Bioshock 2: TheState and the Family

So I've finished Bioshock 2 yesterday and being the goody-paragon-hero of the Mass Effect series, I came to the "good" ending. The game overall was great and I found it an improvement from the first one. However this isn't a review of how good the game is. Rather, I'm gonna put my two cents into the game's underlying message.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!

Bioshock 2 really is the story of how family interacts with the state and vice versa. The father daughter bond is explored as it is tested by the interests of a community ( represented by Sophia Lamb). It tries to answer the question "Does the state have a role in the family?". I personally think that the game tries to remove the state from that question and replaces it with the notion of love. This can be deduced by exploring the relationship between Subject Delta and Eleanor throughout the game.

All In the Family

The connection of the big daddy to his little sister forges a bond that is both physica, emotional and in a sense spiritual. Once the big daddy dies, the little sister cries in mourning of the loss of her guardian. If the little sister dies the big daddy assigned to it dies as well.

Subject Delta was a special case as he was the first big daddy created for the first little sister being Eleanor. Lamb, Eleanor's biological mother, takes her child away from Delta and orders him to kill himself, thus temporarily ruining the bond between the big daddy and the little sister. The nature of this bond was stronger that previously described due to their specification as the first daddy-sister pairing. The connection opened the possibility that Delta would go crazy or fall into a coma once seperated from his little sister as opposed to simply dying.

Once revived, Delta's connection with Eleanor was reestablished. Random telepathic sequences show how Eleanor assists Delta is rescuing her. By the end of the game, her personality becomes similar to the personality the played imposed on the game (dependant on whether you saved the little sisters and the NPCs you could've killed).

Bioshock 2 really touts the idea that the way you treat others can really reflect on those connected to you. In the context of father and daughter, the daughter learns how to be human through her father which brings up the ideas of parenthood and counters it to the utilitarian ideas adopted by Sophia Lamb.

Brainwashed for the Common Good

"To serve the world, we must grow deaf to the self. Are you ready?"- Sophia Lamb

Sophia Lamb is the quinessential utilitarian willing to sacrifice free will and self-interest for the welfare of the world. She is Andrew Ryan's foil as she disregards self-interest for societal interests and therefore praises subjects who perform martyrdom without questioning the interest of the community. She decides to experiment on Eleanor to make her into the model servant, knowledgable of the sufferings of a whole city while having the ability to solve its problems at the expense of Eleanor's free will.

Lamb proposes that free-will is a non-issue in determining what should be done for common good. A really dismal point of view of the human condition. In doing so Lamb does not improve Rapture but rather turns it from an objectivist dystopia to a utilitarian one. The removal of free will doesn't lead to the common good but rather the worst in commonality. Agustus Sinclair is the parody of her philosophy...willing to die for Rapture's welfare yet a representative of the state of Rapture....out of control. The game however does not leave the player without giving an explaination on how to ameliorate the conflict between societal interests.

What's Love Got to Do With It

Returning to the connection between the Delta and Eleanor, Bioshock proposes that the common good cannot be achieved by the removal of free will but through the free will. As mentioned before, the player is given the choice to kill or save the little sisters he finds as well as Grace Holloway, Stanley Poole and Gil Alexander. Since Eleanor has that bond with Delta, she was able to experience the trials and decisions that he faced; learning from them and adopting them as part of her persona. After Lamb seperates the bond sufficating Eleanor, Delta's death becomes certain by the end of the game.

The Eleanor that the game ends with reflects the Delta that the player created. If he/she killed everyone Eleanor sucks out the ADAM from Delta before he dies in for the sake of her "survival" and self interest. This implies that the world she enters into after escaping Rapture is damned due to her genetic advantages given to her by Lamb's gene splicing and overall nasty personality. However, if Delta showed forgiveness to Holloway, Poole and Alexander and saved the little sister, Eleanor sucks out the ADAM from Delta ending his life yet thanks him for teaching her how to be a good person and is reassured that Delta would be there every step of her life. The game ends in a hopeful note. Delta's compassion is imprinted on Eleanor who has the ability to make the world a better place.

And The Moral of the Story?

This game shows the importance of family as the basic unit of civilization and puts government at a distant place from determining the welfare of society. Sophia Lamb, representing the state aimed to make Eleanor the ultimate tool for the common good at the price of her freedom. However Delta gave her that freedom and well as one thing that can ameliorate the tentions of state and family.

That thing is love. Unless Eleanor can understand how to love (via the player making moral decisions), she runs the risk of either losing her humanity for communal welfare or risking communal welfare for her own self interest. Love allows for the individual to decide what actions to take that respect both the interests of society and his/her self-interest. The recognition of both is the center of free will and determining what to act upon is the free will in action.

This poses the game's general thesis on family and state welfare. Kids need to be raised by good parents. Without them, they would be generally deficient in acting on their own for the common good risking the welfare of themselves or society. The state cannot parent children as its interests desires uniformity of individual interests hence a loss in humanity as free will is replaced with mandated communal sympathy (something like taxes for example). Nor can the individual act solely on self interests willing to sacrifice the interests of others for the ego. The individual has to learn how to love and the best way of that happening is through the relationships of parents and children. Just as Delta who made good decisions taught Eleanor how to love, parents need to teach their kids just the same. Love acts in the common good for the sake of one's self interest therefore preserving free will when confronted with the welfare of society.

I know my interpretation is preachy on love....but that's how I see it. If you have a countering claim bring it up in the comment box.