letâs talk about gale hawthorne. and not in the context of his romantic feelings towards katniss. letâs talk about the fact that heâs characterized as evil more than coin or snow by thg fans and everything we forget about him.
gale grew up in a district where everyone had to constantly avoid starving to death. he was forced to watch children being murdered on television every year, and was exposed to absolutely nothing about the outside world besides captiol propaganda. he did not get a proper education, and was prepared for his whole childhood to follow in his fatherâs footsteps and work for life in the terrifying, dangerous mines.
then at 14, his father is killed in those neglected, disposable mines. he is automatically put into a parental role to take care of his mother, his little brothers, and his unborn baby sister. he is forced to turn to the woods and the tessera and risk his and his familyâs lives to survive. he knows he has a greater chance of going in the hunger games, but he did what he had to do.
he looses his childhood, and has to be the provider for the next several years. but at least he had katniss, who is going through the same thing. at least he can be himself around her. he can express his anger, how much he hates the capitol. he can say things that would get him killed in 12. whoâs ever going to hear him?
then, just as he made it through his last reaping, prim is reaped and katniss volunteers. he has to watch his best friend be paraded around the capitol and then thrown into an arena to die. he watches her at the brink of death, and at her lowest points. when she returns, sheâs traumatized.
but life goes on for gale, and as an adult, he has the responsibility to work in the same mines that killed his father. instead of feeling free in the woods, he is suffocated deep underground, wrapped around snowâs finger. but thereâs talk of rebellion, finally a chance that he can fight back. but his life is in danger. his district is locked down, and any talk of rebellion is controlled.
he then has to watch his best friend go back into the arena, the place that broke her. he has to watch her be tortured yet again by the capitol. he knows in his heart that this time he will never see her again.
and what happens after all of that? his district is bombed. he risks his own life to save as many people as he could. he saves hundreds, but had to watch thousands of his neighbors burn with his own eyes. the guilt he holds that he couldnât save them all overwhelms him.
we forget all of this when we talk about gale. we forget that he was an angry teenager, who was traumatized and a victim of the capitolâs cruelty. he had a hard time emotionally connecting to anything that is outside his personal family and circle. because he was so inexperienced, uneducated, and filled with rage, he kind of had the attitude that you do what you have to do to fight back. he didnât understand the price of war. it took someone he loved and cared about to be killed for him to realize the price. we donât see much of gale after primâs death. i can only imagine the guilt and trauma that haunts him for life. heâll see her face in his dreams every night.
the evil ones were the adults (coin) who understood war. the oneâs who planned this out their entire lives, the oneâs who used this traumatized teenagerâs rage to THEIR advantage. they had the absolute power to not utilize his ideas, and to not use them against innocent people for their own power. ultimately THEY were the one to give the okay on those attacks. do i think he should have been more empathetic and cautious of life? 100%. in fact, i think gale is reckless. but i donât see the teenager who was a traumatized victim of the capitolâs cruelty as evil for having a questionable moral compass.
we are missing the plot here yâall.
gummygunk
izzy806
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
2087
