Adam Mathes
AP English 11-13
May 10, 1998

Exegesis

	Some ideas are better experienced than read. Absurdist plays attempt to convey ideas through experience rather than direct words, and the concepts they try to express lend themselves to this alternate form of expression. My final project, "The Meaning of Life: An Interactive Short Story," takes this one step further. Interactive fiction takes "experiencing" a story through a play into actually being in the story. Before there were high powered graphical interactive adventures, there was interactive fiction, a kind of computer game that allowed text adventure games to be used with basic English phrases. This allows the player to control what is going to happen, to an extent. This type of interface allows an author to quite literally put their audience into whatever position they want.
	Before I discuss the actual game, I must explain a little bit about my philosophy on life and its "meaning." Life itself is a game whose ending is predetermined. Death is inevitable; only its time and method are unknown. Life is frustrating; communicating and connecting with others is limited by language, and the things we want to do are not always possible. Life is lonely; no matter what connection you make with people, in the end only you are responsible for your life and decisions. Additionally, life is filled with annoyances that you can not get rid of. The meaning of life is not readily apparent, nor is it obvious that life, a biological and cosmological rarity, even has "meaning."
	This type of cynical, annoying existence is what I tried to convey in my work. The game begins in a clearing, specifically a remake of the clearing in Waiting for Godot, complete with a rock and a tree that unexplainably sprouts leaves. The tree is initially barren, but if you leave the area and reenter it, the tree blooms. Similar to Waiting for Godot, this action casts doubt on the absoluteness of time and perception. The rock has two things on it, an inscription and a piece of paper. The inscription is both joke and serious statement, "Godot wasn't here." Whatever Godot is interpreted as, the hope he or it represented never came. This furthers the concept of hopelessness and loneliness.
	The sheet of paper floats down and lands on the rock as the game begins. The paper, if examined, says, "THINGS TO DO IN MATHESIA: A checklist for those in pursuit of the meaning of life." It contains a list of many things to do, but none of them can be performed. There is no "help" in the game of life, the answer to the question of "what to do?" does not fall from the sky. The only purpose of the paper is to confuse and annoy the player. Whatever happens in the game, the player must figure it out for himself.
	Death is inevitable, after a certain number of moves the player dies, or the player can be killed a number of other ways before that. The inevitable death is caused by a falling anvil crushing the player. It does not really make sense on a logical level, but in the alternate world of cartoons that I find so interesting, it is perfectly logical. Death can also be triggered by choosing one of two paths in the game and following it to its logical conclusion.
	Within the game there are two basic paths. The choice is between embracing the nothingness of the void, or finding an entrance to the Tower of Meaning at the top of the mountain. Obviously, these two paths are symbolic of a choice between looking for meaning in life or embracing nothingness. If the player follows the bridge to nothing into the void, then after a few turns in the void he falls asleep. Then he dies. If the player climbs the mountain to the tower of meaning, solves the puzzle to open the tower door, just as he is about to enter the tower, he dies. Regardless of what path the player chooses, the same thing happens: an anvil falls on him and he dies. This is central to the premise of the game: whether one chooses to embrace traditional ideas of the importance of the search for meaning, or to shun it in favor of emptiness, he will meet the same ending: death.
	The game also contains characters the player can interact with. The parrot, an incarnation of Shakespeare, is ever present in the game. He is annoying, and continually spouts random Shakespeare quotations. There is nothing the player can do to get rid of him and his squawking. Other people in the game are representations of characters in pieces of literature. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the characters of Stoppard, not Shakespeare. The continually flip heads, and they drop a coin. The player can flip the coin, and it continually turns up heads as well. They are their clueless selves, and it is possible to almost play the question game with Rosencrantz. Guildenstern is generally hurried since he must answer the royal summons.
	Mersualt, from Camus's The Stranger, is also present in the game. He is completely apathetic, and although you can get some response from him, there is no way to really understand him. You can have brief conversations, but that is all. He does not attempt to help or aid the player. At the tower is the orator from Ionesco's The Chairs. He speaks gibberish to whatever the player asks him about. This, obviously, makes communication difficult. However, true communication is always difficult. The orator is the only character that can actually help the player. If you ask him about the tower, door, or key, he will give you a golden key to the tower. This gold key does not fit the lock, which should make the player less hopeful. After climbing a mountain to find the tower of meaning, they can't even get in. However, if they are truly persistent, and ask the man about the key again, he will laugh and give him the correct key to unlock the door. Of course, this leads to the same death sequence.
My game attempts to make people think about the absurdity of existence and life. Why do people search for the meaning of life? As Guildenstern responds if you ask him about life, "Why does life have to have meaning?" If we knew what the meaning was, what then? By being annoying and leading the player to the same inevitable end, the depressing short interactive story, "The Meaning of Life" mirrors life itself.