Gale vs Peeta is NOT a pointless love triangle and i will die on this hill | MOCKINGJAY ANALYSIS

THIS IS A REUPLOAD i got claimed lmao, i had movie clips in the first version. feels like a milestone on youtube tbh, baby's first copyright claim :)

Hi everyone!! I do get a little off in the weeds on this one but I think there is a point to the love triangle between Gale and Peeta in the hunger games series. I will also admit here that young Mer thought Liam Hemsworth was way hotter than Josh Hutcherson… anyway Katniss is not dumb to consider Gale an option and you’ll have to watch the video to figure out why!!

0:00 pre-analysis
7:10 plot analysis

[ralunix]

She said, "Yes, for Prim." Snow didn't kill Prim, Coin did.

[nmoney]

My favorite quote from the book is “There are still moments where he clutches a chair in the dining room and I still wake up screaming from nightmares of lost children but his arms are there to comfort me and eventually his lips and after when he asks:You love me real or not real? I answer real

[hockeygrrlmuse]

Your point about how Prim isn't very fleshed out as a character also shows the reason why Rue is so powerful. We know that Rue isn't Prim, but that she represents Prim in a lot of ways for Katniss. We see through her how much Katniss loves Prim and wants to protect her. It helps build our understanding of Katniss as a character, but not Prim. And that also contributes to the true gut punch at the end of the series. Prim showing up in the Capitol is a complete shock to Katniss and a complete shock to us. She's kept growing up where Rue stopped. It's a hell of a challenge for Prim to be such a pivotal character and such a huge part of Katniss's motivation throughout the series while remaining largely off the page/screen, and Rue's role in the first Games very much contributes to the cohesiveness of the whole.

[beckysaurus]

I like the idea that Coin purposefully sent Katniss into danger hoping she would die to become a martyr that she could control the image of as she couldn’t control Katniss

[juzzachannel]

to me katniss agrees to the hunger games to gain coin's trust and make her think she's convinced snow killed her sister and she's consumed by that rage so coin doesn't see her plan of killing her coming

[heyo]

i saw someone say katniss says yes to the games “for prim” as a test for coin. katniss KNEW prim would never want another hunger games, she literally sacrificed her own life to save capital children, and coin not seeing that is pretty much katniss’ final confirmation that coin never cared about prim, and was just as bad as snow. “for prim” also works in a different sense: prim and other innocent children were killed in an enclosed area, at the hands of coin, in order to send a political message, similar to the structure of the hunger games. so in a way, katniss ALREADY saw coin’s version of the hunger games play out. ifl this shows how katniss was never really saying yes to coin, she was just following a plan.

[justlooking]

Katniss knew about the 2nd bombs because it was an idea Gale had and I believe he spoke about the idea before and worked on it with Beetee

[dxnzaii]

As a lesbian who didn’t have many feelings for peeta nor gale (I did want her to end with peeta though) I always saw them as ideologies. One person who is more gentle not as confrontational about things (peeta) and one who is more brute force who was willing to do “bad things” for a “good cause”. I always thought peeta was a good choice for katniss because she complimented him and they balanced eachother. Katniss already was very much a fighter and protector she needed someone who was sweeter and most gentle, someone to take care of her and worry about her wounds. I think gale was meant to represent fire which katniss already had so peeta was the water that brings down her flames. I think it was a great way to get the ideologies across while getting young readers interested in the romance. Many people like to focus on the love triangle but the closer you look at it the more clear cut the themes are which can make ir more digestible for younger audiences.

[jackmartin]

It's also really interesting that Peeta loses his leg in the first game. Katniss is shocked that he couldn't be healed. I think it's symbolism for the games damages damaging her moral compass that she had before. She was horrified at the suggestion of murder before the game

[anissawilkinson]

18:46 I read a theory somewhere that Tigris started hating Snow when he began prostituting the Hunger Games victors out to capitol citizens. It's implied in BOSBAS that Tigris herself had to resort to prostitution during the Dark Days in order to keep the Snows from starving to death, and it makes sense that finding out that her cousin is trafficking victors (children, essentially) would put her over the edge. At that point she's still a costume designer for the games but begins making her costumes progressively more rebellious in any little way she can find, and eventually Snow gets sick of it and fires her

[floraacastro]

I think it is really interesting that Coin is the only person Katniss actually kills out of choice and not out of survival throughout the whole series.

[sarahcortese]

The fan theory of Tigres’s story between Ballad and Mokingjay is that she becomes a stylist for the games (which was confirmed in Mockingjay) and due to nepotism was given her preferred tributes to style, which ended up being district 4.
She continued to live her capitol life. However, once she realized the fate of Finnick after he won his games, she drew parallels to herself and how she had to traffic herself in order to support her family (particularly her cousin, Snow).
This enraged her, as President Snow was well aware of her personal history. So she started to evolve her physical appearance to change her affiliation with her family and became a district sympathizer, then eventually giving her full support to the rebels.

[anarudiaz]

I am very anti love triangle EXCEPT for Gale and Peeta, and its for the exact reasons you said. Maybe its because i was older when I read the trilogy and in the middle of my english lit degree but i immediately caught on to the fact that Peeta and Gale were metaphors for Katniss' choices. Both of those boys were absolutely necessary in the books.

[morleywritesbooks]

fascinating deep dive! however, i think i disagree about Prim being "innocence" (i made the same conclusion at first, but after mulling it over...) I think Rue represented innocence in book1, but Prim represents "the way things were" or "happier times" so the reason we don't see much of Prim but Katniss has this idealized image of her is because over time memory fogs and fades. We long for that simpler time, the time before now, but we forget that those days also had struggles. Since we don't know a lot of detail about Katniss's past except things here and there, it makes sense that Prim (who represents this concept) is only seen from time to time. Thus Prim's death is the moment of Katniss realizing things can NEVER go back to how they were. That the world is not completely uncertain and there is nothing to anchor onto.

Or maybe i'm an idiot, it's really up in the air.
Anyway, awesome video. Keep at it ^_^

[djadelaney]

When Katniss's dad died, her mom fell apart and was unable to care for her children. They talk at some point about how she needed a medicine, like it was extreme clinical depression, but she didn't have the ingredients or the willpower to get them. Katniss can't forgive her because Katniss had to become the adult, when she was 11 and also grieving. When Katniss believes Peeta is dead, and when Prim dies, she reacts in basically the same way her mom did and becomes suicidal and catatonic. She doesn't have kids though, so it's allowed. I think her mom doesn't come back to live in 12 because, like it says explicitly, she can't live with the memories of her dead husband and daughter, but also she can't face Katniss, who has always been unforgiving of her grief, even though and maybe especially because they grieve in similar ways. When the only one left is someone who cannot hold space for your breakdown, you wouldn't go live with her.
I also hated Katniss's mom when I first read the books fifteen years ago, now that I am 30 I see her very differently... She's a very tragic figure to me. I wish I knew her name.

[wildflower]

also i think in the trial plutarch would have been advocating for katniss and revealing the evil of president coin. because its from katniss’ pov and she’s so shell shocked about her sister, she isn’t absorbing all the information from the trial. people in 13 knew coin was corrupt and that can be seen when boggs transfers katniss the holo and warns her about staying on coins good side.

[TheBlondeGeniusGaming]

I like the theory that Katniss said yes to the “final” Hunger Games in order to guarantee that she would have the chance to kill Coin. Remember, they also repeated ‘if you’re not with her, you’re against her’ in regards to Coin. If Katniss had said no, she probably wouldn’t have been given the chance to do the execution. She said yes in order to trick Coin into giving Katniss the chance to kill her. That’s also my theory as to why Haymitch agreed with her. When she says “this is the moment we find out how alike we really are”, I think it’s implying that Haymitch realizes, even if only partially, what all Katniss has realized and he supports her in order to stay on Coin’s good side and to show that he understands Katniss without outright telling Katniss, since they didn’t have much opportunity to talk, especially without being watched/recorded.

Also, the reason Katniss is able to know what is happening with the final bombs is that it’s the same design that Beetee and (mainly) Gale (that specific bomb design is thought up by Gale) were talking about down in the lab in 13 with Katniss earlier in the book. That’s another reason why she realized that Coin dropped the bombs, not Snow. The specific design of the bomb, plus Prim being there, plus Snow reminding her that they had agreed never to lie to one another (this happened in Catching Fire, before the Victory Tour), knowing how Snow never killed when he didn’t find it necessary, along with her knowing how much Coin hated her and how afraid Coin was of Katniss taking the power from her, all led to her realizing who really dropped the bombs.

[anonmouse]

Katniss agreed to the “last hunger games” so that coin would announce it to the masses before Katniss shot her. So that everyone would know what’s gonna happen if anyone ever decided to have a hunger games again. Katniss wanted everyone to know why coin deserved to die. Katniss killed 2 president snows that day. She knew the people would tear snow apart whether she shot him or not

[CementFrosting]

it's been AGES but for me gale has always been a big brother, bitter furious and grief stricken, he's not always a GOOD man or a GOOD brother. but he is all you got so you stick with him. never saw him through a romantic lens

[abbypierce]

Im re-listening to the trilogy (Tatiana does INCREDIBLE narration on the free YouTube version - highly recommend) in my late twenties and Gale suddenly became such a effective character for me. I hold so much sympathy for his situation, and honestly - I believe Katniss and Gale would have had a beautiful life together if she wasn’t reaped in the games. Peeta however BECOMES what she needs to heal. Gale could never be that for her by the end of Mockingjay, and it’s truly bittersweet.

It also adds another layer of why Peeta is the GOAT. He handles Gale and Katniss’s relationship with so much grace and respect it’s honestly mind-blowing.