Blog 7: Cybil as a motherly character in the game Silent Hill

[This will be my late post for the semester.]

As a foil to Dahlia Gillespie, the character of the police officer Cybil Bennett is a vehicle of benevolent motherhood throughout the game's plot. From the beginning, Cybil vows to be an active part in Harry's search for his daughter. In one of the moments that decides the game's ending, Cybil has just agreed to go alone to the Amusement Park on Dahlia's strange warning that she must get there before Alessa does. As Harry, the player must travel to the park to find her, and upon doing so she appears glassy-eyed and drugged and stands up to aim her gun at Harry, triggering a boss fight. Stripped of her character, Cybil becomes one of the many forces assailing the father in his search for his daughter: another monster. At this point, the player may choose to use the “red liquid” on her, triggering a cut-scene in which Cybil keels over and vomits a worm-like, seemingly parasitic embryo. Now purged of this creature, Cybil is conscious again. As Harry acts as an impediment to Dahlia's “plans,” the turning of Cybil against him creates not only adversity but insult; a character who has consistently devoted herself to the search for an endangered child is not only negated but reversed in intention, suddenly a danger to Cheryl's last hope of being rescued from the hell-world of Silent Hill and Dahlia's obscure plots. Her possession is represented by a parasite, which draws intriguing connections between the motivating forces of the monster-Cybil and that of the plot's ultimate evil-doer: Dahlia Gillespie, acting ferociously on her religious devotions to the point that she abandons her compassionate instincts as a mother. One can further examine the physical similarities between the parasite that possesses Cybil and the wriggling growths on the backs of the possessed nurses in the hospital; the hospital was a key part in hiding the terrible abuse Dahlia exerted on her daughter as part of her “plan.”

If Cybil is saved rather than killed, the player is treated to a cut-scene in which Harry explains to her that he is not Cheryl's biological father, but took her as his daughter when he and his late wife found her on the side of the road. He concludes that he will not give up his search for her, and Cybil promises to help him until the end. Perhaps one of the most powerful details pertaining to these characters' sense of parenthood is the unconditional treatment they give it; their parenthood is undefined by genetics, whereas Dahlia's seems only to be a condition of genetics. In Cybil's case, the lack of condition is even stronger, as she has never even met Cheryl, yet gives motherly devotion to saving her life. Here is a concrete point of distinction between the motherly archetype of Cybil and that of Dahlia, who is Alessa's biological mother.