Shadows of Being

“You are banished from death,” tells a figure shrouded in shadows to the fading protagonist of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. He is brought back to life after the brutal murder of himself and his family. A curse binds him to the shadows and the figure behind them, we come to learn, as it was cast on the protagonist while he was still alive, followed by his murder, only for him to return to life. So he isn’t “banished from death,” like the figure alleges, but returns to life after death.

What takes place between life and death is shrouded in shadows, which makes us unable to verify how this curse relates to it and whether what we refer to as life is comparable with the life before death. The shadows that cloud and cover these unknowns are the common factor between them that makes us infer that life follows death. A cause corresponds with an effect, we might say. From a cause we expect an effect, that we can’t say when it’ll take place and in what shape it’ll emerge. Instead of calling such effects that are unknown as such, we substitute it with something else that conceals a figure who speaks to us, hides the gap between life and death, blurs parts of what we conceive as ourselves, to end up calling it with the same name, as shadow.

The eternal return of the same, we may call this after Nietzsche, or as repetition of difference, if we consider the thought of Deleuze. Difference is made the same by repetition as the protagonist of Shadow of Mordor proceeds with the cycle of life and death to avenge the death of his family, to see them in the afterlife, and to end the reign of Middle-earth’s antagonist. It is to live and die over and over again, where living and dying ceases to mean living and dying, but are synthesized as vengeance, as looking towards the afterlife, and as toppling the reign of a tyrant. It is to transcend life and death with one thing, be it vengeance, justice, or love, that are eternal. But love may dissipate, and justice and vengeance may be served, which makes eternal things finite as opposed to eternity that’s infinite. Eternity includes everything, reserved to God, and only them, in Platonic-Christian tradition, as opposed to secular understandings, like with love and justice, that are mere approximations to eternity.

This secularized ground is where Shadow of Mordor operates in and offers endless battles towards toppling the ruler of Middle-earth. Here, the cycle of life and death is made transparent by a black screen that follows the protagonist’s death and precedes its reanimation. Cause leads to the same effect of overwhelming darkness. But what meaning can be derived from this gap between life and death when life returns with vengeance to transcend the death of loved ones through the death of enemies to death of its own that returns in life as death? Transcendence. It is to combat death with death in an attempt to bring forth life with one negation after another in hopes that a series of negations will succeed, even though life always follows death, as it is eternal in Shadow of Mordor.

To bring forth transcendence, negation and its multiples cannot suffice, so more operations are brought forward. The shadow is one attempt of splitting the homogeneous darkness of death, but it turns out to be a mere substitution of one eternal concept to another that remains incommensurate with eternity. Consider how the antagonist of Middle-earth uses the shadow of Mordor to manipulate the shadowy figure who deceives the protagonist through the shadows. By using deception as an operative mode of the shadow, its conceptual meaning of the unknown is merely substituted with the homogeneous conception of deception. To wit, Sauron, the ruler of Middle-earth deceives Celebrimbor, who takes the form of a shadow to deceive Talion, the game’s protagonist, who deceives the population of Middle-earth. This reference to intent with the notion of deception is misleading, because if someone is deceived in relation to something, then they cannot deceive in relation to the same thing they are deceived about as it is hidden from them. That is, if Sauron deceives in order to come back to life, and Celebrimbor deceives to prevent the resurrection of Sauron, then Celebrimbor cannot be deceived about Sauron’s intent, otherwise they are not deceived, nor can Talion be deceived about Sauron as his intent is hidden from him by Celebrimbor who deceives. Thus each character can only be deceptive about something else or deception itself, that is, what this conception entails. Since the motif of shadow returns with each character in different shades which we’ve related to deception, we may see that they can only be categorically different, which leaves us to have a look at what this conception entails.

To do this, we should return to the idea of transcending life and death with a conception approximating eternity we’ve called eternal. Sauron and Celebrimbor are portrayed as persons without bodies who are capable of affecting matter. The body-mind duality is mapped onto the duality of life and death where each category is true and untrue if one considers them according to set properties. This mode of conceptualization is rather limiting but necessary for clarifying what the idea of the shadow entails. Because through a conception that we’ve called deception, each character has been imbued with its double, which makes the pairs of Sauron-Celebrimbor and Celebrimbor-Talion. We shall consider the latter, as the game allows us to embody this double.

But first, we shall think about the Cartesian double that looks at the category of human, splits it to mind and body to have a closer look at what it is to be human. Shadow of Mordor proposes something similar if we consider that Celebrimbor and Talion intertwine to reveal something about one thing, be it human, eternity or deception. If dualistic thought starts with something preconceived, which it splits for analysis, then we shall consider the earliest motifs in the game. Shadow of Mordor begins with murder, followed by the murdered’s resurrection through the entwinement with another person. A shadow is a part of Celebrimbor which then becomes part of Talion as well by the entwinement. One thing affects another. The cause in our case is death, and life is its effect. Being is the preconceived category that when split to life and death tells us about being in dualistic thought. The connection between Celebrimbor and Talion then tells us about life and death, where the latter is transcended by the entwinement with another person. One person affects another when they are (being) together. Like the notion of love with Talion and his family, that persists even after their death, which makes being transcendent to the duality of life and death.

The Celebrimbor-Talion duality may be characterized as such, since they remain intertwined even after death. But this togetherness is sustained by a curse that is transcendental to life and death, as they return to life after death that isn’t like life, because it ceases to be sustained by the permanence of death that makes life what it is. Talion then desires his own death in the hope of breaking the curse and being with his loved ones. But both the curse and love define being while being transcendental to it. This cannot be true at once, because a part (curse or love) cannot lay inside (as definite part of it) and outside (as transcendental idea) of the whole (being). Thus the desire appears to contain a metaphysical thought where meaning is derived from life and death, as well as ideas transcendental to this duality. Characterizing curse as transcendental idea to being that’s temporal in allowing to reach true transcendence in the form of love, expresses the same idea of eternity that’s derived from the duality of life and death, where death expresses a gap between life and afterlife, a kind of temporality between eternal life. Which, as we’ve shown before, remains to be lacking in the face of eternity.

This conception of the double may be characterized according to the aforementioned idea of splitting, that instead of substituting eternity with ideas that conceptualize the eternal, approaches it from the other way around, that is, instead of separating the conception of life, complicates the conception of death.

But there appears to be a third attempt of splitting towards transcendence, one that aims to synthesize multitude of pairs in the omnipresent I. This approach considers the splits as givens, where operations recalculate and recontextualize them in ways that give way to a coexistence of an ideal self. Talion and its double, Celebrimbor, cooperate as one whenever a button press corresponds with the given prompt in combat, and as wielders of capabilities that can only be carried out of one mind and body. Each inhabitant of Middle-earth is seen through the capabilities of Talion-Celebrimbor and may be divided into pairs, like strengths and weaknesses. But this division doesn’t split the orcs of Mordor, but looks at them through the logic of duality, towards its own ideal. No orc exists as an individual agent or a person as double, but as something that the omnipresent I may engage with, who happens to consider the inhabitants according to their capabilities and the logic of the double. A split between these dualities are not possible in a way that desire and its lack, life and its opposite of death, carry out, as a third agent performs the button presses to the fulfilment of an ideal. This figure isn’t transcendental, but a category that engages with other categories that move beyond them within this I, that is, the player.

Through this category, one may engage with ideas of transcendence and the eternal, that remains out of reach of true eternity. This lack is transparent in returning through life and death as one, to the omnipresent I as the player, as the character, as an inhabitant of Middle-earth, and as a person behind the player towards the infinite. That is, one may think about living and dying over and over again towards eternity. But these attempts towards it remind us that this idea of an infinite cannot be reached, hence these returns come back to haunt us through life and death, through strengths and weaknesses and concepts solidified from and through them as eternal ideas of a one. Being is transcended to the idea of haunting. One becomes haunted by haunting to be haunted and haunting. Talion and Celebrimbor are haunted and haunting as shadows that haunt them as shadows whenever they are reminded of a return of life and death and the trauma of dying and living. Trauma is haunting and haunted by returning as omnipresence, as if something returns from the outside, suspending eternity, which comes to haunt the inside as an idea that’s eternal. If transcendental thought returns from the inside through the outside, then differentiating one from another becomes impossible by naming, as we would have to differentiate this thought from itself in relation to itself, where this attempt returns it as itself that’s the same and different.

Consider that whenever we refer by the word I, such as with “I believe,” or “I love,” the referent disappears in belief or in love, then returns as itself by being a referent. That the I expresses this is a mere happenstance, as one may substitute this word expressing transcendental thought with haunting, trauma or God that return in thought as concepts that define. By definition, definitions define; I am I, therefore I am. But with these tautologies we merely state what we stated already (the same,) hence we shall affirm difference, such as with “I think, therefore I am,” or ‘I believe, therefore God exists.’ In these examples, thinking brings forth the idea of I, and belief, the idea of God. But how this takes place, remains to be a question that we give answers to, that remains to be unsatisfactory, hence we return to answering, that is preceded by thinking. Which leaves the concept of the player an open question as well, that we may think about when we don’t return to play.