r/thehungergames • u/jeontgarak • 5h ago
Other Finished The Hunger Games trilogy and came out thinking Gale was the most interesting character
That doesn't mean I think he's perfect, of course. He's controlling, stubborn, and self-righteous; can be incredibly dismissive of perspectives that clash with his own; and is extremely possessive of Katniss, but I think that's consistent with his angry personality. Gale is an angry, bitter, and deeply resentful person, and I think his anger is pretty much who he is. It makes him impulsive, uncompromising, and, in the end, downright cruel, but I don't think that makes him any less interesting as a character.
"Oh, but Peeta, Katniss, and other characters have been through worse things and didn't turn out like him" Okay, and? He is still a person who has been radicalized by the experience of living in a reality of extreme poverty and violence. It surprises me that the fandom is frequently so harsh towards him, as if he, individually, were a maniac, as if he had become that way in a vacuum, rather than as a result of the very circumstances the series criticizes. Gale's character is there to represent a cycle of violence, resentment, and oppression that other characters also reproduce, like several Hunger Games winners agreeing to a new edition with the children of the Capitol, something that even Katniss initially agreed to to avenge Prim's death. I can understand his violence and the way he directs his anger at the wrong people because, when it was time for others to extend him or the people of District 12 any sympathy or understanding, no one did. He genuinely never had the opportunity to see people outside his immediate circle as anything other than potential threats to his own well-being and the well-being of the people he loved. I can understand why he developed such an angry, violent, and impulsive personality, just as I can understand why Katniss, after everything she went through, doesn't want to cause any more deaths and destruction.
Narratively, Katniss, and especially Prim, exists to represent the consequences of this war on innocent people who have nothing to do with the power structures that oppress vulnerable individuals. Katniss is there to question who this revolution serves, while Gale is so dominated by his anger and the desire to end that structural oppression, which, in fact, could only be ended with the emancipation of the oppressed, that he comes to justify virtually everything he does as necessary for the greater good, believing that the ends justify the means. He was willing to kill and die for the cause. He refused to run away with Katniss, the woman he loved, because he didn't want to live in a state of alienation in the face of a possible revolution. This man saved the surviving population from the District 12 and took care of them. He was also one of the first to volunteer for the mission to rescue Peeta. He did all of this because he believed in the cause with everything he had.
Katniss never really wanted to be the face of the revolution. She always only wanted to protect herself and the people she loved. She repeatedly found herself pushed into a symbolic role she hadn't chosen, and she agreed to become the Mockingjay under considerable pressure. This, obviously, isn't a criticism of Katniss. Her reluctance makes perfect sense after everything she's endured. But Gale has a different relationship with resistance. He has a sense of community and a vision of a future beyond his immediate circle that Katniss never had, which actually gave him a cunning that Katniss also never had. Like, when they're in District 8, in the makeshift hospital for the wounded, Gale questions whether grouping all the wounded together in one place is a good idea, then the hospital is bombed by the Capitol, and he says he imagined that would happen because those severely injured people would be useless to the Capitol even if District 8 were retaken. He is extremely intelligent, pragmatic, and such a fierce critic of the Capitol that he understands exactly how it works, so much so that he become susceptible to reproducing its dehumanizing logic.
He reminds me of Eren from Attack on Titan in so many ways. I really like this archetype of the angry, resentful, rebellious character, completely outraged by the submissive role they play in the world they live. In dystopian stories, I think everyone likes to imagine themselves as the great revolutionary who would destroy the system, but in their daily lives, how many people actually feel indignant and willing to act against the injustices and oppressions that occur every day? Essentially no one, because these behaviors are normalized, historically and daily. How many people harbor such intense anger toward an oppressive system that it shapes who they are? I get why the fandom has a problem with Gale (especially in comparison to Peeta), who represents the complexities of this world and how an oppressed person, contrary to what we tend to imagine, won't always be an empathetic pacifist for understanding the effects of violence on an oppressed community, while Peeta is essentially a nice guy uwu golden retriever boyfriend who's obsessed with Katniss. Like, don't get me wrong, I like Peeta, but I think Gale is much more interesting as a character. And, for the Hunger Games universe, his instance is more realistic as an oppressed individual who ended up internalizing the values and behaviors of their oppressors.
Btw, although I don't even consider myself "Team Gale" because, after reading all three books, I genuinely think that the relationship between Peeta and Katniss has more depth, and I also think it's a huge disservice to reduce such a complex and interesting character as Gale to nothing more than the love interest who lost the main character in a love triangle, some people are just coping when you insist that Katniss was indifferent to him. Katniss gets jealous of Gale, like when Haymitch implies that something might be going on between him and Madge. She mentions several times how Gale knows her better than anyone and how she trusts him. She admits that if their roles were somehow reversed, if Gale had gone to the Hunger Games and had to ally himself with a girl, pretending to be in love with her, she would be driven mad with jealousy. She explicitly says that she felt she was cheating on Gale somehow by kissing Peeta. I don't think it's a stretch to say that, if Katniss had never gone to the Hunger Games, the two of them would have ended up together. Yes, their relationship reaches a point of no return after Prim's death, and by the end of the series, Katniss wants to distance herself from all the anger that Gale has and represents, but that doesn't mean there was no romantic tension between Katniss and Gale, especially before the 75th Games.
It's kind of sad to search for Gale's name in fandom spaces and only find people talking about the love triangle (especially on Tumblr) when I believe his character has much more to offer. Everyone seems so overly focused on downplaying the importance of the relationship between Gale and Katniss, saying it was merely "transactional", as if the relationship between Peeta and Katniss didn't begin as a pragmatic scheme to gain public sympathy in the Hunger Games. Katniss was pretty much forced to pretend to be in love with Peeta in order to obtain the necessary resources to survive and keep Peeta alive during the Hunger Games and, later, to avoid punishment from the Capitol after their suicide attempt. It's funny because people say that Gale was never that important to Katniss, and yet they feel the need to diminish the relationship between Gale and Katniss when, canonically, Katniss describes their bond in terms of belonging to one another. You don't have to interpret that as proof that she was destined to end up with him, but you certainly can't pretend that he meant nothing to her.
Narratively, I would have liked to have seen more of Gale. He disappears from Catching Fire after being whipped, and I would have liked to have seen a stronger reaction from him about Prim's death and his role in it in Mockingjay, but he himself said that Katniss would never forgive him and that he failed to protect her family, so that's pretty much it, I guess. He understood that his presence would cause Katniss pain forever and that there was nothing more he could do for her, that their friendship was over. Still, I wanted to know more about what happened to him besides him getting a job in District 2. I saw a comment that, instead of ending up single (as far as we know), he could have ended up with Madge. I totally see that, and I think it would be interesting. Imagine him being attracted to Madge while a part of him despises her because, wanting or not, she is part of the power structures of the Capitol, as her father was the mayor of District 12 (even though he knows that being angry with her is pointless and that she herself is not to blame for anything).
