Analysis Of Silas Lamb's 'Stonehearst Asylum'

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As humans, our fears always find a way to haunt us, no matter how hard we run or hide from them. In “Stonehearst Asylum”, Silas Lamb, an asylum superintendent, finds himself in this situation when an asylum doctor by the name of Dr. Edward Newgate travels to his asylum to take up residency. Dr. Newgate eventually discovers that Lamb and his staff members are actually asylum patients when he stumbles upon the previous staff in a locked dungeon. Eliza Graves, his lover and ally, instructs him to leave the asylum before it’s too late, but he refuses to do so. Graves is forced to abandon him after he attempts to free the captured staff, leading to his capture and eventual preparation for execution. Newgate stops Lamb from executing him by revealing …show more content…

In the scene where Lamb prepares to execute Dr. Newgate, he is shown a photograph of a drummer boy; a photograph that triggers a traumatic and dark memory in his past. The scene then shifts from the quiet asylum into Lamb’s memories, where he is inside of a hospital tent filled with dying soldiers. Desperately wanting to save them, Lamb kills them all, including the drummer boy. Later on, when the scene returns to the asylum, Lamb is shown to be mentally broken, as he is unable to do anything another than shake his head and say “I saved them all.”. These two short, significant scenes show the powerlessness of humans when they are faced with the mistakes of their past. Silas Lamb is reminded of his actions through the photograph he is shown, which symbolically represents his dark experiences and depicts one of the many people he has killed. As a result, Lamb hides the photograph so he can pretend it doesn’t exist and hide from the guilt it depicts. However, he can no longer hide, as Newgate reveals the photograph to him. The photograph of the drummer boy reminded him of the powerlessness he felt when he tried to “save” his comrades. He was incapable of doing anything once again when he failed to change his actions in the haunting recollection. In both events, Lamb could not do anything, as he did not have the power to work medical miracles or change the past. When he finally understood this, he broke apart mentally and became insane. Lamb conveys the inability of humans to control their past through his own experiences of the past and his dark persona. Moreover, he shows that all humans are powerless and afraid in the face of their past and their

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