Henry Townshend
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| Henry Townshend | |
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| Game series | Silent Hill series |
| First game | Silent Hill 4: The Room |
| Voiced by | Eric Bossick |
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| Occupation | Freelance photographer |
Henry Townshend is the main protagonist of the video game Silent Hill 4: The Room by Konami.
[edit] Personality
Henry Townshend is somewhat of a quiet soul, shy, extremely stoic and introverted in personality. He is a keen and adept photographer, proved by the many scenic pictures that hang on the walls which he himself shot. He has an eye for natural beauty that goes beyond the superficial as he once remarks, "This is a photo of the church I ran across while I was visiting Silent Hill. For some reason I was really attracted by the way it looked, so I took the picture." Also, his desk has several books, a sketchbook and a pen, which may show his interest into writing.
Judging from the pictures Henry has in his possession, it is apparent that he has visited Old Silent Hill before. The photos serve as reminders of past Silent Hill games. Two in particular depict to be the Balkan Church and the old lighthouse, both landmarks of Silent Hill 1. Henry even makes a comment about the light house picture saying that "There was even a rumor that a UFO came flying right by the lighthouse." This is a subtle reference to the UFO endings of the three previous games.
He has a penchant for cars, shown by the car magazine that is on his coffee table, entitled 'Bikkuri Cars'. He is a collector of books, yet for the two years he has been living in South Ashfield he hasn't read any of them or even touched them.
Henry shows remarkable altruism throughout the game: he is constantly trying to help the people he meets, regardless of his own situation. The first time he sees Eileen in the hospital he tells her that "I might know a way to save you", which shows that Henry immediately thinks of other people's situations before himself and his own safety. When meeting Joseph Schreiber, he instinctively keeps Eileen behind him until the man leaves. He even puts his own life in danger when he touches an electric chair to save Richard Braintree even though he was unable to save him.
[edit] Role in the game
At the starting point of the in-game plot, Henry is locked up in his own apartment room--much like how Walter, as a child, was locked up in a prison cell. And just as guards would keep an eye on Walter, and the rest of the inmate children, Henry is being watched in his own room (for example: hauntings such as Walter's portrait replacing the Silent Hill Church or Joseph Schreiber's ominous phone call, "I'm always watching you...").
Henry has gone unnoticed in his building for the past two years; he passes his next door neighbor Eileen Galvin occasionally and they give each other nodding glances of acknowledgement and courtesy, yet no further relationship develops. He is equally distant from his other neighbors, most of which he seems not to know by name and vice versa (when meeting him in the Apartment World, Richard Braintree calls Henry just "That guy that lives across from me"). The Hitchcock-style windows are perhaps his only comfort, where he can watch the lives of other people. But this is the same case as with his neighbours.
Henry is depicted as very shy person and an observer type, and even his occupation - photography - is all about watching (Later in the game, when he discovers he can watch his neighbor Eileen through a hole that has opened in his wall, he watches her go about her daily business to keep an eye on her).
Henry, unlike earlier Silent Hill protagonists, enters the series' nightmare world without a lot of obvious traumas or emotional problems to work through. It is notable that while the monsters of the previous two games were seemingly inspired by the fears and guilts of those games' protagonists, the monsters of Silent Hill 4 seem to spring from the twisted mind of the game's villain like how they did in the first game, in this case from Walter Sullivan.
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