LETS TALK ABOUT what hnl employees would jokingly call “the maimings”.
“THE MAIMINGS”
‘the maimings’ were a part of jane’s training that exercised the section of jane’s brain that is capable of harming, maiming, and killing live beings. we saw a short snippet of these particular experiments displayed when jane was forced to harm the cat, which she ultimately ended up refusing to do because it was too painful for her to follow through knowing she was inflicting suffer on an innocent being trapped behind the wire walls of a cage. in my opinion, she saw a lot of herself in the cat and sympathized with it, which is why she (unwillingly) accepted her punishment of the dark room, which she still fought because she is terrified of it.
while this is the only time we see her forced to harm innocent creatures in hawkins lab, it’s subtly hinted that she was forced to harm humans later on down the line in that when presented with a photo a man by brenner, her immediate assumption was that brenner wanted her to hurt him. when she says this she seems extremely withdrawn in posture, completely closed off, her voice is small, and even her gaze is very disconnected from the room and from brenner’s presence in it. this leads me to believe she has reached a point in her training where what she has been forced to do has caused her to shut down, as she is given very little option and ultimately, there really is nothing she can do other than to obey and follow orders.
THE VOLUNTEERS
the volunteers were paid volunteers collected by employees of hawkins lab. the people chosen for the experiment were often homeless, troubled, had very little friends and family that would notice if they went missing, and were always offered large sums of money if they agreed to follow through with participation in the experiment. of course very little ever received the money, and those that did were likely brushed off as drunks or “crazy” if they ever tried to bring up what they saw in the lab. not only that, but there is always the looming threat of death / murder when dealing with promises made to the government regarding private experiments, so it goes without saying that most if not all kept their mouths shut.
GUILT AND REMORSE
guilt / remorse when killing employees of hawkins is not something that we see a lot of in jane. she doesn’t reflect or seem to have any thought when going about killing people who are actively trying to harm her, capture her, or who lure her into a corner and give her no option other than to retaliate. i think this is partly due to the fact that she has been raised to become desensitized to the idea of murder, which i believe we got to see in that scene that i referenced earlier when assuming her task was to harm the man in the picture. she had already shut herself down, and even though she figured she was going to be asked to harm the man, she didn’t react strongly, she didnt look upset or horrified, she had simply quietly accepted it. this is different of course, when dealing with the innocent. the difference between harming someone who is trying to capture her, and harming someone who is sitting locked in a chair across from her, is that the former is self defense, and the latter is blatant torture / murder. this is something that she recognizes, and she does hold a lot of guilt and remorse for those volunteers she was forced to harm, maim, and murder in these specific experiments. they were locked into chairs, completely defenseless, and would of course cry out, scream, yell, threaten, beg, and ultimately suffer. she saw this, and while at the time she really had no choice thanks to being ten to twelve years old and emotionally / psychologically manipulated her entire life, its still something that now haunts her and that she feels a great deal of guilt over.
PUNISHMENT
punishment for not complying with the experiments on jane’s end would result in either the dark room for varying amounts of time, which is a room void of light and sound that acts as a scary sort of deprivation tank, or isolation / withdrawal of socialization by brenner, which is actually of extreme value to her thanks to the way she has been emotionally and psychologically manipulated her entire life. ie, if you don’t do this, i will not visit you tonight, or tomorrow. or, if you don’t do this, i will not visit you for the next three days / the next week. thus, she would be forced to spend however long in complete isolation, with no stimulation whatsoever as she is not allowed to have any items in her room without the presence of brenner at any time other than the stuffed tiger, which would be taken from her as well. once he finally came back, she would immediately be asked if she was ready to move forth with the experiment, and if not, her time in isolation would be lengthened until ultimately she caved and agreed.
