@fandomsarefamily1966
Okay but What exactly is the difference between the two? (I hope that didn’t sound mean, I genu want to know)
Alright fine fine I deleted the original post because it was eating my notifications but this is honestly a really good question so okay, the answer
It comes down to Theme and Symbolism.
A well-foreshadowed death is, for the most part, just a death that makes sense. The character does not die for shock value or to motivate another character through their tragedy, they die because their death 1) has deeper meaning for the plot and narrative and 2) because it makes sense for them as a character to be in that spot when the bomb goes off, or to do that thing at that time that ultimately leads to their death. What this looks like is largely circumstantial; a death that works in one story won’t necessarily work in another and vice versa, but for the most part, if a character dies and you’re upset about it and maybe surprised but not left sitting there going “What kind of actual bullshit was that?” then the death was probably well-foreshadowed.
A character being Doomed By The Narrative, however, is a little bit more complicated.
The thing about The Hunger Games is that, in a lot of ways, it’s not really a story about Katniss at all. It’s a story about Prim’s death. The very first major story beat – Katniss volunteering as tribute – comes because Prim was picked. Prim, as Katniss and we as the audience know, would not survive The Hunger Games. It’s not a question, it’s a fact. By being selected for the games, Prim has been marked for death. This is foreshadowing of her dying later, yes, but more importantly it’s the first glimpse we get of the actual Theme of the Hunger Games series.
Prim, in the moment she is selected at the reaping, is one more dead child in a long list of dead children, and her death is meaningless. It’s pointless. It doesn’t need to happen, and there’s no actual benefit to it.
Rue dies. Her death is meaningless and pointless. She is one more in a long line of dead children. It is Katniss’s compassion, her visible grief, her reaction to Rue’s death that turns what would have been just another tribute who lost the game into a martyr.
It is key that Gale’s bomb kills Prim, because Gale buys into the idea of there being a concrete enemy. Us vs Them. Gale believes that those from the capital deserve to die. Obviously, capital people believing that those from the districts deserve to die is bad and wrong, but it’s fine when it’s the other way around, because the Capital is the oppressor, and therefore everyone in it is evil. In another story, that might have been true, but the Hunger Games actively rejects that kind of black and white mentality. The Hunger Games is about the horrors of war, and the ugly reality of rebellion.
It is key that Coin is the one who gives the order to drop the bombs in the first place, because one of the themes of the books is that, even on the “good” side, evil lurks. President Coin is not a revolutionary, she’s just one more wannabe tyrant. She’s not here to save anybody. Overthrowing one corrupt government just to end up with a new one is a very real thing that happens in real life over and over throughout history. Who does war benefit? At the end of the day, even if the only way to freedom is through violent uprising, it’s still a question that needs to be asked. Who does this war benefit? Because the answer is never just one side or the other.
The Hunger Games is, at it’s core, a story about piles of dead children, and all the ways in which people justify those dead children, and how at the end of the day there is no justification. There is never, ever an excuse for that.
So Prim needed to die. She needed to die, because The Hunger Games is about her death. It would have cheapened the Theme and Narrative elements to let her live to see the end of it. The whole point is that she’s not special. Her sister being the protagonist, the Mokingjay, the face of the rebellion, doesn’t make her special. Her being a medic on the side of the heroes doesn’t make her special.
Prim ends the series in the exact same way she started it, as just one more dead child. A child who should have never been in danger in the first place, a child who’s life was considered expendable by predatory power structures. That’s the whole theme of the books.
So, I guess the tl;dr is that a character who is doomed by the narrative is a character who’s death is the lynch pin for the theme. That character’s death is the point, not just a side-effect. Prim didn’t die because now we can make Katniss sad, Prim died because The Hunger Games is a series about how, no matter how hard you may try, one person cannot hope to protect their loved ones against a violent oppressive government determined to use those loved ones as canon fodder. Prim died because the theme of the series hinges on her dying.
