4 - Red Dead Redemption 2: Arthur Morgan, Ivan Ilyich & Memento Mori

Watch the video:https://youtu.be/ynV50tCh6oc Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur Morgan and Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich both teach memento mori: facing death can renew how you live. After Arthur's tuberculosis diagnosis he turns from outlaw vanity toward an honorable redemption; after Ivan's fatal illness he sees that a respectable career and middle-class image were a false life. In this Mythic Mind Games solo essay, Dr. Andrew Snyder reads RDR2 against The Death of Ivan Ilyich. He traces Ivan's acquaintances who think "it is he who is dead and not I," the widow's inconvenience over grief, Gerasim's honest acceptance of mortality, and Ivan's spiral of denial until the end. Then he sets Arthur beside that arc: a bad man who wants to be good, collapsing into TB, asking whether he has wanted the right things, and redeeming what remains of his life by living well. The shared archetype is mortality that reorders desire; the medieval Latin reminder is not morbid retreat but a call to responsibility, virtue, and the form of a human life (Aristotle, Westminster). Along the way Andrew argues that video games can approach the literary and connect us to the true, good, and beautiful. Continue the Red Dead thread with the RDR2 panel (ep. 5) https://youtu.be/WpViR-BQwCg and Red Dead Redemption (Mythic Mind) https://youtu.be/cqrr3_p1hmw. For the series frame on games as fairy-stories and literary value, see Video Games and Fairy-Stories (ep. 1) https://youtu.be/lYzzMFDus9U and The Value of Video Games (ep. 10) https://youtu.be/C7g7z-PmVwU.<... /> Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.c... Listen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts: - Mythic Mind - Mythic Mind Games - Mythic Mind Movies #MythicMind #MythicMindGames #RedDeadRedemption2 #RDR2 #ArthurMorgan #IvanIlyich #Tolstoy #MementoMori #Death #Redemption #Philosophy #VideoGames