The Deeper They Bury Me: Review
The linear narrative of “The Deeper They Bury Me” delves users into the life of Herman Wallace; the longest man in solitary confinement. The creators of this interactive experience, Angad Singh Bhalla and Ted Biggs, asks its participants this:
What does a man who has been trapped in solitary confinement for forty years sound like?
Through twenty precious minutes, as indicated by the timer at the bottom of the screen that emulates call-time length for prisoners, participants must learn the story of Herman through his voice on the phone.
In a computer-based experience, users can also click and interact with different items in the rooms to hear Herman tell a story about his life, or his opinions on pressing topics such as racism within the Angola jail. One thing is for certain, a linear interactive story couldn’t have been a better choice when telling the story of Herman Wallace, and here’s why.
This is the real story of Herman Wallace. This isn’t made up for fiction. In any other interactive narrative architectures, one will find the illusion of choice — perhaps with different endings. Wallace’s story cannot have any other endings, because there was only one true ending that happened to himself, and if any others were to be created then it wouldn’t be the raw story of Herman. Even so, Bhalla and Biggs have done an excellent job in making a linear narrative into an interactive experience that the user can take home.
Participants are given the task to listen to the topics presented in front of them, in this case, “surviving a cage” about Wallace’s time in a jail cell, and “I can only dream” about his dream home. They can choose which one they want first, and it will not affect the outcome of the story. After listening to both in no sequential order, the user will be presented with two more topics that they can pick from, that will also lead to more options that follow a linear narrative structure. Once a user chooses a subject, there are subtopics inside of it that a user can click on to learn more about and explore — which is easily identifiable with a chalk-like outline.
The great thing about these subtopics is that the participant can go at their own pace with what they choose to listen to, but ultimately won’t affect the outcome of the story. Therefore, there are elements of interaction that users can achieve by choosing to attain more information about Herman Wallace, but no matter the choice, the moral of the story will always remain the same in this linear structure.
If this experience was anything but linear, then the sentiment and meaning of Herman’s story would be lost in the world of choice. In many cases, it can be said that some narrative structures that interactive experiences offer merely make users want to click their way through the end of the story instead of following along. Moreover, the layout that this experience gives truly makes you feel as though you must figure out his story within the twenty-minute time frame. The countdown clock on the bottom of the screen not only adds an element of pressure, but sentimental value to the narrative. Users must try to figure out the story of Herman Wallace in what feels like no time at all, which is a live depiction of how quick time goes by while making that one call a week to a loved one although in prison. Additionally, this component doesn’t take away from the brilliance that this linear narrative conveys, and enhances Wallace’s story by giving insight into what it truly means to be distracted by the clock.
