nail in the metaphorical, maybe, coffin is the mechanic of repeating the same three days. You keep playing the Song of Time to repeat recent events, you are, in effect, stuck in time. This can be how grief feels, like you're stuck in time. There's much more too but this post is getting quite long so I'll leave it there! Could Ben be using Majora's Mask to venture through purgatory and find acceptance in his death? Maybe, but at the same time he was torturing Alex so I think he accepted his death!

#majorasmask #festivalofhorror