SPOILER ALERT: this series contains plot details for the game.

If you haven’t seen them yet, check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this series now.

In case you have no idea what’s going on, this is the third and final installment of WIAN, my analysis of the game Her Story. So far, we’ve talked about the title of the game, the names of the main characters, and their sisterly relationship. In addition to Hannah and Eve, many other characters in the game share names with figures from history or mythology, which is what I want to look as we wrap up today. Watch the video below or keep reading for more.

Florence, the midwife who steals and raises Eve, shows similarities to Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War who also had an interest in writing.

Simon is the name of the apostle later called Peter in the New Testament.The name Simon means “he has heard,” and in the end his character doesn’t just bear witness to Hannah and Eve’s story, his death allows it to be shared.

When Hannah gets pregnant, Simon wants to name the baby ‘Ava,’ but Hannah refuses. She doesn’t want her daughter to have a symmetrical name and be plagued by the same issues of identity and reflection as she and her sister were. She wants to name the baby Sarah, another biblical name.

The Orson Scott Card novel Sarah describes the events that befall Abraham and Sarah in Genesis from Sarah’s point of view, expanding the few sentences they get in the bible to 300 pages. Eve’s interviews do a similar thing for her life and that of her sister.

After the events of the game, Eve’s child is named Sarah, as we know from the chat messages that appear on the database computer. The player watches the videos alongside Sarah, to learn ‘why her mother did what she did.’

Reflection, Representation, and Storytelling

In her interviews, Eve often connects her life to fairy tales she read in books growing up. She even calls her final interview ‘a real life fairy tale.’ For her, growing up across the road from Hannah, Hannah’s life was what hers was supposed to look like, what she read about in books. So she cut her hair like Hannah’s, moved like Hannah, and eventually lived not just with Hannah, but as Hannah.

Many women feel compelled to look, dress, and act like the characters they learn about as children, the women they see on television or in movies. They are princesses or evil witches, good or bad seeds, and they provide archetypes after which girls are expected to model their own lives. Girls are set up to compete with their sisters to be the prettier or more likeable one, to perform womanhood more perfectly, because only then can they receive their fairy tale ending or their blessing from God.

These ideas of what makes someone a successful girl, what makes them the hero of their own story, are passed down from generation to generation in stories we tell and books we read. We learn them from such a young age that it can be difficult to remember they’re only stories

As time went on, both Hannah and Eve realized that aspects of living as one person didn’t feel good. That it limited them, made it difficult for each to be her authentic self. When Eve finally lets go of being one with Hannah, she embraces her individuality, getting a tattoo and wearing a wig. And when she is ‘herself,’ the man she’d always fawned over falls in love with her, separately from the character she played, and gives her the baby she’d longed for when her sister was pregnant.

Hannah is understandably angry at this turn of events. She was taught that acting a certain way would deliver her happiness and then found out that wasn’t true. She lashes out, and although she may not have intended to, she kills Simon.

But Eve doesn’t condemn Hannah or blame her. She protects her because in the end, neither of them is a ‘villain’ or a ‘damsel,’ and they aren’t in competition with one another. By telling her story, Eve liberates not just herself, but also her sister and her daughter, from these boxes. As Eve is giving her last interview to the detectives, Hannah is escaping the police and her past.

Each of the women in the story sheds the skin of her namesake and embraces her flawed, fully realized self. And as we play the game, we learn to let go of a little bit of our own preconceptions. To question the stories we tell ourselves.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this analysis, you might like my review of GTFO The Movie or my analysis of the Mass Effect Trilogy.