Jenna During Carl's Route
(Spoilers for Carlâs Route)
(New analysis, now formatted for Tumblr. I swear they wonât all be about Jenna, but I needed to get this one out of my system. If you haven't read my last post about Jenna, I'd recommend it since I'll be referencing it here.)
https://www.tumblr.com/blindseer0/757394083370123264/who-is-jenna-and-what-is-her-route-about?source=share
In my last post I talked about how Jenna is one of the characters people have the hardest time getting a handle on. Part of that is because she mostly features in two routes: 1) her route, which Iâve already talked about, and 2) Carlâs Route, where sheâs possessed for most of it; so sheâs obviously acting out of character, right? Well, no, I think Jenna is actually still herself in all the ways that matter, and Carlâs Route is both a great look into her and just as much her route as his.
Between the possession by John and the influence of the Hum, how can I say that Jenna is still herself? Well, letâs look at how the possession works. John and James can influence their descendants, Jenna and Carl, and their ability to do so increases as the week goes on, being at its strongest in the dream mansion. James is able to âcontrolâ Carl while he sleeps during the early parts of his route, making him ram the wall and hide evidence of what James did to John. Otherwise, we donât see any other effects until the Hysteria is in full effect and theyâre in the dream mansion.
While in the dream mansion, James is able to communicate with Carl in his dreams, and, if not talk to him, âhintâ to him what the âcorrectâ course of action is. Carl describes this as making him feel powerful, confident, all the things heâs not normally able to be and feels he lacks. Most importantly though, Carl knows James is separate from him and can choose not to do what he wants. The pivotal route choice is whether Carl should let James take full control or fight his influence. If you choose âFight itâ, James loses all influence over Carl for the rest of the route, and Carl describes it as âeasyâ.
If Carl, whose defining traits are a lack of confidence in his ability and an overreliance on others to make difficult decisions for him, is able to fight the embodiment of privileged, colonial overconfidence that is James, why is Jenna, who everyone says is the strongest person they know, so easily influenced by John? The answer is she lets him, because, like Carl and James, John gives her something sheâs always wanted: the permission to get fucking angry at the injustices in her life.
Jenna doesnât hate Carl, but her family does. They blame him (and his family) for everything that is wrong in their lives, for why theyâre the messes they are, and for why their lives are miserable. But Jenna has defined herself in opposition to her family. In this narrative theyâre the victims, and nothing that is wrong is actually their fault, so Jenna refuses to let her familyâs past define her and refuses to be a victim (which I talked about in the last post).
AND TO BE CLEAR, western expansion and genocide is a huge fucking factor in her familyâs current state (and the lives of real Native Americans). What James did to John even more so. They donât have to forgive and forget what was done to them, and neither I, nor the game, think Native Americans should do so. Jenna is still defined by her heritage and cares about it, as shown by her grandmother and chiding Flynn for going to the casino, but the anger her family has isnât something she lets out.
Jenna and Carl are foils in more than just their heritage though. Jenna grew up poor, in an abusive, controlling household that offered her no privacy (in Route 65 her door is literally removed) or autonomy (she doesnât have a car and doesnât seem to have a cell phone in Route 65). Her parents seem to be chronically unemployed, sheâs watched her brothers literally and metaphorically killing themselves, and she has no future if she stays in Echo.
Carl, on the other hand, grew up the only son of rich and decent, if absentee, parents who donât go through his stuff, control what he does (we know he played M rated games as a child) and didnât really care where he went (like the Route 65 party). Unlike Jenna, who is probably the first person in her family to go to college, Carl is expected to go to college as a matter of course and has a guaranteed, successful, career ahead of him.
This isnât to say that Carl doesnât have his own problems or that theyâre not serious issues, but to point out that, to Jenna, he has everything she has been denied. Itâs also important that heâs a man and sheâs a woman, and the societal pressures they feel are different. (Iâd be remiss if I didnât point out that heâs into Western Comics and wants to be an artist, while Jenna is into Manga/Anime, something she views as a luxury. They both use comics to escape from the real world, but in very different ways.)
Chase and Carl tell us that Jenna yelling at Carl during his birthday party isnât like her, but I think the stuff sheâs saying is perfectly in character. We see her say similar things in her route about Leo and Heather (which Chase says sounds rehearsed) and in Flynnâs route about Flynn. Sheâs taken her life in her own hands, left Echo against all odds, and is making something of herself. Sheâs done this all by herself with no support (or so she tells herself). For Jenna, college is a way to leave Echo, and the fact that Carl would just give up and stay there, to rot away like they both know he is, is inconceivable. If she could leave and make it, then he, with all of his privilege, can do the same and itâs completely unfair that heâs choosing to waste it.
No, what I think is actually unusual for Jenna isnât what sheâs saying, but the fact that sheâs saying it aloud. Jenna talks about how Socketman usually appeared âwhen I was sad, or angry, like when dad was having one of hisâŠmoments.â People who grow up in abusive households like that learn not to talk back, not to get angry or sad, because it will just make the abuse worse, so Jenna made sure not to let any of that out (Iâd love to go into how Socketman plays into this, but that will be its own post). Making herself seem calm and personable to the outside world was also a survival method, because she didnât want anyoneâs pity or scorn. (Again, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity play into all of this).
And despite being her closest friends, because theyâre her closest friends, Chase and Carl donât know about this side of Jenna because she made sure they wouldnât. She didnât talk about her home life, she didnât tell Chase in Route 65 why she had missed school, and she didnât tell any of them about the situation with Heather, even when Leo directly asked her.
So, when the Hysteria starts effecting her, Jenna lets out everything sheâs been holding in. All of the negative emotions, her anger at the injustices sheâs faced, her frustrations with her friends and the unfairness of life, she unloads them all on Carl, a symbol of rich, colonial privilege. Itâs not fair to him, but sheâs not wrong to feel that way either.
Sheâs grown-up hearing about what the Hendricks did to the Begays, and she pushed it down. She grew up seeing Carl have all these things she was denied, and she pushed it down. She saw Carl wasting his life despite all of that and she (tried to) just push it down.
And when she ends up in the dream mansion and John tells her itâs all Carl/Jamesâ fault, that they can be angry at the injustices that have been done to them together, that they can let it all out, she lets him take control of her, because itâs exactly how she feels.
(This is also why I think Carl's route is a great exploration of colonialism, generational trauma, what the descendants of the colonizers owe the people they genoicded, and the stories they tell themselves about those actions, but this is not the post to go into that and I am arguably not the person to do so.)
To summarize, I think Jenna is perfectly in character during Carl's route, even when she's possessed by John (an action she lets happen) because it is the route where she gets to vent all of her frustrations, personal and generational.
Carl's route gets a lot of flak as skippable or most boring, but I think there is a lot more to it on second read than most people give it credit for. I think the character work for Carl, Jenna, and even Chase are all top notch, and it has some of the most interesting overarching themes in the game. If you haven't played it recently, I recommend going back to it and giving it another try; it's rough and definitely not perfect, but there is a lot of good there as well.
(If you're a certain type of brain rotted, it's the "Stay/Night" to Leo/Jenna's "Unlimited Blade Works" and TJ/Flynn's "Heaven's Feel".)
Remember, all of this is just my read and interpretation of the text; if you disagree, thatâs ok. I just wanted to explore some of the nuances I donât often see talked about and give people another perspective on this game and these characters.
Going to try and work on the post about âLeo, Jenna, and College in Echoâ so that I can actually write about âLeo and Conservatismâ, but I saw people talking about Carlâs Route and had to get this out of my system. Until then, continue to imagine people, and characters, complexly.
