Exploring Girlhood and Trauma Through Fairytales: Walking through ‘The Path’

 

Trigger/ Content Warning: This article has mentions of drinking and smoking, as well as implied assault, abusive relationships, and murder. Please read with caution and take care of yourself. 

On March 18th, 2009, Belgian video game production company Tale of Tales released a new game titled The Path. Inspired by the Red Riding Hood story, the game follows a family of six girls, all tasked with bringing a basket of goods to their grandmother. When you start up the game, you are presented with a choice as to which girl you play as. When you choose your character, you are placed in the middle of a gravel road surrounded by trees. If you follow the instructions, you will make it to your grandmother’s house quickly, enter through the front door, and sit next to your sick grandmother. The game will end and you will be given a failing score. To score anything higher, you must deliberately defy the rules and go off of the path. 

Going off the path leads your character into the winding woods surrounding you. Here you will be able to find an interact with odd items and destinations, specific to each character and their story. We will not touch on the items here, but note that there are eighteen in total, and each girl has special reactions to each one. There are six special locations in which each girl will have their “wolf” encounter. These encounters tell a backstory of the traumatic events each girl has experienced. 

Starting with the youngest, Robin is nine years old. Robin is naive and juvenile, happy to divert from the path and play in the woods. Her wolf encounter is a literal one. She stumbles across and old graveyard where you learn she doesn’t seem to fully understand the idea of death. While playing in the graveyard, Robin spots a werewolf lurking around the graves. Rather than run away in fear, she runs up to him and jumps on him. She is unable to understand that the wolf is a threat to her life. Before the wolf can buck her off of his back, the screen fades to black. 

The scene opens again on Robin’s unconscious body lying in front of her grandmother’s house. Entering the house, you are met with knocked over furniture and claw marks on all the doors. Upstairs you see an upside down crib, in which a bird has built its nest. Past the crib you see a circle of chairs in a room with balloons and presents. In the next room, you are shown an upright bed, covered in what looks like duct tape. Under the tape is something shaped like a human body. At the base of the bed you see a crudely dug grave. When you approach the bed, you will fall into the grave. This will trigger a sequence of images to flash over the screen. An image of the wolf biting at Robin’s red hood, Robin’s face with large claw marks over it, Robin’s upside-down body with a long claw mark across it, a close up of Robin’s twisted legs, and a close up of the wolf’s sharp teeth. 

The next sister, Rose, is eleven years old. Despite her young age, she dresses and acts very mature. Many times throughout the game, she makes mentions of religion, the innocents of animals, and her misguided belief that all of mankind is good. Rose’s wolf encounter occurs when she stumbles up the misty lake. She takes a rickety boat out into the middle of the lake. Her “wolf” is a ghostly figure of a man, made of clouds and light. When he spots Rose, he floats toward her and whisks her up in a cloud of white mist.

When the screen fades back in, Rose is lying in front of her grandmother’s house. When entering, you are immediately met with a spinning ceiling fan placed on the ground. Rain will fall as you walk through the entire house. In the kitchen, there is a pair of pliers on the table. The fridge is ajar and inside appears to be a black mass of something. Up the stairs you are shown an all red bathroom, except for a pristine, white bathtub. The bathroom turns into a long hallway of red sinks and toilet stalls, similar to a public restroom. Leaving the bathroom you see a red desk with a bird cage hanging over head. You continue down a checkered hallway with red doors lining the walls. You are led into a long hallway ending in a bright light. Following the light leads you into a bedroom, which is filled with white mist and spinning rapidly. All the furniture has been torn apart and whipping wildly around the room. This triggers the sequence of images. A picture of Rose’s outstretched arm surrounded by clouds, a close up of Rose’s cloud figure where you can see he seems to have internal organs, a close up of Rose’s head turned up toward the sky, and a blurry image covered in white fog of what could be a rabbit or even Rose herself. 

The third sister, Ginger, is thirteen. She is much more tomboyish than her sisters and prefers playing outside and climbing trees than anything else. She is entering her teenage years but makes it very clear that she is not comfortable with experiencing female puberty or adolescence in general. Ginger’s “wolf” is a girl around her age, wearing a red dress. When Ginger enters a flower field, the girl in red comes up behind her and covers Ginger’s eyes with her hands. The two play around for a bit before laying down in the field, laughing together. The camera pulls away and fades out.

When the camera fades back in, Ginger is alone and laying in the forest. She gets up and walks slowly to her grandmother’s house with her head down. Entering the house, you are shown a relatively normal house with dark red walls. However, everything seems to be covered in a thick, tangled mess of black hair. All the doors have been replaced by barbed wire gates. Up dark some red stairs, and into the attic, we see it is  also tangled with long black hair. You enter a room with two child-sized beds. One is white and the other is a dark red. The player is forced to crawl in the room, where you find that there are toy soldiers and dinosaurs hidden under the red bed. The player walks through the only available door, which leads into a tight hallway with more hair. Through the hallway, you enter a room covered floor to ceiling in bloody mattresses. Bird feathers are spinning around the room like snow. As the player walks forward, they trip over barbed wire and the images begin to flash. We seem an image of Ginger’s legs folded uncomfortable together with barbed wire covering the screen, a close up of the girl in red, Ginger’s neck stretched out with barbed wire around it, the girl in red with her hands covered in barbed wire, and a blurry image of Ginger flailing her arms.

Fourth sister, Ruby, is easily the fan favorite. She is fifteen and has a noticeably emo or mall goth fashion style. She is also wearing a knee brace for the whole game, although it is unclear what happened to her. She has a pessimistic view of life and clearly is battling with her own mental health issues. Ruby’s wolf encounter takes place at an old playground. After playing on the swings for a bit, Ruby walks over to a blonde-haired man on a bench, smoking a cigarette. They seem familiar with each other. He hands her the cigarette, and she takes it without hesitation. The camera zooms out as the two sit side by side.

When you fade back in, Ruby is laying on the ground with her leg bent back in an uncomfortable position. She stands and limps her way to grandmother’s house. Once inside, you see urns sitting on a coffee table. Under the table is a case of beers. In the kitchen there is a knife on the table and more beer in the fridge. The entire house has a dark red hue. Up the stairs, you enter the attic, which is filled with billowing black smoke. Following the smoke leads past a generator room and down a school hallway lined with lockers. Black fog and loose papers swirl around. At the end of the hallway, the camera shifts to the side and you are lead into a school gymnasium. There are large, black tire marks all around the gym floor, walls, and ceiling. A large bird cage drops down next to the player and the door swings open. The player steps inside and is swung across the gymnasium. You swing past a wrecked car producing white smoke. The player falls from the cage and the screen blacks out for a moment. When the screen fades back in, the player crawls out of the gym. You enter a long hallway of boiler room equipment, towards a red door. This door leads into a bed room in which a bed is stuck to a spinning carousel. There is a large metal board slicing through the bed, as well as another hanging overhead. The bed is crushed by the board and the images begin to flash. A close up of Ruby’s face which is shattered like a porcelain doll, Ruby’s unconscious body on the ground with her legs folded unnaturally, a close up on the face of the blonde man from the playground, and a picture of the man’s arm with sickly, gray veins.

The second oldest sister, Carmen, is seventeen. She is very confident and aware of her beauty. She doesn’t like boys her age because she finds them immature and obnoxious. She tends to act much older than she really is because of this. Carmen’s wolf encounter takes place at a campsite. There’s a log cabin, two tents, and a campfire in the center. A middle-age woodsman is cutting down a tree marked with a red ex. When Carmen approaches him, he stops and acknowledges her. She takes his hat and puts it on. He doesn’t argue, instead walks toward the campfire and sits down. Carmen follows. The woodsman hands her a beer, which she accepts, then opens one for himself. The two sit together by the fire and the screen fades to black.

We fade in on Carmen, laying in a heap outside grandmother’s house. She stands, grabs her neck as if it hurts, then continues walking. Once inside, you see that the ceiling fan has been replaced by a large rotating blade. There is a coffee table with red urns sitting atop it. In the kitchen, you see a knife on the table and an open fridge. The door leading out is red, but marked with a white ex. Down some steep red stairs, you are shown an empty swimming pool with wooden chairs and a tree stump at the bottom. By the far wall of the room, there is a stack of matresses with a white rocking chair on top. You leave through a narrow, winding hallway with wood-paneled walls, all marked with red exes. Tree branches begin to grow into the hallway. You enter a room with axes mounted on the wall, and, on the far wall, a large animal head is mounted. When the player approaches the animal head, they will fall through a hole in the floor. This leads into a new hallways. There is a large saw blade on the wall and a path of roaring flames. Past the fire and through a door, you enter a bedroom filled with yellow-ish fog. There is a bed in the center which has a large tree growing from it. Approaching the bed causes the series of images to appear. The woodsman’s face with two axes crossed behind him, an image of the woodsman winding back to strike something with his ax, Carmen on her side with blood dripping from her mouth, Carmen crawling with the outline of flames overlaying the picture, a close up of Carmen’s face with a red ex across it. 

The oldest sister, Scarlet, is only nineteen. With their actual mother seemingly absent, Scarlet has become a mother figure to her younger siblings. She puts aside her dreams so she can support her sisters. She yearns for a life outside of the small apartment she lives in, but with her younger sister being only nine years old, she knows it’ll be a while before she’s truly free. Scarlet’s wolf encounter takes place at the run down theater. She walks to an old piano to play it, when a cloaked figure with long, white hair approaches her. This person instructs her on where to place her hands. The camera then zooms out and the screen fades.

You fade back in with Scarlet struggling to stand on the path outside her grandmother’s house. When she enters, you see that all the furniture in the house had been covered in white sheets. The blades of the ceiling fan are missing. The kitchen is completely bare. There is a sickly green hue over the entire scene. Upstairs, you see rows and rows of empty glass jars lined up symmetrically on the floor. Through a stark-white door, you are led down a green hallway with dark oak walls and towers upon towers of books. You enter a room at the end of the hall in which a plethora of instruments whirl wildly around you and play themselves. The player floats through that room and is led into another, much larger room. This room is filled with thick, white clouds. Two large curtains are pulled up from the middle of the room and what looks like a bed is revealed. At this, you fade out into the flashing images. You are shown the hands of the white-haired instructor with claw-like fingernails, a close up on Scarlet’s eyes which has inverted colors, so she appears green, a black and white image of the white-haired instructor, and Scarlet’s body sprawled, with strings tied to each limb.

In the second installment of this series, I will touch on the theorized and intended meanings behind each character’s story. I have done my best to explain most of the game, but I still highly encourage you to play it yourself. It is typically $5-$10 on Steam, and there are a multitude of playthroughs on YouTube at your disposal. I also encourage you to watch the videos Izzzyzzz has made on this game as she goes into much more detail and dives into the background of the developers as well. Thank you for reading to the end and I hope you will be back for part two.