#but eliza and isaac haunt Arthur more than anything else and if you decide to keep the pen then Jimmy Brooks' gratitude does as well

[arthur-morgans-last-journal]

I am deep in youtube theory videos and came across the whole Jimmy Brooks/The Strange Man thing. Please don your tinfoil hats my friends that's what this post is. Also, spoilers for both RDR and RDR2.

If you don't know, Jimmy Brooks is someone you meet during the mission "Polite Society, Valentine Style." Jimmy recognizes Arthur from Blackwater, and you have to run him down and catch him. He ends up falling off his horse and you have to choose whether or not you'll save him. If you don't save him you lose honor, but if you do save him he gives you a pen and his voice is one you might hear during Arthur's last ride depending on your ending.

Jimmy doesn't show up again in the game, but there's some speculation/theorycrafting that he's a test from the Strange Man, a character we don't see in RDR2 but who shows up as a stranger mission in RDR, where he gives a similar sort of morality test to John. The Strange Man doesn't explicitly show up in RDR2, but you can explore his house in the bayou, and there will be a poem there about Jimmy Brooks which will read one way or another depending on what choice you made at the cliff.

If you accept that Jimmy is some kind of moral test from the Strange Man--and for such a grounded series there sure is a lot of wierd shit in these games lmao--one thing that has a kind of lovely poeticism to it is that the pen Jimmy gives you if you save him can be sold for a total of $10. It's otherwise unremarkable but. BUT. $10 is also the amount of money Eliza and Isaac were killed over.

I don't know that it exactly means anything--maybe it lends more creedence to the whole strange man is death thing or god or what have you--but I do kind of love that regardless. This totem of your first moral choice in the post-prologue game, this stupid little pen, can also act as a sort of reminder on subsequent playthroughs (when you know about Eliza and Isaac) to be good, to not be the kind of person that would kill a woman and child over $10. Arthur saved Jimmy Brooks, he has the capacity in him. He can be good, he even wants to. And if he ever needs $10 so badly, he can sell the pen.

I actually have a lot of other thoughts about that moral choice and its placement in the game but I'll save that for another post. I don't actually think the strange man is very important in the RDR2 game at all but the way Eliza and Isaac hang over it IS and you don't even know until chapter 6 AND if you choose the right dialogue options lmao.