lenore dove: a calculated, clever and emotionally driven rebel°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
arguably one of the biggest misconceptions about lenore dove, is the idea that she’s a manic pixie dream girl, a dead-wife, or a mary-sue character.
this usually happens when people choose to ignore her recklessness—either because they want to push the “shallow character” agenda on her, or because they think being impulsive is a bad trait to have.
lenore dove was incredibly clever—she was smart with many of her rebellious acts, and she made sure to try and keep that side of her a secret so as to not involve or endanger anyone else.
but she is also an emotionally driven rebel.
she is impulsive—it’s a big part of her character—and that’s not a bad thing.
impulsivity isn’t the absence of thought; it’s action born from feeling.
lenore dove acts when she’s sad, mad, or scared. it is a characteristic she shares with other main characters in the trilogy, such as katniss herself.
her rebellious acts do not cease to exist, nor do they stop being meaningful just because she was emotionally driven.
Her impulsivity is not a weakness—it’s proof of her humanity. And in a world built to extinguish that, her emotions were fueling her most radical acts.
“Sometimes she cries because things are so beautiful and we keep messing them up. Because the world doesn’t have to be so terrifying. That’s on people, not the world.”
she feels so deeply that silence becomes impossible. most rebels are driven by their emotions anyway; it’s a survival instinct.
many studies of revolution consider emotions as central to mobilization, and our rawest emotions are what fuel rebellions, “impulsivity” if you will.
lenore dove is self aware, she knows that she’s driven by her emotions; haymitch and her uncles know it too.
“I overstepped, just like my uncles always warn me about. I lost my temper and started hollering and now you’re — oh, Haymitch . . . I don’t want to be on this earth without you.”
“That’s the part I’m worried about. That she might be saying something rash.”
she was only a child living under an oppressive government that thrived in spreading fear and death amongst her people.
she grew up knowing of a past she couldn’t experience and of relatives she never got to meet.
the rage and fire in her heart were something she grew up with, something she slowly developed through the years, and her ideals and beliefs only strengthened that need to raise her voice.
ignoring her impulsiveness is harmful to her character, because it is something that makes her who she is.
she started rebelling, from what we know, at twelve—both her actions were fueled by her emotions, carefully planned, but not perfect.
“Maybe it was overkill, the way she’d prepared. Maybe the Peacekeepers could sense they were being played. They let her go again, but this time with a strict warning that they had their eye on her.”
at the age that she was, the action in itself, was impulsive.
she was fueled by fear the night before her very first reaping, she couldn’t bear to stand the thought of it—she wanted to stop it from happening, even temporarily, just in the hopes that none of her people fall victims to it.
“When I press her, she just laughs and says if it’s true, that information could put me in danger, and if it’s false, what does it matter? “Didn’t do much good anyway, did it? Clay’s dead and the reaping’s alive and well.”
“They needed a place to be together, to raise their voices. Sometimes the hurt’s too bad to bear alone.”
what truly unites people of all ages when it comes to fighting for change, is our shared hope for a better future.
lenore dove’s heart was with her people, and the reason she fought for change was because she loved life, and she loved her people.
she hated to see the ever-growing misery, pain, and the horrors that kept happening under the capitol’s control. she couldn’t stand feeling helpless, and everything she did, she did it to help her people.
her emotions moved her, she was extremely empathetic.
and this trait of hers is something that makes her incredibly interesting, and shows how multidimensional and complex her character truly is.
