Sharon Da Silva

"If you love someone, you'd know that you'd never give up!
 * —Heather to Vincent, regarding her father"

Sharon Da Silva, alias Heather Mason, is a character from the Silent Hill film and protagonist of Silent Hill: Revelation. She is the adopted daughter of Rose and Christopher Da Silva.

In the first film, Sharon is the good part of Alessa's soul, and by the end of the film she combines with Dark Alessa and they both become the unified incarnation of Alessa Gillespie.

In the first film, Sharon takes on the role of Cheryl Mason from the first Silent Hill video game, and in the second, she stands in place of Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3.

Personality
Being the good part of Alessa's soul, Sharon is an innocent well-intentioned girl tormented by nightmares in both films. As a child, she loved drawing. Unfortunately, Sharon had to cope with a rough childhood when her mother Rose disappeared. It is implied that constantly changing identities in order to hide, as well as schools, has turned her lonely as there is no mention of any friends.

She has been shown to be a bit sassy, likely influenced by being raised by Rose, such as when she rolls up a window in front of Cybil Bennett. In Revelation, Sharon even stands up for herself when a classmate teases her for having unfashionable clothing. Like both of her parents, Sharon is shown to be determined with a strong-will.

Background
Around a decade prior to the events of the first film, Alessa Gillespie took the remaining purity of her soul, and a baby was formed.

It is unknown why Alessa created Sharon; it is likely that Alessa wanted a chance to seek happiness in a world outside her bedridden hell. In addition, Sharon could be Alessa's next vessel and opportunity to live a better life. It is also possible Alessa intended to lure Sharon and her adoptive parent(s) to Silent Hill in order to test their love for her, as well as learn the truth about what happened in Silent Hill and have them agree to exact revenge on the cult.



Dark Alessa carried the baby to the Toluca County Orphanage, where she was found by Sister Margaret. Not much later, the baby was adopted by Chris and Rose Da Silva and named Sharon. As she was the positive side of Alessa's soul, Sharon was a kind and innocent child.



However, when she reached the same age Alessa was when she was burned alive by a group of religious fanatics, the Brethren, Sharon began to suffer from nightmarish sleepwalking episodes in which she screamed the words "Silent Hill". In her dreams, Sharon saw Dark Alessa, who was calling her back to Silent Hill, the town where Alessa was born and raised. Chris and Rose had taken Sharon to numerous doctors, but no amount of therapy or medicine helped Sharon's illness because her condition was supernatural.

Her sleepwalking fugues became more and more dangerous, until she was found preparing to throw herself off the edge of a cliff one night. Sharon's issue becomes so severe that her parents are forced to choose between having her institutionalized for the rest of her life or allowing the sleepwalking sessions to continue, running the risk that she will eventually die from them.

Silent Hill


After being put on medication, Sharon continues to suffer the sleepwalking episodes, forcing her mother to take her to Silent Hill in the hope of curing her. Rose has researched Silent Hill on the Internet, and despite its grim history, goes in hopes of Sharon remembering something about Silent Hill and be healed.

On the way to the town, Sharon's drawings become dark and macabre; they depict a child being torn apart by fire-breathing demons, among other things. Rose discovers these drawings at a gas station, but Sharon claims to not remember making them. She becomes upset and begins to loudly question Rose as to who made those pictures, saying she doesn't like them. Rose tries to explain that Sharon drew the pictures, but she refuses to listen, not believing she is responsible. Sharon's outburst brings the attention of a police officer named Cybil Bennett, who attempts to question Sharon, but is simply told she doesn't "talk to strangers", and rolls the window up in the officer's face. Cybil becomes even more suspicious after an aggravated Rose blows her off when she politely inquires if everything is all right. Cybil later stops Rose, but Rose speeds off, embarking on a high speed chase with Sharon in the car. As Rose rushes to lose Cybil, Dark Alessa darts into the road, causing Rose to crash the car. It is heavily implied that Sharon is knocked unconscious in the crash, due to the sudden cut-off to her screaming.



Rose wakes up to find that Sharon is missing. She searches the town, and Dark Alessa (who is visually identical to Sharon) leads her around Silent Hill to places of importance to Alessa. Rose is eventually led to Brookhaven Hospital, where Dark Alessa confronts her and tells her that Sharon is what's left of Alessa's goodness. Dark Alessa warns Rose that the cultists will be able to find Sharon and that they will burn her alive, just as they did to Alessa thirty years prior. Sharon is later found in the apartment of Dahlia Gillespie, who likely tried to protect the child in hopes of redeeming herself, or as she still saw the girl as a part of her daughter she was so devastated to lose. It is most likely that Sharon was knocked unconscious in the car crash and was then led there by Dark Alessa while sleepwalking. From there, Dahlia led her to a bedroom above a shop to keep her concealed from the cult. Sharon ends up being caught by Christabella, the priestess of the fanatical religious cult that believes Alessa is a witch and the vessel for a demon, and is forced to watch the ritualistic burning of Cybil.



Rose enters the church just as Christabella and her followers have tied Sharon up and prepared to have her burned alive as a witch, and she opens a portal through which Alessa and Dark Alessa arise to take their revenge on the cultists. As the last of the cultists die, Sharon locks eyes with Dark Alessa, and they then recombine, becoming one unified incarnation of Alessa. Sharon passes out from the trauma.



When she awakens, she looks around blankly and walks towards the door. Dahlia asks why she wasn't killed with everyone else, to which Rose replies, "Because you're her mother. Mother is God in the eyes of a child." Sharon/Alessa glances at Dahlia, and the two return home; however, they are still trapped in the Fog World, as revealed by Chris being incapable of seeing them along with the hazy appearance of the house, and it is implicated that Sharon/Alessa is happy about it.

Silent Hill: Revelation


Not long after the events of Silent Hill, Sharon was forced back into the Real World using the power of the Seal of Metatron. Sharon was unable to remember anything that happened during her time in the Fog World, and her memories of Silent Hill disappeared, though why is never explained. In order to give his daughter a normal life, Chris told Sharon that her mother died in a car crash on the outskirts of Silent Hill.



Soon after, members of a fanatical cult begin stalking her, and she and her adoptive father are forced to move and change their names; Sharon was renamed "Mary". Two years before Revelation, a member of the cult assaulted Mary and Chris in their home in Portland, and Chris murdered him in self-defense. Mary was then changed to "Cathy".

Sharon assumes several different aliases up until her eighteenth birthday and is ultimately given the name "Heather", after Chris' grandmother. Her hair is bleached blonde in order to help keep her true identity undisclosed. Since she was found, Sharon has had to transfer through five different schools, although she is always plagued by the Order as well as horrifying nightmares that have been growing more intense.



At the start of the film, Heather is on the verge of turning 18 and is having nightmares. She dreams of a demonic version of herself and sees a disc-headed monster kill her father. She awakens and speaks with Chris before leaving for a new school. On the way to school, Heather has a vision of a homeless man turning into a monster and is startled. She is then confronted by a detective named Douglas Cartland, who claims that she looks familiar. Heather refuses to speak with him.



At the school, Heather is teased by some of her classmates because of what they call her unfashionable clothing, which leads her to make an impressionable speech on how she isn't interested in any of them, most of them aren't "original thinkers", she "sure as hell won't remember their names", and that they should just leave her alone. As she is walking to another class, Heather hallucinates a girl being teased by classmates. She then shortly enters the Otherworld version of the school and is approached by an armless monster. Heather is snapped out of this trance when she runs into Vincent Cooper, who is also a new student at the school, but she rebuffs his friendly advances.



Heather sees Douglas watching her as she leaves school and flees from him. She goes to Happy Burger in Central Square Shopping Center to meet safely with Chris, but he doesn't arrive, so she becomes impatient. Heather has more hellish visions, including children eating flesh burgers and a man being skinned alive to produce meat. Douglas catches up to Heather and tells her that the Order is looking for her and that he wants to help her. He reveals that the reason why Heather has been moving so much is not because her father murdered someone years ago, but because the man Chris killed in Portland was a member of the Order who was trying to abduct Heather. Before he can tell her anything else, the Missionary arrives and assaults them. They try to escape through the elevator, but Douglas is pulled away and killed by the Missionary.

Heather leaves the mall, which has become a crime scene due to Douglas' death, but she leaves her jacket behind, causing the police to suspect she was responsible for Douglas' murder. Heather walks home with Vincent, only to discover that Chris has been kidnapped, and a note beckoning her to Silent Hill has been left on the wall in blood. Heather retrieves a box containing the Seal of Metatron from her father's bedroom, although it is missing its other half, along with various documents regarding the mythology of Silent Hill. Police arrive at Heather's door to confront her about Douglas' demise; despite Vincent not wanting her to go, he gives in and drives her to Silent Hill.



On the way to the town, Heather reads Chris's research on Silent Hill and the Order along with a personal note to her from her father, and she learns that she is an incarnation of Alessa Gillespie, who was burned alive with the knowledge that she would survive the fire. The Order intended to use the hatred she formed from her pain to perform a ritual to impregnate her with their god, but Alessa proved more powerful than they had thought, and she instead split her soul and dragged the cult into an alternate reality. They stop at Jacks Inn, where Vincent reveals that he is a member of the Order and that he has developed strong feelings for Heather and now wants to help her. Because of Heather's proximity to Alessa, the Otherworld takes over, and Vincent is kidnapped by the Missionary.



Heather enters Silent Hill in the Fog World, where she meets Dahlia Gillespie, the mother of Alessa. Dahlia tells Heather that she is the manifestation of the pure side of Alessa's soul and that Alessa's dark side controls the town. As "the darkness" (the Otherworld) devours the town moments after their conversation, Heather flees from the streets and then meets Suki, a girl who was randomly pulled into the Otherworld for unknown reasons. Heather tries to save Suki from a monstrous entity known as the Mannequin Monster, but she fails when the creature grabs Suki and drags her away.



In Brookhaven Asylum, Heather finds Leonard Wolf, the grandfather of Vincent and the former leader of the Order. When Heather hands him the Seal of Metatron, he transforms into a beast; Sharon then shoots at him, but is taken prisoner. To stop Leonard, Heather rips the completed Seal out of his body. Red Pyramid then arrives to protect Heather from the hands of prisoners who are trying to grab her. She finds Vincent, who has been strapped onto an operating table and left in a room of demonic nurses, and frees him.



They head to Lakeside Amusement Park, and Vincent kisses her before he distracts a group of the Order's cultists, allowing Heather to face Alessa's dark side to regain her memories and powers. She descends into the sanctuary beneath the park, and she is approached by the cult's priestess, Claudia Wolf, who explains that the Order wants to impregnate Alessa with their god so that their suffering at her hands will end. Claudia then transforms into the Missionary when Heather gives her the Seal of Metatron, and Red Pyramid rushes to Heather's defense, decapitating Claudia with his Great Knife.



Heather frees Chris, and he, Vincent, and herself leave the town. However, Chris wants to remain behind to find Rose. He and his daughter share a tearful goodbye, and then Heather and Vincent enter the real world and depart. They are picked up by a trucker named Travis Grady, and Heather goes back to being called Sharon. As they depart, a coalition of police cars can be seen directing a prison bus into the town. It is possible they are searching for Sharon, as she is a murder suspect in Douglas' end.

Symbolism
Sharon could be seen as a symbolic representation of the Christ child of Christianity, with Alessa acting as the Christian god and Dark Alessa as the Holy Spirit.

In the opening scene of Silent Hill, Sharon is seen standing in front of a large cross, and she is later revealed to be the non-biological child of Rose, who represents the Virgin Mary. Like the Christ child, Sharon is a supernatural creation of an all-powerful figure (Alessa), who literally is a part of that entity, while also existing in a separate body. Sharon is also sent out into the Real World for a number of years, similar to the Christ child's existence among mankind. When speaking to Rose in Alessa's hospital room, Dark Alessa refers to Sharon as Alessa's "child", suggesting a symbolic mother/daughter connection between Alessa and Sharon that mimics the father/son relationship of the Christian god and Jesus. In interviews, director Christophe Gans has compared Sharon's relationship to Rose with the concept of immaculate conception, suggesting that the Christ child symbolism is intentional.

It is also likely that Sharon's name was changed from Cheryl to reference the Biblical Rose of Sharon, a name given to a plant mentioned in the Bible, which is also used to describe Jesus of Nazareth.

Relation to the Wolfs
According to the canon of Silent Hill, Christabella is Alessa's biological aunt., and in Revelation, Claudia Wolf states that she is also Christabella's sister. This makes Sharon and Vincent cousins, though neither of them seem to be aware of it. It is possible that Claudia hid her relationship to the Gillespies due to the shame of Alessa's "evil" and Dahlia's outcasting from the cult.

Retcons in Revelation

 * Sharon's age is changed from 9 to 11 in Revelation; why her age is changed is unknown. The first film states she is 9 years old when Chris tells Sister Margaret that 9 years ago, a child was left at the orphanage. In addition, Silent Hill: The Novel states Sharon is 9. However, in Revelation, Sharon says to the class, "This is the fifth school I've been to since I was 11", a prop for Alessa says "Young Alessa (11 years old)", and various Revelation interviews say that six years passed between both films, meaning that Sharon was 11 during the first film's events in the canon of Revelation.
 * What happened between Sharon and Dark Alessa is likely changed in Revelation, as Dahlia states that Heather is only the good side of Alessa, and Heather is seen uniting with Dark Alessa on the Happy Carousel.
 * A third likely retcon seen in Revelation involves the reasoning for Sharon's creation. Dark Alessa states that Alessa created Sharon so that she could be free of the Otherworld and could learn to feel love, but this is directly contradicted by Alessa's blatant usage of Sharon as a pawn to bring her an unsuspecting outsider in Silent Hill. Had Alessa created Sharon to be free of the alternate reality, then the events of the first film would never have occurred, as Alessa would not have called Sharon back to the town at all.
 * The facial features of young Sharon bear little resemblance to that of her teenage form, due to the character being cast based on her game appearance rather than that of her younger film incarnation. Revelation writer/director M.J. Bassett stated that she thinks Jodelle Ferland is a fine actress, but that she didn't look enough like the video game version of the older Sharon/Cheryl. This is ironic, due to the fact that Jodelle had already portrayed Sharon throughout the previous film.

Actor's comments
Adelaide Clemens

"It was a huge privilege to take on the role of Heather Mason and to be in that world. There are so many scares involved it's extraordinary and the aesthetic of the game is a big part of the world but we take the plot and put a twist on its head so..."

Silent Hill

 * "Home... home... Silent Hill! Silent Hill!"
 * "I don't remember..." (about her sleepwalking)
 * "Daddy's not coming?"
 * "I don't like that... Who did that? Mommy, who did that?!" (about her changed pictures)
 * "Don't talk to strangers." (to Cybil)
 * "Can I sit in front?"
 * "Are we there?"
 * "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" (hearing the radio static)
 * "MOMMY, AHH!" (when Rose drives through a fence)

Silent Hill: Revelation
Heather: "Not today."
 * "Dad... I don't want to do this..." (about going to another school)
 * "Okay, you know what!? Let me make this easier for you. This is the FIFTH school I've been to since I was 11. Me and my dad, we move around. So I do this a lot. So don't bother trying to remember my name because I'm sure as hell not going to remember yours. Don't talk to me. We won't be friends. I won't IM you or Facebook you or Tweet you or read your blog. And whatever you're thinking of saying or doing, don't bother because I've seen it before and I'm just guessing here but I don't think there are too many original thinkers in this room. And by the time any of you have found out anything about me that's worth knowing, I'll have moved on."
 * "That speech I gave in class, I gave it for a reason. I really don't want to know anyone here."
 * "...Not so tall." (to Vincent in a deleted scene)
 * "Get off me... get off... GET OFF ME! I'm not Alessa!" (to a nun in a deleted scene)
 * "No, it's not okay! Nothing is okay!"
 * "Fuck you! He told me the truth!" (to Douglas)
 * "Fuck Facebook."
 * "I don't think I like my reality."
 * "That's a crime against pickup lines."
 * "I know who you are... You're her mother. Alessa's mother. How could you let them BURN her?"
 * "You all got what you deserved."
 * "I don't care, just tell me what you know!"
 * "Mom? Mom? I'm coming! MOM! MOM!" (to Rose in a deleted scene)
 * Leonard: "You are a demon! You must be destroyed!"
 * "Go to Hell!" (to Dark Alessa)
 * "Take it. I want to see the truth of what you are." (to Claudia)

Trivia

 * In the first film, Sharon's pajamas have an image of a butterfly on the front of them. In the game series, butterflies are used as a symbol of rebirth and transformation, the two examples being Alessa and Heather as well as Mary and Maria (Maria has a butterfly tattoo). This may have been intentionally added to symbolize Sharon's status as an incarnation of Alessa, or may be a lucky coincidence.
 * Takayoshi "Usagi" Tanaka, the designer of Robbie the Rabbit, drew Sharon as Heather.
 * One poster for Revelation shows Heather in a wheelchair being pulled by a nurse, which is identical to one of Heather's artworks for Silent Hill 3.
 * Heather's on-set outfit consists of a stunning amount of layers. Aside from a presumable set of underwear, she wears a white undershirt and dark purple athletic pants, a paint-splattered tank top and a dark purple rubbery skirt, an orange hoodie, a cream leather vest, an olive green jacket, and a red and black plaid coat, making a total of seven layers.
 * It is suggested that Heather may often defy her father's orders, given that she immediately makes a speech at her new school about how much she's moved around, despite having been told by him just hours before to keep her history hidden. Chris also orders her not to go to Silent Hill to rescue him, yet she does anyway.
 * Chris gives Heather the white jacket she's seen wearing in the film the same morning that the film starts for her birthday. However, the picture of Heather carried by Douglas Cartland shows the same jacket. This could mean that someone, perhaps Douglas himself, photographed her while she was walking on the way to school and had the photo printed as soon as possible, presumably during her first day at school.

Silent Hill: Revelation
Sharon Da Silva Sharon da Silva