Husband, writer, hero and anti-hero, deus ex machina of himself: Alan Wake is probably one of the most complex and multifaceted characters born from the mind of Sam Lake. He is a man whose story has neither a beginning nor an end, neither an above nor a below. “It’s not a loop. It’s a spiral“, he will exclaim during a scene in Alan Wake II, suggesting that perhaps there could be an end (here is the review of Alan Wake 2). Given its postmodern nature – attributable to a literary genre very dear to Sam Lake – it would be simplistic to analyze Wake with traditional methods. The writer is a character within a character, aware that he is reciting a script with its own life and will. We are like the dreamer, who dreams and then lives within dreams / Don’t wake the dreamer, if your life is a dream.
We want to talk to you about this man whose travels between two worlds have been branded in the minds of users in this appointment with our Biographies column(here the Biographies special dedicated to Arthur Morgan).
Husband, writer
Just before his life became a real waking nightmare, Alan is an internationally renowned writer specialized in the thriller genre. In New York he meets the woman who will later become the woman of his life: Alice. Although the man’s personality makes coexistence between the two difficult, the marriage seems to work. The spouses support each other, despite the writer’s depressive phases putting the young photographer’s patience to the test. In any case, the love between the two seems to compensate for our protagonist’s shortcomings.
What seemed like an inexhaustible well of ideas, it soon turns into a black, barren hole: words, images and concepts seem to have abandoned Alan Wake’s mind, now deprived of his most precious tool: imagination. How to cure writer’s block? Alice has a plan and wants to take Alan to a clinic in the mountains of Bright Falls. Neither of them, however, could imagine that the Dark Presence was waiting for them. She had been waiting there for years, hoping that someone with the right skills would help her pierce the veil that separated her from the real world.
The Presence captures Alice, and Alan, like a moth to a flame, immediately runs to his aid, unaware that he has fallen into his trap. To remedy the situation, he is forced to do what made him famous: write a story.
Not just any story, but the most horrifying ever. Despite the conflicts and misunderstandings, the love that Alan feels towards his wife Alice is absolute, and it will be precisely this love that awakens him from his torpor (here is the review of Alan Wake Remastered).
Hero, antihero
Ironically, Alan finds himself facing what was his greatest fear as a child: the darkness. The slow and inexorable descent into darkness becomes for the writer the opportunity to face his deepest anxieties, in a nightmare that will last thirteen years. Despite the commitment, effort, anger and pain, no story seems to work. Alan seeks salvation on the typewriter keys, but the ending is the same and the darkness is increasingly oppressive. “This isn’t the story I was hoping for. It’s not the ending I wanted. This story will eat us alive. This story is a monster. And monsters have many faces“.
The Darkness is a place outside of time and space, where one’s fears take shape: thus Graffio was born, doppelgänger of Alan Wake. What is Graffio? He is the antithesis of the writer, a concentration of pure evil dedicated to violence. No, there’s more: the doppelgänger represents Alan’s dark half, and it is only by defeating him that the author will be able to free himself from his inner demons. Scratch was not “born” from nothing, has always been part of Wake’s psyche, has always pushed him towards the bottom of the barrel, leading him to hurt those around him. “We wrote it! Our history! Our finale! Our book! We are one! We were made for each other!“
How to save yourself, if you are a prisoner and a jailer at the same time? We need to experiment with new formulas, mess up the equation, try new genres.
Horror, thriller, comedy, musical, weird, hard boiled. Once you have found the genre, you need to put together the story and find the right character. “His name is Saga Anderson“.
Deus Ex Machina of himself
If the first chapter can be summarized as the story of a man who tries to save his wife, with Alan Wake II the matter becomes more complicated. After trying numerous times to escape from the Dark Place, the writer reaches a bitter conclusion: there is no story capable of saving him, so the only solution is to stop writing. No more characters, subplots or plot twists; the Dark Place seems to leave no escape for anything or anyone. The only hope is that the story, in one way or another, decides to end independently, without external interference. However, the risk of being stuck in the Dark Place for eternity is too high.
A place so threatening that it attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Control: what is the Dark Place? What are the laws that determine its existence? Can it be controlled? Can it be understood? But above all: where does the story written by Wake begin and where does it end? Are we in the field of hyperstition? By whom and when was the first page of this horror story written? “How many writers does it take to finish a story? One for each draft. It’s the same writer, but in a different time“.
Thirteen years pass, the world almost seems to have forgotten about Alan Wake. Almost, in fact: the FBI suspects that the writer is connected to a series of murders that occurred between New York and Bright Falls, but how is this possible? A question that will haunt detectives Alex Casey and Saga Anderson for the duration of the investigation. While the two agents delve into the writer’s past, a dark premonition takes hold in their minds: the Wake deal may be bigger than it seemsand there are still many aspects of the story that still need to be shed light on.
As a good writer, Alan chooses the perfect protagonist for his horror story: FBI agent Saga Anderson. Who better than her could solve the case and save him from the nightmare? This is a cliché that is perfectly functional to the story. “In a horror story, there are only victims and monsters,” but who are the victims and who are the monsters?
Return
Saga is not just an FBI agent, a heroine; she is first and foremost a mother who, despite herself, finds herself involved in events much bigger than herself. For the story to work, Anderson must be willing to sacrifice something in exchange for safeguarding the world: her daughter. Alan involves Saga in the story, but by doing so he puts the agent’s family at risk, who are therefore forced to save the writer. Do ut des.
Like pawns on a chessboard, the characters in the story follow the script written by a supreme authority, which in turn fights against an infinitely greater power. Alan’s is a thankless but necessary task, and the actors involved must be prepared to leave something behind. In short, a happy ending is not guaranteed.
The author’s only luck is that he has spent enough time in the Dark Place to understand its logic and how it works: everything is planned down to the smallest detail, from the paragraphs to the commas that make up the script. Alan not only fights to free the world from the Dark Presence, but also for himself and for the people he loves. Drowning in the dark sea that makes up the Dark Place, the writer had the opportunity to redeem himself and face his own demons, the same ones that for years had jeopardized his sentimental and working life.
The Champion of Light calls together his allies to put an end to the tale of tales: Saga Anderson, Alex Casey, Tim Breaker, Rose Marigold, Odin, Tor, Thomas Zane and many others. Without realizing it, he transforms the entire world into a blank page on which to give life to friendships, betrayals and transdimensional plots, in the hope of ending the longest battle ever: that between light and darkness. “And so, I returned. With me, I carry the torch of knowledge. The light, the illuminated miracle. The master of two worlds. No. The master of many worlds“.
The story of Alan Wake, for the moment, ends here. Others are waiting to be written, told, and who knows what role the characters from the Remedy universe will play in these stories.
