cant it be argued that haymitch's trauma changed him, and not the alcoholism? i mean, to me the haymitch we know and grew to love was always there from sotr, although hidden within the love he had for everyone he knew and lost.
and i agree with you on most of your takes about sotr, dont get me wrong. collins definitely didnt have sotr planned from the start, and im sure the reception of tbosas impacted how she wrote it (which pisses me off ngl), but i just dont think i'd say thg haymitch and sotr haymitch are completely different characters. would love to know your thoughts!!
can it be argued? sure. But I don't think SOTR itself leaves Haymitch on a note to develop such traits via the invocation of The Raven and his own recount of what he does.
First, let's unpack what he tells us he does:
I am so desperate to forget. To escape the grief, the aching loneliness, the loss of those I love. There are no mementos of them; all are burned or buried. I work on forgetting their voices, their faces, their laughs. Even in my head, my language becomes dull and flat, stripped of the color and music of yesterday.
The only human contact I allow myself arrives by way of Capitol News, which I play on my television set 24/7. That way, if Lenore Doveâs ghost ever comes to me, I can tell her Iâm working on a strategy to keep that sun from rising.
There are a few key pieces here. He's working on forgetting, on drinking himself into oblivion. Perhaps this is steady for the first year, but we know Haymitch doesn't forget via his input to the memory book Katniss and Peeta create at the end of Mockingjay. Haymitch is highly perceptive and knows memory is all he has, and yet his goal at the end of sotr is to forget, not try to remember. In fact, he remembers so much that he knows it's not how his games went down when they're all on the train in CF, and then apparently tries to deceive katniss at her most vulnerable in Mockingjay by telling her:
"No. My mother and younger brother. My girl. They were all dead two weeks after Iwas crowned victor. Because of that stunt I pulled with the force field," he answers. "Snow had no one to use against me."
The second piece is his characterization of his language. His language is some of the most colorful in the original trilogy. Not in the sappy romantic way, but in a keen, mischievous, and sardonic way. Can trauma contribute to that? Absolutely! Does drinking until you're blacked out in the dark alone in front of a capital propaganda machine give you the opportunity to develop the underlying sense of humor he has? No. The ending of SOTR gives him no breathing room to develop the key undertones of his language in the trilogy.
Finally, the television. The point isn't that the television physically prevents Haymitch from becoming strategic. The point is what the habit represents. He's not studying the Capitol because he has a long-term plan. He's not gathering information. He's not building toward resistance. The text tells us exactly why he's doing it: "That way, if Lenore Dove's ghost ever comes to me, I can tell her I'm working on a strategy."
It's passive and avoidant language, not language with a larger goal in mind. He's constructing a ritual to soothe himself while he's most vulnerable to tampering with his memory. The television isn't presented as a tool. It's presented as an anesthetic. And that's important because the ending doesn't frame Haymitch as a man adapting to his circumstances, it frames him as a man giving in to them.
An alcoholic hermit stuck watching capitol propaganda 24/7 with absolutely no human interaction aside from his asshole moonshine dealer does not become a witty, strategic, sarcastic chess-master. He becomes an asshole. There's no pulse here for the undertones of haymitch's character.
Finally, the most damning point is The Raven. The character in the raven succumbs to his fate. He waits, just as Haymitch does, for a savior or the return of the source of his loss- origined grief, claiming others have returned and therefore once the person he lost returns, he'll be fine again:
Till I scarcely more than muttered âOther friends have flown beforeâ
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.â
            Then the bird said âNevermore.â
He commands the Raven to leave:
Leave my loneliness unbroken!âquit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!â
Quoth the Raven âNevermore.â
Then finally resigns to the fact the raven will be a permanent fixture in his life and chooses to slouch:
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
   And his eyes have all the seeming of a demonâs that is dreaming,
   And the lamp-light oâer him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
            Shall be liftedânevermore!
His soul becomes trapped under the shadow of the raven forever. Through associating the raven with haymitch, collins has condemned him to a life of nasty, brooding solitude where he has no room to actually develop the beloved trilogy traits under the boot of his trauma. She chose to end on imagery that emphasizes despair, withdrawal, and surrender rather than the qualities we later associate with Haymitch.
Further, under the covey formula, where they all seem to be magically condemned to the violent ends of their namesake, attaching a poem to a character is a permanent decision in the hunger games universe. So when she closes Haymitch's story by invoking a character who ends the poem completely constrained by his loss, she's emphasizing the very traits that sit furthest away from the mentor we meet in the trilogy.
So can trauma be a factor in developing a somewhat different personality? Yes, normally. However the ending text doesn't allow for it in sotr.
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