Perhaps this has been said before but as I was playing through the game again last week I came to the picture which says that prisioners can choose their death as a last taste of freedom. The only two choices on the list are being skewered (which I also considered stabbed) and strangling.

In a (not so startling way) these are the only two attacks which the final boss can inflict upon James at the end of the game (excluding moths which...are clearly not deadly). I'm not sure entirely where I'm going with this idea but perhaps James is picking both as his punishment as the prisioner of his own mind?

Please excuse my stumbling in the dark.

as the jail is quite old (out of use in the real silent hill) it was probably just a way of how the executenors killed the prisoners, however pyramid head (who was made by james to punish himself) does have both those attacks( first fight he can either strangle you or just cut you up with the great knive)
I don't think the marydemon had a strangle attack though I never let her close to try anything, only those moths kept hitting me , as far as I know she only hits with this tentacle thingy and the moths

The final boss does have strangling attacks, you do have to get quite close to her though and she lifts you from the floor by your neck with her tentacle.

That might be true, but i didn't know that there was another way of getting killed at the prison, i only thought that you could be hanged.

well I finished SH2 2 times now and currently playing SH3
both times I played normal setting so uh as the pyramid heads hurt like crazy I just didn't want to risk having mary get close to me, I fisished the second marydemon fight without getting hit once( also no moth hurt me , tbh for the last boss this is way too easy ) well as the last place is indeed made like a courthouse (marydemon being the "judge") it would make sense that she can do the last "rights" a prisoner has (which james is in a way, prisoner of his own warped mind)
to me the PH seemed more like the executenors (well they where in the real silent hill ages ago , just ofc not immortal, prolly some normal humans who had those scary outfits on )

Theey are, just not for james.

(Yay new rank!!)

hmm mistyped that in a way, PH was more a tormentor for james but in the same way he was also to make sure james didn't kill himself (too early)

You could choose to be hanged, rather than strangled.

Hanging is supposed to kill you by breaking your neck (which is why there is a drop in gallows), not via strangulation.

Strangulation and Skewering are both big themes within the game.

I always thought it was interesting that PH can strangle you, and he skewers Maria, and you if you aren't careful. And how did James kill Mary? He suffocated her, which is similar to strangulation in that it cuts off the airflow to your lungs. I have been thinking that James conjured up his "demons" because he identified with what he read about in the history of the town (possibly about the executioners and their means for execution) after he killed Mary.

So basically, he made his own version of Silent Hill based on his crimes??

So let's get this straight - Nothing in Silent Hill 2 actually happened?
It was all through James' eyes? SH2 was just his insane interpretation of a random ghost town?
Awesome ^^ !

Yes, to make it easy to explain the town made james emotions come to live (the demons and PH are proof of that)

No.

High priest says no. Heh...

I'm interested about further explanations then, since this was a theory I came accross several times and that I tend to identify to.... But hey I guess I can't be always right about what I feel about something......

The great one hath spoken.

I don't know what you'd expect: Everything in Silent Hill 2 happens. The events were not "just his insane interpretation of a random ghost town," but rather the manifestations of his guilt & contrition.

Exactly. The town manifests the guilt of James. It makes it whole and tangible. So in other words, it isn't just 'in his head'. While the town does function on some level...the world where we wander as James does exist on some plane of reality. So events that have influenced these manifestations were real, but now are just shifting to fit into the world SH and James' subconcious have created for his punishment.

Please expand on that, as I'm finding everything a bit confusing.

Note:

Skewering is a pretty loaded phallic symbol, while strangling is related to smothering. Both means of death are relevant to James and his story.

I never knew PH could strangle you. That's interesting...

(one more thing to look for when I finally get around to replaying SH2)