Birdyline Book Blog

“It’s war. Sometimes killing isn’t personal.”

Gale Hawthorne, Mockingjay pt.2 (the movie)

Gale Hawthorne and his controversial actions/beliefs, although hugely hated by the Hunger Games fandom, are absolutely essential to the ideology that the trilogy conveys.

The fandom likes to say that Gale represents war and Peeta represents peace, and while that may be partially true, there is more to it than that. I believe that Gale as a literary figure represents cycles of oppression and the potential of the oppressed to become the oppressor. Hating his character is counter productive because it shields us from recognizing our own potential to repeat these cycles, which are unfortunately common byproducts of our humanity.

Gale and Katniss both come out of the same awful circumstances but end with very different beliefs by the final book. Why is that?

Part of this comes from their very different ideologies that have existed since the first book. In the very first chapter while talking in the woods, Katniss declares that she will never have children because she does not want to subject them to the hunger and fear that living in District 12 entails. Gale replies that he would have kids if he didn’t live in District 12.

Katniss believes that adding that note is preposterous. She is a realist. She lives in District 12, and she doesn’t have time to picture any other reality because it isn’t real. For Gale, however, hope is a central part of his character. He has an image in his head of what the world could be, and when he is given the opportunity to achieve it he accepts that future as his goal and will stop at nothing to get it.

Moving over to the later books now, we examine President Coin. Coin is, as I saw someone put it once, the same as Snow… just “the other side of the same coin.” Her name illustrates exactly what she does. She wants the power to be taken from her oppressors, but in the end it becomes evident that she has no interest in changing the methods of control or the distribution of power and/or wealth in the capitol and districts. Coin wants the power that Snow has and uses the desperation of the hopeful, such as Gale, to her advantage.

Gale’s image of the future ultimately blinds him to his own hypocrisy. If you strip down the choices Gale makes down to the ending goal that he is reaching for, there are no negatives left. His intentions are as pure as Katniss. He, unlike Coin, doesn’t want power. He wants the people of the capitol to lose their ability to treat his peers the way they have been for decades.

The quote from the movie that I attached above is my very favorite for illustrating exactly where his ideals go wrong. In order to chase his vision of the future, Gale dehumanizes the capitol’s citizens. He stops seeing them as nuanced individuals. He refuses to acknowledge the ability of the capitol to manipulate or control its own citizens though he recognizes that they do that to the districts.

Unlike Katniss, he never learned the heartbreaking truth that even tributes like Glimmer, Clove, Marvel, and Cato who willingly participate in violence are ultimately victims of a system built by the capital that exists to create that “us-versus-them mentality” as well as channel people’s hope into the wrong place. Gale lacks the perspective Katniss has from being in the games because his lack of proximity and exposure to the capitol prevents him from seeing their humanity.

(SPOILERS) At the end of the day Gale refuses to see the capital’s citizens or loyalists as human. If they die, they are simply a means to an end. This is what ultimately leads him to have the reaction to Coin’s bombing of the children that he does. While he likely had less of a hand in designing the bombs used than the movie implies, and while he clearly cares about Primrose deeply, fans despise him and hold him at fault for her death. While I personally don’t believe it was ever his fault, I understand their rage. He doesn’t have a reaction big enough to match the tragedy.

But here in the story is where Gale’s optimism and hope ends and the bit of realism that he has in him shows. While Katniss says that killing is always personal, and every death is a tragedy, Gale disagrees. Wars lead to peace, right? In Gale’s mind Primrose’s life mattered the same as any other life. While Katniss also believes this, she would have expected Gale to treat Prim differently as she herself would. Gale will not bring himself to care that much more about Prim’s death than the others’ because it lead to the “ideal” end of the war.

Prim’s death is a crucial addition to the book. It strongly reinforces one of the series’ core messages- there is no “ideal war.” It also forces the reader to bear the weight of death by not allowing all the deaths to be anonymous. Every casualty was someone else’s Prim, but without the emotional connection, the reader may not care.

For me, there is a truth and a life lesson buried in Gale’s actions related or unrelated to this event that people don’t want to face. We are all more similar to Gale than we think. His failure is something anyone is capable of. There’s nothing we hate more than a good guy actually being bad. The reason reading the choices made by Gale over the course of the books is difficult is because it forces us to confront the fact that ideals do not matter.

What you believe does not matter. Your definitions of right and wrong do not matter. The only thing that matters is what you do. Gale always had good intentions and yet those “good” morals and “good” ideas are what lead him to his bad actions. That is a frightening idea to consider. We can easily commit evil in hopes that it will bring about good.

The actions by the rebels in the end of Mockingjay illustrate the slippery slope that leads those who are oppressed to commit the same crimes as the people who have oppressed them. In the name of justice, many former victors even vote to have a symbolic games with capital children. Their mistake is the same as Gale’s- that as someone who has been wronged they no longer believe they can take revenge too far.