Binding of Isaac is of course a fantastic game. One of the reasons it’s attracted attention has been its focus on religion. The usage of devil and angel imagery, the way that Isaac’s mother intends to sacrifice her own son, and the fact that even Isaac seems to believe in the religion that is responsible for his torment is all poignant.

But there’s something that a lot of people haven’t focused on, and that’s the game’s discussion of abuse.

Sure, a lot of people have pointed out how daring it is that the game features prominently not only the obvious aspect of Mom trying to sacrifice Isaac but also the subtle signs of abuse throughout the game like the fact that health-increasing pickups include dog food.

The really fascinating thing, though, isn’t Isaac’s abuse. It’s how Isaac fights.

The enemies in Binding of Isaac are often pitiful. They’re swollen. They’re nasty. They spit flies. They’re crying, or have mad grins on. They’re sickly and green. They have sores and rashes.

A lot of the game does have a juvenile sensibility: There’s omnipresent references to poop and urine. I personally have spent more time than I’d care to admit shooting tears into the classic cow-pie “Plop!” shape so that I could get coins that are occasionally hidden in the poop. Creatures that spit explosives or shoot flies are part of that sensibility.

However, the juvenile sensibility and the pitiful nature of the monsters have a common cause: Isaac is a child, trying to make sense of the abuse.

Adults who have been abused or sexually assaulted often find that the language centers of the brain shut down. They’re trying to put words to the wordless, express the unthinkable. Human beings struggle to understand evil even at a distance, and it turns out that when it’s in our faces, we don’t do any better.

Isaac is crying throughout the entire game. But depending on the powerups you get, your tears become bloody. You can become a demon-winged monstrosity that can cleave through enemies with ease.

See, one of the hardest parts to talk about with abuse is that the victims don’t always come out of it pure and innocent people. In fact, they usually come out angry, sad, and ready to lash out. A lot of the time, they’re able to staunch those instincts. They try their utmost to be the kind people they want to be. They don’t want to replicate the behavior of their abuser.

So Isaac may be shooting tears, but he is striking out at things that are just as pathetic as him. He employs fetuses and other creatures to strike with him. He is lashing out for what he feels is survival, but he is hurting other creatures who seem to be implicitly of the same cloth as him: Products of abuse, violence, disease and neglect.

We have to ask how dysfunctional Isaac’s home was before Isaac’s mother became religious that Isaac knows about abortions and demons, even in the distorted form that he as a child can imagine. We also have to ask about Isaac’s own presentation of his home life. He implies that his home life was largely idyllic. But how can that be? It’s simple: Many victims want to pretend that everything was always okay, that there were just a few bad moments. They don’t want to admit that their home life was basically a crucible rather than a house.

I normally don’t do analysis like this of stories. I don’t find them very illuminating. I think fan theories are generally both infantile and irrelevant. To me, what matters is how a story makes one feel, how it says something about the human condition.

But this interpretation of Isaac is actually vital to understanding what Isaac is about.

The power that the character gets in Isaac, the fact that Isaac himself ends up seemingly killing or at least defeating all of his enemies, shows that Isaac is trapped in a world where the only solution to violence is more violence. In that world, religion becomes an excuse for mutual holy wars and endless reprisals.

In the real world, plenty of people have allowed trauma and abuse to make them into distorted shells of what they once were. They have allowed their empathy to be stunted and their anger to grow.

Binding of Isaac is great art because it exposes us to that problem, nakedly, and doesn’t give us a solution.

Of course, children like Isaac can get the help they need, whether they do it as children or when they grow up to be whatever kind of adults they can muster being. There are policy changes to be made, and there are ways we all individually can make sure that we support people to be better.

But at least when we play Binding of Isaac, we’re reminded that the problem exists. We’re reminded that, as much as we may empathize with the victim of abuse, they can themselves become abusers. And that’s vital if we want to see a better tomorrow.