Deciphering the Core Part of Leon’s Personality
It seems Leon as gone through multiple core personalities over the course of the Resident Evil stories. To understand those phases, i shall review them one by one and try to assess in what state of mind he falls into.
Resident Evil 2
There is no denying that Leon is a trully altruistic cop.
Althruisim is simply being unselfish and only doing stuff just because they want to help. It might only be a case of convinience that his job makes obligatory to help others.
Some have theoried why would anyone sacrifice themselves to save other such as :
Biological reasons
Neurological reasons
Environmental reasons
Social norms
Cognitive reasons
Biological Reasons is derived from kin selection. Which means that are are willing to save them because they are related to them. That is definitely not the case as shown here:
Even in later game that is still isn’t his motive:
Neurological Reasons is when the reward centers activates in the brain when doing certain actions. It would be hard to know if he’s even happy to save people thous hard to know if his pleasure part of the brain would then activate.
Environmental Reasons is developed by who you are surrounded by or what relationship you have with people. It’s definitely a given since he IS a cop. But i feel like it’s not just because of his profession.
Social Norms is the idea of reciprocity. For example, doing something for someone and expecting to receive something in return. So most people would be altruistic when expecting a reward. However, although we could assume Leon would try to save Claire or Ada to get with them , it doesn’t seem to be the reason why.
Cognitive reasons could be from empathy. Although, there are some traits of this in his behavior. I truly believe that his motive is from the other cognitive reason : helping relieve negative feeling. Seeing people in distress could cause other to feel upset, distressed or uncomfortable. So helping other would be more of a coping with negative emotions. And Leon is definitely no stranger to that.
Resident Evil 4
It’s definitely a big departure from his debut game. Sure we are presented with a more confident side of him. However, his personality became as macho as any action hero protagonist. Definetly show signs of an inflated ego and hypermasculanity.
“Hypermasculinity is a psychological term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behavior, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality.”
The study made in 1984 by Donald L. Mosher and Mark Sirkin, they defined hypermasculanity or the “macho personality” with those three traits :
callous sexual attitudes toward women
the belief that violence is manly
the experience of danger as exciting
It definetly checks out quite a lot in this game :
Not to mention that Leon do excersice a lot of emotional self-control to appear more tough.
As almost a sign of foreshadowing, another study about hypermasculanity led by Thomas Scheff as this to say about the subject :
“Repressing love and the vulnerable emotions (grief, fear and shame, the latter as in feelings of rejection or disconnection) leads to either silence or withdrawal, on the one hand, or acting out anger (flagrant hostility), on the other. The composure and poise of hypermasculinity seems to be a recipe for silence and violence.”
But hey, it’s the result of the media’s portrail of men that this frame of mind exists in the first place.
Resident Evil 6, Damnation and Vendetta
In those movies and game, it’s easy to notice that Leon is in a deeper stage of depression. However, between 6 and Vendetta, it seems to have gotten worst. To most suffering from alchololisim, having a few drinks kills the pain. Unfortunately, it only acts as a band-aid. So it only aids to feed the addiction to have this “high”. And as previously mentionned, Leon can be quite macho at times. It’d be definitely the type of man to avoid his problems and resort to such habbits. It’s even confirmed in the “ Leon and the Raccoon City Inccident” file his avoidance of talking about the traumatic expericence :
“Leon spoke very little of the incident afterwards. Government officials who heard of his survival tried to ask him about what happened out of curiosity, but he always avoided them.”
Doesn’t help that his emotional numbness, avoidance of going on missions and always feeling tense or “on edge” are all signs of Post Tramatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Not to mention here’s all the symptoms he has in all those interpretations :
Numbness, Violence, Guilt, Hopelessness, Substance Abuse, Anger, Self-Destruction, Irrability.
Furthermore, his behavior could indicate signs of depression. Namely, men are more likely turn to alcohol, become irritable, sudden prone to anger, Take unnecessary risk, Acknowledge a loss of interest in work & hobbies.
Here’s the more troubling part : men is 4x more likely to commit suicide than women.
Sure it’s only 15% of all people with depression that commits suicide but , unfortunately, he’s VERY likely he’d kill himself. Look no further than this quote from the same document :
“ To tell you the truth, I even thought about ending it - several times, actually - with just a quick bullet to the head. “
If ever you ask somebody that is suicidal “How you’d do it?” and they answer you clearly what they’d do, it’s the biggest red flag they could give you. It’s you-need-to-send-their-asses-in-emergency type of emergency since it’s very likely they’d kill themselves shortly after.
Sure he had an excuse to not commit such act :
“ But I didn’t give up. Sherry needed me. She was a 10-year-old girl thrown into a hellish environment with monsters after her, so I had to pull myself together for her sake. She was our reason for not giving up - especially for Claire. ”
However, depression and suicidal thoughts could linger like a shadow and never truly goes away without proper treatment. I can tell you as such from personal experience.
In short, Leon started as a nervous and helpful selfless cop. He started to help others either from duty, empathy or just relieving his own negative feelings during the whole ordeal. Then, after being given a job as an agent of the government , he became indoctrinated into a more hyper masculine mindset that cost a slow deterioration of his mind. Because he was forced to shut down is emotions, he became more and more depressed and became dependent on alcohol to aid him suppress the immense guilt he amassed over 20 years. Not only that but he also has signs of suicidal thoughts. But as long he someone to protect, he’s willing to anything to save them.
