The Legend of Zelda and the Value of Escapism

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:03]Escapism has long been a dirty word.

[00:00:05]They hurled at fantasy of all kinds from books to movies to video games, selling them as childish wastes of time. Despite its long-standing negative connotations, many have championed escapism as not only healthy, but necessary. But how could such a contradiction exist? Today, we'll look at how several prominent figures in the realm of fantasy define escapism, how and why it can be beneficial, and connect it all back to The Legend of Zelda. So, shatter your shackles, break your rusty cage, subscribe to the channel, and let's talk about The Legend of Zelda and the value of escapism.

[00:00:45]Our first stop is with a figure you're all familiar with, J.R.R. Tolkien, famous, of course, for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Well, I've talked at length about Tolkien's view of fantasy before and of the four elements he deems necessary to make a fairy story, we'll focus specifically on the obvious element, escape. In Tolkien's view, critics fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of escapism, explaining, "It is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which escape is now so often used, a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers are fond of calling real life, escape is evidently as a rule very practical and may even be heroic. Evidently, we are faced by a misuse of words and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home?

[00:01:47]Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way, the critics have chosen the wrong word. And what is more, they're confusing, not always by sincere error, the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter. As so eloquently put by John Ronald Reuel, escapism is not an avoidance of or distraction from reality. It is not entering into an imagined world as a replacement for real life. This is the act of the one who turns their back on life and the real world. This is a deserter. It's also important to note that Tolkien's view was heavily informed by everyday responsibilities and struggles that were not only wrote or mundane, but becoming increasingly and quite literally unnatural. Thanks in large part to the rapid industrialization of the mid-20th century following two world wars.

[00:02:50]Tolkien's escapism then is not a denial of life. It's a brief retreat into the forge, the armory, to recalibrate and re-fortify your senses, to watch golden light from a platform in the sky, to feel the wind blowing you forward, to spy a leaf afloat on a wooded pond, and to re-enter the world reinvigorated with wonder and strength to tackle those everyday responsibilities and struggles of our modern life heroically, with sword and shield as you would tackle a demon king in Hyrule.

[00:03:23]Our second stop and downstream of J.R.R.

[00:03:26]Tolkien is Ursula K. Le Guin, well known for the Hainish Cycle and the Earthsea Cycle, as well as, like Tolkien, her many critical essays. In one such collection, The Language of the Night, Le Guin restates the negative accusation of escapism before combating it with an affirmation of Tolkien's view of fantasy, explaining, "The oldest argument against science fiction is both the shallowest and the profoundest. The assertion that science fiction, like all fantasy, is escapist. The best answer was given by Tolkien, author, critic, and scholar. Yes, he said, fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?

[00:04:12]The money lenders, the know-nothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison. If we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape and to take as many people as we can. Le Guin not only affirms Tolkien's message, but also does so using the same prison prisoner framing. And by doing so, argues that to contend with the world, it is our duty to escape into fantasy, into the realms of the imagination, and to create worlds like Hyrule or Termina that others can venture to as well. Le Guin also contends that the use of imaginative fiction, in which I would include interactive fiction like the Zelda series, is to deepen your understanding of the world and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.

[00:05:02]These imaginative worlds allow us to overcome death-defying challenges, to save others, to pull the sword from the stone, to restore the world from the clutches of evil, and to translate those triumphs into our own lives.

[00:05:18]Our final stop is with Tolkien's contemporary and close friend, C.S.

[00:05:22]Lewis, acclaimed for his Chronicle of Narnia series and both his fiction and non-fiction writings on Christianity.

[00:05:29]Now, Mr. Clive Staples has one of the more interesting takes on escapism. He believes that escape itself into books, movies, video games is inevitable. As he puts it, all such escape is from the same thing, immediate concrete actuality. The important question is what we escape to. As such, Lewis believed that stories meant to mimic the {quote} {unquote} real world could actually be more delusional than fantasy stories. As children may be regaled by Peter Rabbit without wishing to become rabbits, but the reality-based story of the awkward novice who becomes the star athlete panders to a young reader's actual fantasies and ambitions. In Lewis's view, real stories can make us self-centered, but fantastical stories, because we are strangers in strange worlds, not the centers of those worlds, do the opposite. He says, "The other longing, that for fairyland, is very different. In a sense, a child does not long for fairyland as a boy longs to be the hero of the first 11th grades in school. Does anyone suppose that he really and prosaically longs for all the dangers and discomforts of a fairy tale?

[00:06:39]Really wants dragons in contemporary England? It is not so. It would be much truer to say that fairyland arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him to his lifelong enrichment with the dim sense of something beyond his reach, and far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods. The reading makes all the real woods a little more enchanted. Lewis's ultimate point is that intentionally directed escape makes us view our own reality differently. Not by casting a spell, but by breaking the spell of familiarity. Escape is a reminder that the struggles of everyday life are not all there is. That in the world there is still truth and beauty, joy and whimsy, and that escapism is not a means to abandon a hard moment or responsibility, but to find the honest means, the courage, the power, the wisdom to endure it.

[00:07:43]Now, no fairy story is complete if it does not wrestle with the idea of the shadow. And though the arguments from these preeminent writers have their merits, the critics' argument, at first blush, is not completely unfounded.

[00:07:56]Modern studies have sought to characterize the relationship between video games and escapism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these studies have concluded that overindulging in video games as a coping mechanism for anxiety, depression, and stress can be, as the papers describe it, problematic.

[00:08:15]That excessive use of video games as a coping strategy is, in fact, psychologically detrimental. However, these studies frame escapism as avoidance. This is Tolkien's deserter, and what Lewis, and probably any other rational person, would consider as escape into the wrong place. The important takeaway is that escapism should not be the structure without which the entire roof collapses. It is the decoration that enhances the brilliance of that structure, roof and all, and that substituting responsibility for excessive escapism is not freedom. As Le Guin would say, to be free, after all, is not to be undisciplined. All that's to say, every so often, jump into that game world and lock in. But also, touch grass.

[00:09:02]A final thought I'll leave you with is this. Many Zelda stories are very dutifully structured as heroes' journeys. A crucial late stage phase in the hero's journey is to return with the boon. I like to think about the escape into video games as its own little hero's journey. Crossing the threshold when the game boots up, conquering the challenges in the abyss, and ultimately, the return, the leaving of the game world. But what's the boon? Well, having returned from Hyrule, I'd hope to fill my life with just a little more wonder.

[00:09:34]Thanks for watching.