i continue. to lose my fucking mind over this game. so now it's time for close readings of all the poems on the This House of Dreams blog wheeee let's make use of my english degree

spoilers ABOUND and are unspoilered beneath the cut




context: i am fond of the theory that AW2!Zane is actually AWAN Mr Scratch, it makes too much sense! so that may play into my readings of these poems


Typed poem can be found here

Okay, let's begin with the first stanza. People have already talked about the parallels between this and Scratch's song in AW2, 'Dark, Twisted, & Cruel', but I'm gonna do it again!

We pillage and whore
Hauling our loot

is very clearly directly linked to the middle bit of DTC:

I pillage and murder, hauling my loot

although apparently Scratch does not get to fuck. No whoring for Scratch! Only murder.

Followed immediately in both works by

We swagger down alleys
We don't say please
The town is burning (Poem 1)

I swagger down the alley, I don't say please
The town is burning while you beg for mercy (DTC)

Broadly similar, but there's a distinct shift towards the end. For Zane's poem (as I'll refer to it, whether or not it really is), "we set it in flame" (emphasis mine). However, in DTC, the implication is that Scratch set the fire - a much more hostile approach. Zane's poem could be read as a literal arson, or a more metaphorical sense - note the additional lines "We are the fire/That's gone out in your eyes". DTC, on the other hand, reads to me as a much more explicit arson - you are begging for mercy, I swagger.

Which is another difference between the two - DTC always uses I. Zane's poem always uses we. Who is that we? We don't know - possibilities might be Zane & Barbara Jagger (his lover, whose death triggered the release of the Dark Presence (allegedly??)), or perhaps Zane & Emil Hartman (who did work with him, and whose influence we see in later poems)... or, and hear me out here. What if the 'we' is the Zane/Alan/Scratch trifecta? I don't actually have much to support that idea right now, it's just a vibe, but I like it.

Moving on to additional lines in Zane's poem - "We are the fire/That's gone out in your eyes". Here, I'm actually going to draw parallels to a different song - Wide Awake, the AW2 chapter song that many people think represents Alan & his escape from the Dark Place. I want to draw attention here to a particular line - "Blinding lights/Burning eyes". And, too, to a line from Herald of Darkness - "Of the fire you're bearing, the eye of the darkness, your light". There's a clear theme here - eyes, light, fire. And let's not forget what happens at the end of AW2, and that recurring image in AW2 - Alan shot by the bullet of light, that single glowing circle in his forehead. A third eye, perhaps, certainly as interpreted by plenty of amazing fanartists. A glowing, burning eye.

...And now's the part where I point out that this entire stanza has been crossed out. Whoops. I'll go into more about the physicality of the poem later. For now, let's move to the second stanza.

There's a clear theme in this stanza of decay, corruption, rot. All of that decay, though, is coming at the hands of nature - and it's destruction primarily of humanity, of human creations. Maggots gnaw at the heels; rain falls through a hole in the ceiling; the house is riddled with ants that are consuming it. And yet again, we have parallels with DTC:

I'm in the rain, trickling down
I'm the sickness of this town
I'm the ants inside your walls

Whilst that second line doesn't directly tie to Zane's poem, it's a continuation of the theme of decay. The first and third lines, again, are taken almost directly from Zane's poem - the primary difference is, yet again, the 'I' instead of 'we'. Which, whilst I'm thinking about it, can also tie in to Scratch's lines in AW2 - "this is my story", "give me the Clicker" etc. AW2 Scratch is very much focused on what he wants, there's no 'we' involved. AW2 Scratch sees himself as a distinct, individual being in many ways - whilst also not being one. But that's a topic for another meta post!

And the last three lines of this stanza in Zane's poem:

We are the sharp rocks under your knees
In front of the altar
Where you are kneeling

It's the theme of suffering, this time; pain. Pain linked specifically with ritual of some kind - an altar, at which the person is kneeling. This, to me, reflects most particularly Yötön Yö/Nightless Night, Zane's film in AW2 (if it really is Zane). The entire point of the film is the ritual sacrifice of Aleksi Kesa, upon an altar of stone, to bring back Veikko Alen (played, of course, by Tom Zane).

And, if we take the earlier thought of 'we' representing the Alan/Scratch/Zane triad, that brings a connection there. If Alan and the other two are both 'we' and 'you', it links nicely with the overall theme we can see throughout AW2, that Alan is causing his own suffering to a degree. As highlighted by Mr Door later in the game, Alan creates rules for himself when he doesn't need to; he himself is his own worst enemy.

Moving on to the next stanza, let's take the first three lines.

We have no morals
No guilt, no qualms
We don't give a damn

The obvious thing here would be to link once more to Scratch - in particular the Mr Scratch of AWAN, the one who took glee in causing pain and suffering, who relished in harming others. However... there's a difference between immoral and amoral. And to me, that first line reads more like the latter, particularly in combination with the others. To be amoral is to not care about morals, or to not know of them - nature's cruelty, for example, might be described as amoral. In contrast, to be immoral is to know and understand morals, and choose evil - like AWAN Mr Scratch.

But "We don't give a damn" - we don't care. Especially with the earlier links to the natural world, the triumph of natural decay and rot over human creation, I'm inclined to read this part of this stanza as amorality, something inhuman, rather than immorality. The speaker has "no guilt, no qualms" - they regret nothing, they have no doubts about whether they're doing the right thing, no fear of it. Again, to me this points towards amorality, a lack of caring. The speaker, perhaps, is some kind of natural force, something other than human - and this is also an interesting point to consider, later on, in relation to the scratching out of the first stanza.

The sewers are clogged
Filled with waste
The water is rising

My first thought here is actually not linked to Alan Wake, but rather to Control - specifically, to the Clog, Ahti's old nemesis. (Note here that I haven't completed Control yet, so take this bit with an extra pinch of salt). Again, though, we're seeing implications of destruction of human design - the sewers are no longer fulfilling their function, cannot fulfil their function. The water is rising - just as we see in AW2, so many times at Cauldron Lake, when the waters rise and mysteriously recede. We see it, too, in the old bunker where Saga rescues Tor - the water rises steadily as the player/Saga progresses.

We'll make a ship out of
Your naive, broken dreams
And lay siege to your sanctuaries

This part is a little more complicated - it doesn't easily tie to or parallel anything, not in the same way as the rest of the poem thus far. We could, however, read the "naive, broken dreams" as perhaps dreams of escape from the Dark Place - both for Alan, and of course for Tom Zane himself, who wrote these poems in the first place. The ship itself could perhaps be seen as the only way to survive this new, flooded world - the water is rising, has risen. The siege to be lain to sanctuaries might link to the dreams; the sanctuaries will be destroyed, just as the dreams have already been.

And let's not forget: the blog all of these poems are drawn from is titled This House of Dreams. Could these, in fact, be the dreams from which the ship is made? Samantha Wells, the woman who bought the titular house and found the shoebox of poems within it, suffers various hardships as a result - her dreams of what the house would become might be the dreams referenced. And then, of course, there's the dreams she writes of in her blog - one of which features Tom the Diver (who may or may not be also Tom the Poet?) telling her of how he and his lover (presumably Barbara) ended up in a pocket universe of sorts, safe even as the Dark and Bright Presences took their bodies. Are these dreams true? Are they a trick? Is it only naiviety on her part - on our parts, perhaps - to believe that this might have happened to Tom and Barbara, after everything?

We are a ravenous horde of rats
We are the fangs and we are the beast

And once again, the 'we' is inhuman, something other. Maggots, rain, ants, rocks, rats, fangs, a beast. The poem's speaker is clearly, at this point, not human - if they ever were, which I doubt. We return again here to the theme of corruption, destruction - a "horde" of rats, wording clearly chosen to represent threat, danger, insurmountable forces of nature. We can link this back to AW2 Scratch, as well - I've seen various comments on how much more animalistic, how much more inhuman, he seems than he did in AWAN. In AWAN he was suave, sharply-dressed; the 'charming serial killer' archetype. In AW2, he hardly speaks, and his speech is growled, snarled, demands, none of the charm of AWAN Mr Scratch. If we see him, following the parallels drawn between DTC and Poem 1, as the speaker of the poem - the "beast" - this makes more sense. Whether or not they are the same character (I have my doubts), AW2 Scratch is not human; he's something other than human. Something, perhaps, closer to the Dark Presence itself. Or, you might also argue, he's very human; he's the part that many people don't like to think about, the animalistic, instinctual, angry part of humanity that gets buried down deep.

And at last, we come to the final stanza.

There will be no more admiring gazes
No more courtesies
No more gardens in spring
We are the rising waste
And you will be a drowned king

There's a lot to unpack here. Let's remember the end of AW2 - the Eternal Deerfest. Everyone adores Alan Wake, and by extension, Scratch. He is the centre of the universe; he is admired.

But, warns this stanza, he will not be. Not when things are done; not when it's all over, and the speaker (perhaps Scratch; perhaps the Dark Presence itself) has taken over. The admiration, the courtesies, will all be gone.

As for gardens in spring... There's a few ways to try and interpret this. "Spring" is perhaps a veiled link to Night Springs, the TV show, but perhaps not. The simplest explanation is maybe just this: there will be no more gardens in spring because there will no longer be a spring. Deerfest takes place in September; Deerfest is eternal. And, too, if the world is consumed by the darkness, by Scratch - there will be no more springs.

Yeah, this one is kinda flimsy lmao

The rising waste, however, calls back to that third stanza - is this the same waste filling the sewers? Perhaps. If so, the implication is that the waters have risen sufficiently that they've taken the waste with them - the waters now are toxic, dangerous, if they weren't already. Yet again we see these themes of decay, corruption, destruction.

And at last, the final line. I want to draw your attention here to the dance moves in Herald of Darkness - yes, really. Roughly around the time the line "I'll show you the Herald of Darkness" is sung, the dance incorporates a movement which looks very much like someone crowning themselves. That suggests, perhaps, that either Alan or Scratch - can we really distinguish between the two? - is the drowned king. Trapped beneath Cauldron Lake, the lake that is not a lake but an ocean - it would be easy to call that drowned.

But then there's also the question of Zane. Zane the Diver, Zane the Poet. The first person to drown in the lake - the first in the storyline, that is - is Barbara Jagger, Zane's lover. And the second is Zane himself, casting himself and what is left of Jagger into the lake, drowning them both upon realising the thing he brought back was not Barbara Jagger. Is he, perhaps, the drowned king?

I have no answers, only more questions. Hashtag Remedy Games mood.

Let's take a moment now to examine the physical appearance of the poem. This poem, uniquely amongst the poems found within the shoebox, has been torn up in a very deliberate way, as though the poet rejected it, didn't want to see it, to face what they had created. Torn into quarters, and yet in such a way that it hardly obscures any of the poem - not shredded to hide what was written. Perhaps torn apart in a moment of anger, of frustration? We don't know enough of Tom the Poet to say.

The first stanza, as noted earlier, has been crossed out - scratched out, one might say. This stanza also seems to be the one where the speaker is the most human of all the stanzas - after this stanza, the theme of the poem shifts to inhumanity, something Other. Perhaps this was an incident of the poet changing his mind on how the poem ought to be upon completion?

Yet again, we are left with more questions than answers.