Talking Ico: Part 2 - Companions - Video Game Chat Fansite

3. THE CHILDREN ARE NECESSARY COMPANIONS.

By that I mean they are companions by necessity. They both want to escape from the fortress, and neither can do it alone. Each suffers from limitations that make escape an impossibility. Since their predicament is in the form of a prison--in other words restriction of movement--their limitations too naturally have to do with mobility. The boy cannot pass through the idol gates which the girl can open. She cannot negotiate certain terrains which he can. What is more, she will be captured by the wraiths if left undefended, and he will be petrified once she has been claimed. Someone on the net said of the situation "If you die, she dies. If she dies, you die." That about sums up the arrangement. In a biologist's book this would be called symbiosis, and in a sociologist's, partnership or alliance, but I prefer to call it simply companionship. After all it is not as if the two of them sat down and discussed the rotten fix they are in and came to the mutual understanding that since they seem to complement each other's handicaps they might as well stick together. For them the symbiotic arrangement is essentially a happy coincidence. (On the storyteller's part it was of course a deliberate choice.) Ico decides to take the girl with him while he is ignorant of her ability. They are companions before they become cooperators.

C. S. Lewis, whom I recently began reading and who is fast becoming my favorite author, wrote a slim wonderful volume on the nature of love titled THE FOUR LOVES. The four loves are Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity. The companionship between our protagonists falls under Friendship by Lewis' estimation. Writing of Friendship he opined "Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest." He meant that the chief concern of lovers is themselves, that is, each other--but friends come together when there is something outside of themselves in which they take a shared interest. Hence lovers are always looking at each other while friends are side by side looking at, and moving towards, that other thing. In short a friendship needs to be about something, be it a hobby, a taste in music, a political vision or a profession.

Therefore Friendship according to Lewis--between true bosom buddies, not just any "friendly" acquaintances--typically forms when a person looks at another and says "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." This fully applies to the children. Left to die, Ico doubtlessly thought himself quite abandoned. In the mysterious girl he has found not only an age peer but a fellow prisoner. The moment he recognizes her as such the thought of parting becomes unbearable; it would mean returning to total solitude. And I do not mean unbearable just for him; it becomes unbearable for us also. We recognize at once that these two are in a common plight, that they are a match, that they ought to be together. The need to reclaim the captured girl is not mere male heroism, you see. Certainly there is a good deal of "rescue the damsel in distress" mentality in play. But that is not the part of our imagination the game appeals most to. If it were, I doubt very many thoughtful female players would have enjoyed it. What it really appeals to is our desire to get back to a friend--the desire to banish the horrible solitude which her absence has imposed upon us.

One more observation, and I have done with this segment. As we make progress and solve more puzzles, the two children's respective roles become clearly defined. We come to categorize in our heads the list of things the boy can and cannot do, and likewise for the girl. But she is a curious creature. In appearance she is elegant and full of natural grace, but sometimes she acts as if she has not quite got all her wits about herself. It becomes increasingly evident that her limited prowess is more than a case of feminine frailty. She is not only weak; she is timid--not only inept; helpless. She seems to be unacquainted with the very notion of fending for herself. And she continues to demonstrate her ignorance about the castle which has been mentioned earlier; she makes for the most part no contribution to clearing paths, leaving it as Ico's burden to figure all out. The castle--presumably her home--is just as baffling to her as it is to him. Only, he has the facility to tackle it and she apparently does not. And all the while the curious fact is that she is the older of the two if looks mean anything. Ico is a little boy and behaves like one. The girl on the other hand is on her way to womanhood but not half as resourceful as her diminutive companion. He acts his age. She does not. By all logic she, who is older and has spent more time inside the castle walls, ought to be the sensible one who figures things out for them both. Yet Ico has to look after her and lead her by hand as though she were his little sister in this somewhat lopsided, though indissoluble, partnership. Why?

I am not going to answer that just yet. We need to learn more about the girl before accounting for her character, and we have not got that far into the story. In the next part we will look at the first appearance of you-know-who.