Vecna As An Allegory For Mental Illness Following in the footsteps of monster-like villains, Demagorgon or Mind Flayer, Vecna is a supernatural being who mentally torments his victims with his curse power and kills them.
Vecna adopts psychological warfare to target his prey – which, you could argue, very much serves as an allegory for trauma, depression and mental illness, which is all too real.
Vecna as a Means for Externalizing Trauma and Depression
Chaiken suggests that while Vecna is a source of horror in Stranger Things, the monster can also serve as a useful vessel for externalizing issues like trauma and depression.
Sure, Vecna is powerful, with abilities that surpass even Eleven's. But what makes him so scary is that he is the personification of depression, trauma, and suicidality.
Brenner (Matthew Modine) states in the Stranger Things episode "Papa" that Vecna "consumes" everything about his victims, Vecna targets traumatized victims because it builds for him a well of sad and angry memories to draw from. With each victim, he can become gradually more powerful.
Vecna attacked a couple of people, but perhaps the most familiar and heartbreaking one is Max. While there are no direct statements, it's still clear that Max suffers from mental illnesses, such as depression, trauma, and even PTSD.
While intending to get his revenge on Eleven and Brenner, Vecna also goes after victims who have dealt with traumatizing experiences in the past (reminiscent of his childhood and his time at the Hawkins lab).
What was Chrissy's Trauma? Chrissy's life appears to be free from flaws on the surface, but in reality, she is struggling terribly to conceal her depression and self-image stemming. She was struggling with these issues, which resulted in her developing an eating disorder due to her mother's verbally abusive comments.
At first glance, Chrissy seemed like a typical super popular cheerleader; upon closer inspection, however, she held onto a deep-rooted darkness as she suffered from an eating disorder, most likely bulimia (though possibly binge-purge anorexia).
Vecna lives in the Upside Down and preys on people's past traumas and guilt. The monster curses its victims, making them relive their trauma in progressively more gruesome ways until it violently kills them.
Vecna's obsession with time appears to be linked to his hatred of humanity. He views time as a human imposition on the natural world; an attempt to impose order on nature.
This is because his trusted accomplice, Kas the Bloody-Handed, betrayed him and used the sword Vecna created himself to chop off his left hand and remove his left eye. This ultimately destroyed Vecna. Though they're clouded with cataracts, Vecna in Stranger Things has both of his eyes.
Realizing he had tremendous psychic power, he haunted his family with visions before ultimately killing most of them. His father was framed for the murders and locked away in a mental hospital as a disturbed serial killer. Henry then found himself in the care of Brenner, who decided he wanted more kids like the boy.
Obviously still a sociopath, but now influenced by The Mind Flayer as well, Vecna started killing teenagers, imprisoning their bodies in the Upside Down version of his family home. The key to defeating Vecna most likely lies in his origins, so it's great that the Hawkins teenagers were able to figure it out.
First, Some Common Symbols of Depression
You might have seen rainstorm images, ravens, and skull or grim reaper symbols. Barren landscapes and faces of cliffs are popular, too.
Eleven is examined as a child hero of the series who has a potential diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), has significant psychosocial developmental delays that she continues to overcome as the series develops, and is an emblem for the cultural mythology of the 1980s.
Unlike the reporters at the Hawkins Post, Fred treated Nancy with respect. Though Fred appeared to be bright and level-headed, he harbored extreme guilt for his role in the fatal 1985 car accident, and believed many people look at him as a "murderer." This guilt and mental unrest made him a target of Vecna.
Max's past experience with trauma — namely, watching the Mind Flayer brutally kill her stepbrother Billy (Dacre Montgomery) in Season 3 — makes her a target for Vecna's manipulation.
Vecna's first season 4 victim is Chrissy Cunningham (Grace Van Dien), who is targeted based on the trauma she carries due to her body-shaming mother.
Once he takes control of the mind, he traumatizes them by showing the visions of their dark past. He takes them to unknown places and gives them a glimpse of himself. The pain of his victims doesn't end here. Every single one of his victims experiences nose bleeding and severe headaches as well.
In one scene, Max (Sadie Sink) can hear her throwing up in the bathroom, and it's later revealed that she struggles with her mother's emotional abuse over her weight. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
Patrick was born sometime between 1967 and 1968. Patrick's father subjected him to verbal abuse, and likely also physically abused him; he was berated and called "an embarrassment to [his] family" when discovered to be drinking alcohol, and on another occasion, appeared at school with a black-eye.
Vecna draws power from sad and angry memories and that is the main reason he targets traumatized teens. Those teens are a well of power just there to be absorbed. This is not just a theory, Vecna himself told Eleven about the power that angry and sad memories hold.
When One massacres the rest of the children in Hawkins Lab, Eleven banishes him to the Upside Down in the same way she banishes the Demogorgon from season one. One is sent hurtling through the Mind Flayer's lightning and is horribly disfigured, transforming into Vecna.
"Vecna seems to be actually intrigued by Nancy being able to figure him out, to be able to get this close to the truth... I think this is more Vecna's narcissistic traits that pull him to Nancy, why he wants to give her this information."