āIt was not his place to speak out and there were dire consequences.ā
āI wanted to speak outā¦but Iām ashamed to say I didnāt.ā
This parallel always breaks my heart. Three years after being shamed and burned by his father, Zuko finds himself in the same room, under extremely similar circumstances, and he freezes up. He remembers what happened the last time. He knows that, if he speaks, heāll be injured. He could be killed, this time. His voice is literally stripped away from him. Even worse, he realizes that, despite the changes he went through in those three years, his father hasnāt changed at all. The Fire Nation is still planning on destroying innocent lives for the sake of their own imperialist vendetta. Nothingās changed. Thatās why Zuko realizes that he has to leave.
What gets me is when he says,Ā āIām ashamed.ā He was ashamed that he didnāt speak out in that moment, even though doing so would have cost him everything. The very next day, he took advantage of the eclipse, packed his things, and confronted Ozai one last time.He was an abused child who saw the right opportunity to escape, lest he be injured again (or worse), he went on to help save the entire world, and he still remarks that he was ashamed because he didnāt speak/fight sooner.
This is what we mean when we all say that Zuko is one of the best fictional characters thatās ever been written. It isnāt just that he goes from being the villain to being the hero. Itās that every single second of his life is filled with complex moral choices, often at the risk of his own life, and that the consequences of these choices has left him with, letās be honest, a form of posttraumatic stress disorder, which causes him to question, doubt, and despise everything about himself so that, even when he tries to do good, he still feels ashamed because, in his scarred eyes, itās not good enough. On that note, Ozai didnāt just scar Zukoās eye; Ozai scarred Zukoās sight. He scarred Zukoās ability to see himself in a wholly positive light.
Iād like to believe that some of these triggers faded away as Zuko got older, but thatās the thing about being a child in a traumatic situationāsome triggers never leave. (Believe me, I know.) Still, thereās a reason (multiple reasons) why the last song in the series isĀ āPeaceā. In that moment, when Zuko smiles and hands Iroh that cup of tea, heās as close to peace as heās ever been. Itās hard to say whether heāll be able to reach that wholly positive sense of worth, but if thereās one thing Zukoās story exudes, itās hopeā¦
titsay
origamiaround
prguitarman
yousharknotpass
stormborns
