Never am I more reminded that Tyler Galpin is a Teenage Boy^tm than when I read this quote.
It’s the folly of youth. Because what teenage boy is truly understanding his own mortality and by saying that he ‘understands that [being a Hyde is a death sentence]’ and continuing to chase the high of being a Hyde that tells me that he actually *doesn’t* understand it. This freedom he feels is fully manufactured in his mind because by being a Hyde, he can never be free. He would always be chained to the whim of others, of a Master. That’s why it’s the ‘idea’ of being free; it is not true freedom. As far as we’ve been shown, Tyler cannot have true freedom while being a Hyde. Yes, even with Wednesday as his master.
And also, in order to understand his own mortality, to value the life he could lose, he would need to live his life, he would need to create one, which is where Francoise’s experience comes into play because she *did* make a life: she was married, she had a child, she might have had a place in the Jericho community, yet all of that was ripped away by the Hyde.
That’s not to say that what Francoise’s did was correct. There’s no excusing the slap. And obviously there should have been communication before the events in the tower, but there isn’t any and I think there are two reasons for that.
One, they don’t trust each other. I think Tyler *wants* to have his mother’s trust. I think he longs for a parent and is grieving his father and any hope of he might have had to repair that relationship. This is the boy that screamed that he didn’t need anyone because he believed he *had* no one, yet when his mother is miraculously alive, that idea flutters away. As for Francoise, I don’t think she can fully trust her son because she doesn’t know him. Unlike Tyler, who we know has built up an idealized image of his mother (maybe even imagined what his current life would be like if she hadn’t ‘died’), Francoise probably clung to the 4 year old child she was ripped away from instead of imagining the man he would become because the idea of meeting that person was so impossible. Yet the impossible happens, and who she finds is not the boy who loves pancakes instead it’s a teenager who has been deeply traumatized and hurt because of what they both are.
The second reason is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently and that is the parent-child relationship when the child is an adult and how that relationship must change. Obviously in a typical parent-child relationship, that doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a gradual change. The way in which you stop a 4y/o from making a mistake is different from how you stop your young adult child. You take a knife away from a toddler; you explain the dangers of a knife to an older child before allowing them to use it. You caution your almost adult son about cutting himself but at that point any cuts are his to bare; you’re just there to help patch him up. Francoise did not get that gradual release from parenthood (if you are ever truly released is up for debate; if you were to ask my Mexican parents that they would reply a firm NO), so her lack of communication with Tyler, her not explaining what this ‘dark side [of being a Hyde]’, is consistent because do you explain to your 4 y/o that the monster under his bed are not the ones he should be worried about or do you just rid him of his monsters?
Also even if she had sat Tyler down and explained in excruciating detail all the things that were done to her in Willow Hill, of the isolation she felt in Nevermore, of how she felt she needed to lie to be loved, do we think he would have listened?
Growing up, when my mother would lecture me and I was obviously not listening, she would say ‘mas sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.’ And sometimes she was wrong and other times she was right (and boy was she right). So I don’t like the implication that Tyler, with all 18 years of life under his belt, is more evolved, more empowered, because he embraces the power that keeps him chained. My fully formed frontal cortex just can’t support that.
dededos
dailybridgerton
baratheonpilled
kianamaiart
