Released for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1993, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening begins when the fantasy-adventure series’ protagonist, Link, shipwrecks on mysterious Koholint Island, which is crowned by an egg housing the slumbering Wind Fish. Koholint’s population of human and animal citizens reside in peace, until Link’s arrival panics the nightmares and monsters who cursed the Wind Fish to eternal sleep. Learning a song of awakening from the village girl Marin, Link traverses Koholint and retrieves eight magical instruments from its various caverns in order to awaken the Wind Fish. However, during his journey, Link discovers that the Wind Fish’s dreams have manufactured Koholint. After Link revives the Wind Fish, the island and its inhabitants vanish. Link then discovers himself stranded on the ocean, floating on a piece of driftwood while the Wind Fish soars overhead.
Drawing extensively from the shipwreck and high fantasy genres, Link’s Awakening poses the same ethical question explored in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk from Omelas.” That is, the game designers and Le Guin challenge a utilitarian morality that justifies the incarceration and torture of a single figure, if that punishment generates a utopian idyll for every other citizen. In this paper, I contend that Link’s Awakening complicates Le Guin’s thought experiment by asking if such suffering safeguards against apocalyptic events—like plagues, rebellion, or the erasure of Koholint Island. Adopting the role of Link, the game’s player then faces the dilemma of whether to wake the dreamer or preserve the society, an ethical quandary with an inevitably negative outcome. To present this case, this paper draws—like Le Guin—from the work of Freud and William James on dreams, and supplements the analysis with recent theories of attachment, like those advanced by Lauren Berlant and Sara Ahmed.
About the presenterPatrick Thomas Henry
Patrick Thomas Henry is the Associate Editor for Fiction and Poetry at Modern Language Studies. His fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Fiction Southeast, Souvenir Lit, Passages North, Clarion, and others. His essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from European Romantic Review, Response, Massachusetts Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and others. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Dakota. You can find him online at patrickthomashenry.com or on Twitter @Patrick_T_Henry.