“Only Appetites”: A Character Analysis of Micah Bell
“This place ain’t no such thing as civilized. It’s man so in love with greed that he has forgotten himself and found only appetites.” –Dutch van der Linde
Despite creating an (almost!) universally reviled character, the writers managed to give Micah a complexity beyond “Obvious Bad Guy”: he is, like any good antagonist, operating on multiple levels that allow many of his actions to be up for interpretation, because his motives are not always immediately clear. I wanted to explore Micah’s motivations and functions within the narrative while analyzing him like a literary character, and making connections based on those insights. Note that this analysis operates on the assumption that Micah Bell was responsible for selling out the gang to the Pinkertons and began working as a double agent prior to the Blackwater Massacre.
Good writers operate on the assumption that every character should have a function to fulfill within the larger story; a good character will be integrated into the story on multiple levels, making them not only important but necessary. Micah Bell is the primary antagonist of Red Dead Redemption 2, opposing the ideals and goals of both Arthur Morgan as the protagonist and Van der Linde Gang as a whole. By the end of the prequel’s story, Micah has successfully undermined everything that we are made to believe Dutch and the gang stood for, leading to the tragic deaths of several members, the dissolution of the group, and the catalyst for the events of the first Red Dead Redemption story.
Micah’s character revolves around several key binaries, demonstrating how he sees the world as a series of irreconcilable dichotomies. The first and most apparent is the juxtaposition of strength vs. weakness. Micah’s approach to the world is strictly Darwinian: if you live, it means you were too strong to die; if you die, it means you were too weak to live. He does not mourn the dead as the gang’s numbers dwindle and he has no fear of death himself, which makes him dangerously reckless. He goes into any situation with the notion that the fate awaiting him is unavoidable, and the only one who can decide his fate is him, and whether or not he’s faster or better than the other man. It’s this kind of blithe, nihilistic, thoughtless confidence that makes some of the best villains and the best heroes.
Micah’s philosophy is clear: skill alone means survival, and no doubt that Micah’s major contribution to the gang is his significant skill as a gunman. What he lacks in forethought and planning he makes up for in raw talent; in the rare instances where he thinks before acting, he proves even deadlier. There’s no question as to why Dutch would see him as an asset to the gang, in spite of everything else. Micah appears to not only have the stomach for slaughter, but perhaps even an appetite for it. If we avoid the assumption that he possesses a psychopathic enjoyment of killing (considering such a diagnosis would take another three pages to prove or disprove), it cannot be argued that he kills dispassionately and without remorse. Again, to Micah, death is a fact of life, a punishment for those too weak to survive, and he attaches little emotion. Additionally, violence and bloodshed is what he is best at: he seeks any and all opportunities to display his talent, prove his superiority, and earn approval.
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