- Cr4sh Dummy
- |
- Fabled Legendary Member
Posted by: Adam 36O
Hey, you're right, Frank definitely does talk about it as a Christian allegory! As far as I can tell, this is the primary means of talking about the subject on all of the big, bad internet. Thanks a lot for your contribution guys! People notice!I can't believe this thread has lasted a year, good job.
I totally disagree with the theory that this is an allegory for the crusades with the Convenient representing the Christians. There are a number of holes in this argument. First, the Crusades were not a war of total religious fanaticism (the counter jihad on the other hand was), but it was more like a preemptive strike/ war of liberation. Crusaders were the medieval equivalent to neocons, where the saw themselves as liberators and killing on this war of liberation as an act of mercy (almost like American exceptionalism today).
The Convenient definitely parallel the ideological strain of Islam which viewed that the end of the world was imminent and the arrival of a crusader army was one of the signs. Some also saw Saladin as the warrior that would defeat the armies of Gog and Magog (akin to how the Arbiter was supposed to defeat the Humans).
I've attained these sources directly from the books The Oxford History of the Crusades (and also God's Battalions). I'm not in any way partial or inclined to believe in a religion, but I think the pluralistic view needed to be presented. I think in this way it can almost be discerned as a "Christian" allegory is almost like the Song of Roland, or other epic poems (Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, even the allegory of St George) where a chivalrous Christian knight, the hero, defeats or remains steadfast against the hordes of a satanic force. I would note that like those epic poems, this story does follow the monomyth (as someoneelse mentioned in here), and Halo definitely follows Campbell's model.
You could also discern the franchise from the perspective of the Bhagavad Gita (an Indian Epic Poem describing an epic battle between good versus evil) and it's correlation with the Manhattan Project (the Halo rings?).
[Edited on 08.29.2010 3:19 AM PDT]