What is it that Snow loves?
But what he loves is Katniss Everdeen. Oh, he just adores her. [...] So I guess maybe the thing you love the most does destroy you.
I need someone to write an analysis of this please
@heartforeyes I tried my best. It's not the conventional analysis, it feels more than how I'd write a one shot, but smaller. I couldn't write an analysis exactly, so I analyse his feelings through the one-shot. I hope.
The moment Snow looked at her, he knew she was something else. The moment he heard her name, Katniss, he went back 64 years ago. Lucy Gray. He never really got over her. Even when he married Livia, when he had his only son with Livia, he didn't think of her. But of Lucy Gray. He didn't love Lucy Gray anymore. The only thing he felt about her was resentment and betrayed. Nevertheless, he had always hoped that he'd find a great substitute. Someone that reminded him of her, in some ways, but was different in others.
No, anyone that even remotely reminded him of Lucy Gray Baird, Victor of the 10th Hunger Games, is dangerous. Snow wasn't shocked when he was making these thoughts about a 16 year old. But he was disgusted by thinking about Lucy Gray. Again.
At the interviews, Snow witnessed the first mistake made by her District Partner. Peeta Mellark, even though he was eerily close to his 16 year old self in terms of appearance, did something Coriolanus Snow wasn't stupid enough to do even when he was 8. He gave love a chance. In the Games, love can't have a place. Not when you're trying to kill eachother. Not when she hates you. Snow could see the anger in Katniss' eyes. Just like Lucy Gray, Katniss was a devil in disguise. And only he could see it.
Snow didn't know if he was angry at the boy because the Games weren't supposed like that. Or if he pitied him, because he knew that he was just blind and stupid, to believe that she could love him back. People like Lucy Gray cannot love that way. Only manipulate. And Katniss was definitely a person like Lucy Gray.
However, President Snow had to admit - he could see the attraction.
Let's be real - one think he didn't expect was for Katniss to play up the romance. He didn't expect her to call out his name when the rules changed. But of course, he understood her motive right away - she has an audience to please and a District to return to. She can't actually care for him. She has to play it up. For the sponsors, not to return as a parish to her District. District 12. The worst District out of all of them. The more the Games went on, the harder it was to disconnect the girl, Katniss Everdeen, from his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird. Who also happened to be a traitor. And his first and only love.
What he also didn't expect was for even their songs to be the same. He didn't expect one of Lucy Gray's wongs, "The Valley Song", to be the reason for Peeta's oh-so-familiar mistake.
Snow didn't love Katniss. But he couldn't help but see his actual love in her. So he loved (and hated) what she represented. As the rebellion grew (which Snow knew about, but wanted them to think he did not), the feelings grew into paranoia. He can't have her win. He can't have her win too. When she won, the 74th Hunger Games of course, she thought she was out of the woods. Oh no. Never. He would personally make her life as miserable as possible.
Starting with the Quell. He did suspect that everyone would try to keep Katniss and Peeta alive - although it was much more obvious with the latter. He did suspect that the rebels might try to get them out of the arena before the end. But his goal wasn't to kill her. It was to destroy everything and everyone she cared about. He would start with District 12, and he hoped that with it he would take out some people she cared about. Her family, her "cousin's" family, some friends maybe. He could just hope.
When Peeta hit the forcefield, something snapped in Snow's mind. Cogs where turning in his head. She could love? She could care? Yes, Lucy Gray Baird did care for some people. And Katniss, who by now he believed to be her reincarnation here just to mock him, could too. She (by she he meant Lucy Gray, but in his mind, there was no difference) just used his love for her against him. He could get her back. Katniss had convinced her that her feelings were real.
Unfortunately for Katniss, this revelation would be used against her. And Snow knew exactly how. The rebels were planning to scoop her out of the arena first. But Snow could always get to him.
When he said "It's the things we love most that destroy us." He knew that she'd know. That Lucy Gray- Katniss would be fully aware what was about to come. He wanted to destroy her like she had destroyed him. What's a better way to do that than have her lover kill her?
Or at least try to. He was still okay with the results when he heard that Everdeen was going to District 2. It was, obviously, a suicide mission.
The bombs weren't his, but if he knew that Primrose Everdeen was there waiting to be attacked, they would be. He tried to show her the reality of it all. Truth is, he didn't care about avenging Lucy Gray anymore. She has paid. Now he had to show her that Coin couldn't be trusted. Even he, with his extreme grudges and low-key obsession, knew that the girl in front of him had payed too much for the mistake she made 64 years ago. So he told her what to do. For a better Panem. An actually better Panem. That's shocking, he knew. But it made sense.
When Lucy Gray shot Coin instead of him, he laughed. Not because he had been spared. He knew that no matter what, he wouldn't survive the night. He already felt the blood slowly drowning him. But because he had earned again Lucy Gray Baird's trust. And that was enough for him.
So he didn't resist as the crowd crushed him to death.
I love how you write that Peeta was stupid to give love a chance, and add the detail that not even 8 yr old Coryo would do that.
And even though there was anger in Katniss’s eyes, only Snow related that to being a devil like Lucy Gray.
Oh wow! Peeta also falling for Lucy Gray’s songs (through Katniss), just like Snow.
Now i see what David Sutherland meant when saying Snow loved Katniss. She became Lucy Gray personified.
I love how you stop using Katniss’s name at the end, making Lucy Gray kill Coin. And in a way, Lucy Gray did kill Coin. She was the initial spark, and it doesn’t end till the mockingjay sings.
Thank you for this beautiful explanation!!!
First, I accidentally deleted my original post so the fact you reposted literally saved me.
Second, I wanted to pass off Snow as really egocentric and a little paranoid, too. That what he did in the past, which he had convinced himself wasn't his fault, would come back to bite him in the ass.
Also, I added that not even 8 year old Snow would do that is because that's when his family died. He had done it, and he had managed to convince himself that he did not.
And, I tried to justify why Snow was obsessed with Katniss. I think that that was his biggest mistake. He tried to destroy the Mockingjay, in hopes that the rebellion would fall with her. Little did he know that Katniss is much stronger than he could ever see.
And I never even made the connection Lucy Gray killed Snow I just wanted to convey how much these two were connected in his head.
I agree with Snow being egocentric. He probably thought everything that Katniss did was a spit in his face, not out of love, survival, empathy, etc. We saw in Ballad how much his mind spirals and he has a hard time controlling it. Also, him being extremely paranoid, with eventually building a reputation of killing people close to him to tie off lose ends.
Not only is Katniss much stronger than what he gambled for, she was also just the face of the rebellion, made a symbol rather than lead it. And as he said in the end of Mockingjay, he was too busy watching Katniss, and Katniss watching him, that neither of them looked at Coin.
I think you made a great explanation of the original thesis Sutherland made, being that Snow loves Katniss. I loved building up this analysis is with you!!
Yeah, Katniss is just a symbol. Even if she died, Coin would make her into a martyr. She, too wanted to make her a martyr after the Nut fell. The small agenda Snow had for Katniss is just his obsessed self that wants to see her burn because she made a fool of him (in his opinion, in reality she was just thinking about keeping alive herself and the boy she loves).
I also love this analysis we made. And I really can't see that Snow would love Katniss if she didn't connect her a lot with Lucy Gray.