Jade Rambles: The Enigma of Chara

[JadePharaoh]

Naturally, major Undertale spoilers abound!

During my Undertale stream last night I got into a brief discussion about a particular character from that game that we never actually saw if you've only seen my videos. The character is alluded to a few times, but is never actually seen until the ending of the Genocide path, something I was never able to do because I could simply not defeat Sans. While Sans is another character regarded as a major enigma of the game's storyline (as is W.D. Gastor, a character that doesn't appear in the game at all except through some odd glitches and very random dialogue from certain characters), so too is Chara

Simply put, Chara (KAR-a? CARE-a? CHAIR-a? SHAR-a? Dunno how it's pronounced) is the canon name of the original human to fell underground; the one who was befriended by Asriel and adopted by Asgore and Toriel. This is also the character you are naming at the start of the game. Naturally, you would assume you are naming the player character, but during the Pacifist ending, that character's real name is revealed to be Frisk. (This is foreshadowed by the fact that none of the characters address you by the name you entered, except Flowey/Asriel, who has mistaken Frisk for Chara - I'll touch more on why that could be later.)

Chara never appears in-game, however, until the Genocide ending. After defeating Sans, you would proceed to the throne room, where you kill Asgore, then Flowey, without any player input. Then Chara appears before you, explaining that your Determination awoke them (like Frisk, Chara's gender is left ambiguous, again, a point I'll explain more of later). They will then tell you that this world has served its purpose, and that it is time to "erase" it and move on. You are then presented with a choice: "ERASE", or "DO NOT". Actually, it doesn't matter which option you select, as Chara will erase the game world either way (although selecting ""DO NOT" is what gives us the much more awesome scene, with Chara asking "SINCE WHEN WERE YOU THE ONE IN CONTROL?", followed by them coming right at the screen with that creepy-ass face).

See it here:


After that scene, the game closes automatically. Opening it back up again greets you with only a black screen and the sound of howling wind. It will go on like this for a full ten minutes in real time before Chara addresses you again. They will call you out on wanting to return to this world after willfully destroying it, and will ask you if you think you are above consequences. They will then offer to restore the world as it was, in exchange for your soul. Saying no will close the game again and force you to wait another ten minutes before Chara offers you the choice again. Accept, and the game will be reset as it was before. However! The Pacifist ending will become permanently corrupted; indeed, you are not above consequences.

See the corrupted Pacifist endings here (first is choosing to stay with Toriel at the end and the second is choosing not to):


This is why I was quite happy to conclude my own run without being able to beat Sans.

So, this causes the Genocide path to end on a serious Gianax note. The most common interpretation I see among the fandom, however, is that Chara is the true villain of Undertale. Fanon commonly portrays Chara as an absolute evil entity that possesses and/or tempts Frisk for the duration of a Genocide route, forcing them to commit such horrible acts against their will. (Just do an image search for Chara, and happy nightmares)



Before getting into that, however, let us look more into what we're told about Chara's past. From what we're told elsewhere in the game, Chara fell to the underground an unspecified amount of time ago. It could have been a few years, or possibly centuries. He was found by Asriel, who took him home to his parents, Toriel and Asgore. They took Chara in and raised them as their own child, along with Asriel, the two of them becoming close siblings.



Then, one day, Chara grew very ill and died. We discover through the secret tapes in Alphys's secret lab that this was all engineered by Chara themself after witnessing Asgore become extremely sick after eating a pie that they had accidentally made with buttercups instead of "cups of butter" (buttercups being a highly poisonous flower IRL). Chara and Asriel were well aware of the stories about the magical barrier keeping the monsters trapped underground, and how it can be broken with the power of seven human souls. So they came up with a plan. Chara would commit suicide by poisoning himself with the buttercups, Asriel would absorb his soul, use it to cross the barrier, then take six more human souls and use them to destroy the barrier and free the monsters. Asriel carried Chara's body to the surface, seemingly to fulfill his last request, to be buried in a field of golden flowers near his old village. When he brought him to the flower field, however, he was attacked by the humans from the village, assuming that he had killed the child. Asriel must have had second thoughts about the plan at this time and refused to fight back. He was mortally wounded, and made his way back home, still carrying Chara's body, before perishing in the throne room.



Asgore was overcome with grief and rage at the deaths of both of his children, and he declared the war with the humans to be back on. He pledged that all humans that make their way to the underground will die, their souls would be used to break the barrier, and then invade the surface world. His wife Toriel disagreed with this plan, and left for the Ruins. Before she left, however, she took Chara's body with her. It was at first interred in a coffin in the castle basement (the empty one that still has the name you entered on it), but she took it with her to the Ruins, apparently with the intent of giving it a proper burial.

Something unexpected happened, however. The flowers that Asriel had taken Chara's body to had an unusual property; their seeds tend to stick to whatever they touch, and both managed to carry some of these seeds back with them and grow. This is why the throne room is overgrown with these golden flowers, which Asgore has maintained out of tribute to his son. The first flower to grow here is the one that Alphys performed some of her Determination experiments on, awakening some of Asriel's consciousness within it, but lacking a soul or emotions; the result being Flowey. As for where Chara was buried, a bed of these same golden flowers grew there in the Ruins, the same place that Frisk first arrives in the Underground.

Now let's get into why most of the fandom believes Chara is Satan incarnate. Aside from being the character you meet at the very end of a Genocide path that erases the world, a few other bits of dialogue tend to be used to paint Chara as someone with sinister intentions.



One question that comes up is, why did Chara climb Mt. Ebott in the first place? Asriel seems to know, and the way he puts it, "it wasn't for a very happy reason...". He also says that Chara did hate humanity, and that "he felt strongly about it". Given that Chara seems to still be a child, my interpretation of this is that they suffered from some horribly traumatic incident, quite possibly parental abuse of some kind, and climbed the mountain with the intention of committing suicide.

Another point that is mentioned is in the tapes, where Asriel is discussing Asgore becoming sick after eating the buttercups. He says to Chara, "I wish I could have just laughed it off like you did." It does make it sound like Chara didn't care, or was even amused by their foster father falling ill, but we've seen numerous other characters throughout the game using laughter to mask their inner pain, the most obvious example being Sans.

The most damning case against Chara comes when Asriel himself recounts what happened during the pacifist ending; when he absorbed Chara's soul, control over his body was split between the two of them. Chara wanted to kill the attacking humans, but Asriel resisted. He also admits that Chara "wasn't the best person" and says he wishes they were more like Frisk. Some fans believe that Chara was using Asriel, Asgore, and Toriel to gain supreme power, but I see nothing in the game that indicates that Chara didn't care about their adoptive family. That an absorbed human soul can partially control its host seems to have been an unforeseen side effect. At the very least, I'd like to think that Chara made the decision to sacrifice themselves to help free the monsters from the Underground.

So, is Chara the demon child the fandom makes him out to be? I myself don't believe so. I feel that to believe that Chara is an irredeemable, pure evil hellspawn goes against the overall message of the game. This game is full of powerful messages about love and friendship winning over hatred and violence, and that people aren't born evil - they are made that way. Asgore seems to be presented as the main villain of the game at first, before discovering that he is genuinely loved by his people and he is a very sad and grieving father that doesn't really want to hurt anyone, but feels that he has to for the good of his people. Then Flowey kills Asgore and it seems he is the true villain of the game. Then we discover that he is in fact Asriel and is quite possibly the most tragic character in the game. If Asgore and Flowey could be redeemed in the eyes of fans, why not Chara?

Here's my own little theory. I like to think that Frisk is in fact the reincarnation of Chara! It makes a great deal of sense if you think about it. First of all, the physical similarities of the two are too obvious to overlook. Chara is practically a palette-swap of Frisk. Likewise, Flowey/Asriel actually mistakes Frisk for Chara for a good part of the game - the only character that addresses you by the name you gave Chara, as opposed to just "Human". Also, Asriel asks a good question when he asks why Frisk climbed Mt. Ebott to begin with. We actually never see Frisk climb the mountain or fall down. The child that we see doing so in the intro is revealed to be Chara, not Frisk (look at the shirt; Chara has one stripe on their shirt while Frisk has two). The first we see of Frisk is when they're standing in the bed of flowers - the very place Chara was buried. The messages you receive during a Game Over telling you to "stay Determined" and "you are the future of monsters and humans" are found to actually have come from Asgore, which is shown through the tapes to be what he said to the dying Chara. How would Frisk have otherwise known, hearing this when taking a mortal blow themself? In Waterfall, Frisk gets another flashback to when Chara first fell to the Underground. We never know where Frisk even came from or where they go during a Neutral or Pacifist ending. During the Pacifist ending you can choose whether to continue to live with Toriel or go your own way; you still never see where Frisk goes if you choose the latter. During a Neutral ending, Sans will call Frisk and leave a message on their cell phone (the details of which can vary greatly depending on your actions). But I believe it was stated that cell phones down there normally can't pick up signals from the surface, and vice-versa, so how did he leave a message? Maybe Frisk never actually left... maybe they couldn't leave... not until they have set right what had gone wrong... (supporting this is the fact that after defeating Flowey, the final boss of the Neutral path, you are in a room that looks just like a couple of other rooms you encountered Flowey in... way back at the Ruins where you started.)

Maybe, rather than being "possessed" by Chara, Frisk is Chara and vice versa. During the Genocide ending, Chara is not addressing Frisk; they are talking to you, the player, calling you out on your atrocities! Chara didn't make you do anything; you chose a Genocide path of your own volition! Perhaps your homicidal actions have taught this child that such is the way of things; that Flowey was absolutely right with his motto of "kill or be killed".

By hey, that's just a theory, and all that. All in all, I think that Chara, while flawed, was equally as tragic as Asriel was, but received a second chance through Frisk. That they would do with that second chance, however, is all up to you...