the new hunger games prequel is genius and here's why 🐍 ballad of songbirds and snakes review

hello welcome today we are going to be discussing two of my biggest loves The Hunger Games and villain origin stories imagine my delight when the villain origin story for President Snow turns out to be such a well crafted one and one that questions the whole concept of villain origin stories by going Beyond just oh he had a sad past and now he kills people villain or origin story implies An Origin a beginning that they haven't always been evil the saying goes villains are made not born they are strewn together from their negative life experiences until

a final setback zaps the monster in them to life there's a scene in Frankenstein where the doctor regards the monster he created and wonders if he should give him a final chance if the monster is too fundamentally awful to be trusted or if if there is a small opportunity for Redemption I thought of the promise of Virtues which he had displayed on the opening of his existence and the subsequent blight of all kindly Feeling by the loathing and Scorn which his protectors had manifested towards him the doctor acknowledges that his monster came into existence with

all the potential to be virtuous but that this potential was squandered by the cruelty of the world he inhabited this quote is also the epigraph to The Ballad of song birds and snakes The Hunger Games prequel about the origins of its villain President Snow and there's like four more quotes on the epigraph Susan Collins really went off with all the quotes at the beginning and we'll we'll get to the rest later during the video don't worry anyway The Hunger Games trilogy is one of the biggest young adult series one that popularized the ya dystopian genre

and has been adapted into four Incredible movies it takes place in a dystopian futuristic United States now named penm that is divided into 12 districts and kept under the rule of the rich Capital as punishment for past Rebellion every year two children from each district have to compete in The Hunger Games a cruel Battle Royale fight in which the children have to fight to the death the last one surviving is the Victor and all this is overseen by the authoritarian President Snow a cruel man that looks down on the people in the districts and rules

with fear and control anyone who opposes him he eliminates with poison the weapon of a true snake in 2020 10 full years after the release of the final book in the trilogy Susanne Collins published a new Hunger Games novel The Ballad of songbirds and snakes a prequel set 64 years before the original trilogy in which we follow the young years of the villain of The Originals Cory elanus snow as he becomes a mentor in the 10th Hunger Games in the beginning of the battad of s birds and snakes especially in the movie Cory Elena snow

seems like a sympathetic man the war in which the districts rebelled against the capital 10 years ago has left his family poor and out of its former glory he lives together with his grandma and his cousin Ty in the movie when Tigris crafts like a really beautiful blouse for him using bathroom tiles he's very complimentative and supportive of her and we also see him skipping a meal so that his Grand can have some more basically he seems nothing like the cunning and cruel president that he is in the original trilogy but um and this video

does of course contain spoilers for The Battle of song birds and snakes at the end of the battle of song birds and snakes he kills his first love in a fit of rage and paranoia and we see the clear parallel with his future self but how did we get here spoiler alert it's not just some sad backstory he had trauma and now he's evil first a quick intermission to talk about our sponsor which is g2a one of my plans is to reread listen to the audiobooks for The Hunger Games while playing some video games because

video games are my other big Hobby and a great place to buy your video games is the sponsor of this video which is g2a they are the world's largest Online Marketplace for video games and digital products I will leave a link to them in the description so you can check them out and see if maybe you find your next new favorite video game on there the movie opens with a flashback to the dark days which is the war between the districts and the capitals when Corina snow was still a child he's with his cousin in

tigis and he sees a man chopping off the leg of another man resorting to cannibalism and he asks his cousin why would he do that to which tigis answers because he's hungry this is a childhood memory seared into Snow's brain it's a strong Testament of how far people are willing to go in times of War I think this is a great movie opening scene because not only does it Prime us for seeing President Snow as a product of his experiences but it also immediately asks the central question of the story which is is Humanity at

nature good or evil Susan Collins has stated in interview that with the batt of sers and snakes she wanted to explore the state of nature debate of the Enlightenment period the debate of what Humanity looks like without government when they are completely free is Humanity at heart violent and chaotic or free and Cooperative this debate was spearheaded by the political philosophers Thomas Hobbs Jean Jac rouso and John luck which you've probably heard about and they are all quoted in the epigraph of the book which we will get into all of those in this video Susan

Collins also hints to wanting to explore the nature nurture debate the groundwork for the Aging President Snow of the trilogy was laid in childhood there's lock who's all over this book with his theory of tabula rasa or blank slate in which we're all products of our experiences Snow's authoritarian convictions grew out of experiences of his childhood and throughout the story The Young snow slowly forms his worldview his idea on human nature but he's influenced by various people in his life who all represent different philosophies of human nature whose influence on the young snow is the

strongest or better worded who does does he choose to be influenced by the most let me first explain to you what exactly is happening in the plot snow is determined to restore his family's name and he is very ambitious he studies really hard as a student at the prestigious Academy and he is convinced that he deserves the best and is entitled to the best at this Academy we are immediately shown how two-faced President Snow can be he pretends to be rich around his Academy friends and where he was at first very complimentative and supportive of

the blouse that his cousin made for him when he's with his Academy friends we immediately see him switch up and kind of joke about how ugly this shirt is what is he really thinking we don't know it is the year of the 10th annual Hunger Games and they are nothing like the spectacle that we know from the original trilogy it is a project still in its early stages the arena is small and there are no excit fighting traps or environmental spectacles to distract from the essence of the games which is children brutally slaughtering each other

the game makers are struggling to get audiences to still watch the games after all who wants to watch children being forced to murder as one of the top students of the academy snow is tasked with mentoring one of the tributes and turning them into a spectacle someone for the capital audience to root for in an effort to repop poize the Hunger Games his mentee is a girl from District 12 Lucy greybeard a defiant and eccentric girl who is part of the cvy a traveling group of musicians in the time leading up to the games snow

uses his cleverness and cunning to help Lucy gray get sponsors from the capital he encourages her to use her singing talents to gain approval of the spectacle loving audience he even manages to lead Lucy gray to Victory although he's not above cheating to get there for example we see him sneaking rat poison into the arena which Lucy gray can use to kill off the other contestants and we also see him sabotaging threats in such a way that they don't attack Lucy gray which is an interesting premonition for the later Trilogy Where President Snow is known

for using poison and during all this a True Romance also grows between Lucy gray and corol snow even though it ends badly for them especially for her for now their romance seems completely fine and based on trust his time as a mentor during the 10th Hunger Games is a very impactful period of his life and we see him being influenced by many of the people around him and the three ones that I want to emphasize and explore the most in this video are Lucy gray the free spirited girl that he falls in love with the

metaphorical snake Tamer sanus one of his closest Academy friends who seems to be the only student that believes The Hunger Games are outdated and that the tribute should be seen for what they are humans and the last one is Doctor Gaul the head game maker of the 10th Hunger Games and a cruel scientist that sees other people more as experiments than humans she's impressed by Snow's ideas on how to make the Hunger Games more of a spectacle and takes on a kind of Mentor SL tutor role towards him let's begin with sanus sanus plint sanus

is Snow's friend at the Academy although if you read the book based on Snow's inner monologue it's very clear that he has absolutely no respect for sanus looks down on him because he is originally from District 2 and kind of just sees him as this like annoying little man that keeps clinging to him I don't think this comes through through in the movie as much but snow does not respect sanus at all early in the story The Academy students are asked what are the Hunger Games for to which Snow's answer is The Hunger Games they're

to punish the districts it is sanus who is absolutely horrified by the way the teachers and the other Academy students talk about the tributes as if they're not even human monsters all of you early on in the story we already see that sane has a rather positive idea of human nature the students are tasked with solving the problem that nobody wants to watch The Hunger Games anymore and when wondering why it is that no one's really watching The Hunger Games anymore so Jan says who wants to watch a group of children kill each other only

a vicious Twisted person human beings may not be perfect but we're better than that to which another of the capital students El strata who is also one of the only students that seems to have kind of a moral compass later adds because most of us are basically decent people most of us don't want to watch other people suffer and then snow is like slay I'm going to ignore everything they just said and suggest to turn the tribut into spectacles to make people watch them more and then Dr Gul is like slay that's such a good

idea oh my God he's just like me throughout the story we see that sanus absolutely refuses to dehumanize the tributes the way the other people at the capital do his mentee tribute Marcus tries Escaping The Arena and as punishment is strung up at the walls of the Arena at first it seems like he had been killed and his body is now shown to everyone as a warning but he is still alive barely until one of the other tributes Mercy kills him at night sanus sneaks into the arena which is highly forbidden and he is 100%

risking his own safety there being potentially you know like between all of the tributes that could just kill him if they saw him but he goes into the arena just so that he can pay tribute to Marcus's body thereby showing his ability to see the tributes for what they really are children human just like him so Janus believes that all humans are equal and that we shouldn't treat the people from The Districts any differently than we treat the people from the capital and we shouldn't harm anyone this reminds me of one of the quotes that

is mentioned at the beginning of the book it is a quote by John Lock where he says the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges everyone and reason which is that law teaches all mankind who will but consulted that being all equal and independent no one ought to harm another in his life Health Liberty or possessions which is lo saying that he believes that human human it naturally has these rights that there is this natural law that we should not harm one another L's idea of the state of nature

Humanity at its core is a state of political equality where no one is Superior or inferior to each other and I think that sanus would fully support this idea as he seems to be the only one besides Lys strata who doesn't believe that the people from The Districts or the tributes are in any way inferior to them from the capital so this is one voice that is constantly around Cory Elena snow as he grows up since he and sanus are friends moving on to the second person that has a profound impact on President Snow Cory

Elena snow I keep calling him president as if that's his first name the person I'm talking about is Dr volumia G I am Dr volumia G your humble head game maker in charge of the war department and all its Affiliated concerns she is the head game maker of The tth Hunger Games and also a scientist she's kind of taking on a mentor role over Cory Elena because she's very fascinated by his ideas on how to turn the Hunger Games into more of a spectacle how to get people to watch it and she's kind of seeing

I think she's kind of seeing that she can put her little her little mental claws into his head when s Janus has gone into the arena to pay tribute to Marcus Dr G orders for Elena snow to go after him and get him out before anyone sees while in the arena the other tributes see snow and sanus and attempt to murder them running after them with their weapons snow and sanus barely escaped the arena in time and while caught up in the violence snow ends up killing one of the tributes bobin from District 8 completely

in self-defense of course as snow is kind of saying to himself in his thoughts but this is Cory Elena Snow's first kill and Dr Gul has seen it and while she is stitching up his wounds they have a very important first conversation about the state of nature Gaul reveals that she has purposefully sent snow into the arena to teach him a lesson she asks snow what he thinks about the other tributes now that he has seen them and experienced them inside of the arena and what he thinks of himself now that he has killed another

tribute she says what happened in the arena That civilization undressed the tributes and you too how quickly civilization disappears all your fine manners education family background everything you pride yourself on Stripped Away in the blink of an eye revealing everything you actually are a boy with a club who beats another boy to death that is mankind in its natural state this is Dr G showing that she believes that Civilization is just this thin veil that keeps Humanity in check and that Underneath It All We're just Savages here she is expressing ideas that are very akin

to veneer Theory veneer theory is a term coined by France Deval who was a Dutch primatologist and it's when people believe that Law and Order is the only thing protecting us from the savagery of our neighbors it suggests that humanity is like bad to the core and that all of our moral rules are just this thin facade that we put up morality is a cultural overlay a thin veneer hiding an otherwise selfish and brutish nature Snow's reaction to this worldview is initi very skeptical he's honestly quite shocked by the notion and says are we really

as bad as all that he even remarks on how it was actually the circumstances that influenced his behavior I think I wouldn't have beaten anyone to death if you hadn't stuck me in that Arena to which Dr Gul retorts you can blame it on the circumstance the environment but you made the choices you made no one else so Dr Gaul is clearly blaming this on human nature not the environment now why is Dr go so interested in this idea of human nature she says to snow it is essential you make an effort to answer this

question who are human beings because who we are determines the type of governing we need and here Susan Collins kind of uses Dr go to perfectly explain the reasoning that a lot of political philosophers used in the enlightenment period political philosophers like hubs Lo and rouso were consumed with the idea of what would be the best way to govern and in order to answer that question they believe that we should not look at government examples from The Real World instead we'd have to use reason and there are two steps to this that Dr Gul just

like perfectly explains also in the text the first step is consider what humanity is like at its most natural state without laws without governments what are humans like in the state of nature like Dr Gul says start with that chaos no control no law no government at all and then once you have an answer to that you can start thinking about what government would be best fit with that state of nature where do we go from there what sort of agreement is necessary if we're to live in peace what sort of a social contract contct

is required for survival Dr G just casually explaining contract theory to the readers I love how Susan Collins writes her young adult novels anyway different political philosophers of course had different ideas on what would be the best way to govern I think Dr volumia Go's worldview fits the best with Thomas hobbs' ideas on the state of nature and a social contract Dr go believed that what is happening in the arena the chaos of violence that is human nature and it really reminds me of the hubs quote in the epigraph which says hereby it is Manifest

that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe they are in that condition which is called war and such a war is of every man against every man basically he's saying if people are not kept under control of a strong State people are in their natural state which is a state of of War Hobs believed that in our Natural State life was solitary poor nasty brutish and short but yeah Dr go definitely agrees with him so that's her idea of the state of nature and then as a result

of that what is her idea on how to govern she's constantly drilling snow on the importance of control and power and control how important the control of the capital is again this is very similar to hobbs' political ideas he believed that Humanity could only truly be at peace when under control of an absolute ruler a sovereign was necessary to save Humanity from their natural inclination towards War his idea of the social contract was that we should lay down our rights to judge for ourselves and put it in the hands of The Sovereign give up freedom

for peace complete political subjugation um and I guess I think if you've seen that Hunger Games you can see you can see how this kind of thinking is pretty similar to how President Snow ends up ruling so snow has had sanus and Dr go as pretty prominent voices in his life so far you can see him throughout the story kind of ruminating on his ideas on human nature and what's really interesting is Cory Elena Snow's relationship with The Hunger Games and the Arena he sees the arena as a place with no laws chaos extreme disorder

and confusion no direction for any moral compass and he comes to the conclusion that if the world had no rules and no consequences it would be just like the arena people taking what they wanted and when they wanted and killing for it if it came for that survival driving everything there had been days during the war when they'd all been too scared to leave the apartment days when the lawlessness had made even the capital an arena like the man turning to cannibalism because of famine and the interesting thing about the Battle of sombers and snakes

is you can kind of see snow come to conclusions that explain how he later rules in the batt of song wordss and snakes he says people need to agree on laws to follow they agree not to Rob abuse or kill one another and the law required and enforcement and that is where control came in without the control to enforce the contract chaos rained it is a peace built upon cooperation and a respect for Law and Order it is a contract each District supplies the capital like blood to a heart in return the capital provides order

and security the capital is the Beating Heart of PanAm nothing can survive without a heart this is very much like Dr Gaul and like Thomas Hobbs have the idea that people just need to completely lay down their rights and put it in the hands of this like all controlling Sovereign the power that controlled needed to be greater than the people otherwise they would challenge it the only entity capable of this was the capital Hobbs believed that the state must hold humans in awe with the threat of a sovereign and Every Act of transgression must be

punished to keep the idea of The Sovereign intact all images of the Mocking Jay are now forbidden everyone inside that hospital has committed treason show them what it costs to be friends with cutness every day but it is of course not the only idea to have so Janus would probably not agree with it snow Janus don't really have a conversation like this until a lot later in the story when snow is punished for cheating the games to help Lucy gray and he is sent to District 12 to become a peacekeeper and the same thing happens

with sanus and sanus is always talking to snow about how he wants to build a better life he's very idealistic he's like excited for the future he thinks that he can help people which snow very much looks down upon again it comes back to this question of what are the Hunger Games for and snow talks to sanus about everything that Dr Gaul has said to him but the interesting thing is that he does first remind sanus of how sadistic Dr Gul is about how she's always torturing rabbits or melting the Flesh of something like she

really enjoys it I think that's how she thinks we all are Natural Born Killers inherently violent The Hunger Games are a reminder of what monsters we are and how we need the capital to keep us from chaos and it's clear at this point that snow doesn't fully agree with Dr go yet he understand that it's Dr Gaul who is very vile and that she just assumes that other people are just as vile as she is but snow just keeps getting into situations that make him think that Dr go might be right for example at some

point in district 12 he gets in a fight with Rebels and while he's in the throws of this brawl he kills a second person his first kill was bobin in the arena and his second was Mayfair here in district 12 and he remarks how this must be again an example of real human nature the same animal wildness he' experienced when the tributes had hunted him down in the arena swept over him Dr Go's voice echoed in his ears that's Mankind in its natural state that's Humanity undressed and here was the naked Humanity again and here

again he was part of it punching kicking his teeth bared in the darkness in a letter to Dr Gaul he reflects on this moment and his time in district 12 as a peacekeeper District 12 provides an excellent stage upon which to watch the battle between chaos and control play out and as a peacekeeper I have front row seat I'm not convinced that we are all as inherently violent as you say but it takes very little to bring the Beast to the surface and here you can see that he is now kind of subscribing to this

veneer theory of human nature that Dr Gul also subscribes to that we are easily brought to violence and can only be saved by a very controlling government I told you what a fragile thing peace was and he doesn't seem to have been very swayed by S janus's more positive ideas but there there's one very influential character that we haven't thought about yet and that is Lucy gray who also represents another completely different view of the state of nature Lucy gray be during the games we already see that Lucy gray is very Cooperative at heart at

the start of the games she refuses to leave her District mate Jessup alone even though snow has instructed her to run away on her own even even when Jessup is suffering from his backat bite she continues to take care of him and I want to emphasize that during the games Lucy gray only kills because snow has given her the poison had he not done that she may not have killed anyone Lucy gray also talks about how important trust is for her maybe even more important than love before need before love Came trust the thing she

valued most and he Cory Elena snow was the one she trusted it is all the way at the end of the book that Lucy gray for the first time shares her idea on the state of nature with snow they're hanging out with the cies at the lake and snow mentions his viewpoint on the state of nature that without the capital's control people would just run around killing each other just like in the arena and Lucy gray says that's what you think people would do I do unless there's a law and someone enforcing it I think

we might as well be animals like it or not the capital is the only thing keeping anyone safe to which Lucy gray asks the very very important question and what do I give up for that she mentions how the cvy have given up their freedom they used to be Travelers not affiliated with a particular District but under the post-war Capital control they can't travel they can't perform on their own account or sing the songs that they want what if I think that price is too high to pay maybe my Freedom's worth the risk so because

of the civilization that the capital has created the cvy had have to give up more freedom than they would want the order that snow loves so much has not given them the life that they desire it is actively restricting them and this is where we get to our final boy Jean jao who's quote is also on the epigraph man is Born Free and everywhere he is in Chains Russo is referring to society civilization when he says change Russo's idea of the state of nature was that it was self-preserving but also compassionate that in a state

of nature as humans were alone but we were also healthy happy good and most importantly free it was only after we started getting together and socializing that we started experiencing things like jealousy pride and we started creating inequality also rouso is known to like wish for a time where the Earth was not property of humans and I just really feel like that is something that Lucy gray would totally agree with now what was Russo's idea on the social contract he thought it was very difficult to reconcile a state with the fact that you have to

give up your individual Freedom he believed that our current Society was not right we were giving up way too much of the natural Liberty that we had in the state of nature and because we're so afraid of a Hoban state of War we gave up too much of that Natural Freedom just like Lucy gray is telling snow that the current Society under the capital has made the Cy give up too much of their freedom and I think it's so interesting that Lucy Gray's opinion are just the complete opposite of the thoughts that Dr G has

been indoctrinating snow with so far when snow and Lucy gray run away together into the forest they have a very important conversation about the state of nature Lucy gray says people aren't so bad really it's what the world does to them like us in the arena we did things in there we'd never have considered if they just left us alone and to me this is like one of the most important lines because snow concludes that what is going on in the arena that is true human nature that is Humanity undressed as Dr go calls it

but Lucy gray points out that what people do in that Arena they never would have done if they weren't forced to do it by the capital the reason that they brutally kill each other in the arena is not of some kind of primitive Instinct it's because the Capital forces them to and she extrapolates this line of thinking to humanity as a whole I think there's a natural goodness born into us all you know really you can either cross that line into evil or not and it's our life's work to stay on the right side of

that line the world makes people do bad things but in their natural state they are good and we see a little bit of John Lock and Lucy gray here as well coming back to Susan Collins being inspired by Lock's idea of the tabula the blank slate that we all start out us and that it is then the world that makes us good or evil and this theme is literally in the text in the form of the song that Lucy gray has written about snow not only is this a love song where she praise a snow

for being pure as the driven snow but in the opening lines we clearly see this idea of the tabasa come through I can't share like the copyrighted song here so I'm just going to read the text everyone's born as clean as a whistle as fresh as a daisy and not a bit crazy so everyone's born as a blank slate staying that ways a hard Row for hoing as rough as a Brier like walking through fire it's your life's challenge to stay on the right side of the line this world it's dark and this world it's

scary I've taken some hits so no wonder I'm wary the things you experience in your life can make you more negative more wary so throughout the story we've seen President Snow take on this very negative idea of humanity which eventually leads him to do very bad things but the book also asks us the question is snow naturally a bad person or was it what the world had done to him that made him so selfish we've talked a lot about the nature of humanity as a whole now but what is Cory elen's snows nature the theme

of this book so far has really been how villains are made not born but Susan Collins does not fall into the Trap that a lot of authors fall into and that is this idea that villains are purely the result of their sad backstories President Snow is not a blameless agent that is just influenced by his surroundings Susan Collins shows him make making very deliberate choices the most striking one to me is when he makes his first kill in the arena because he keeps repeatedly beating the district 8 boy bobin when he's already down he could

have just knocked him down and then flee the arena with sanus but instead he chooses to strike him down again and again in the book you see his inner monologue where he completely convinces him himself that this is all just self-defense and that he has done absolutely nothing wrong showing absolutely no remorse for what he did but it's so clear to us that he went way further than was necessary his inner monologue by the way is something that is completely missing from the movie obviously because it is a movie and it's hard to get that

across in movie format but his inner monologue is a very very good example of Snow's very very selfish in nature he looks down on sanus from page one when he meets sanus he says Cory elen's first impulse had been to join his classmates campaign to make the new kid's life a living hell he calls District people primitive people with their primitive Customs oh no he starve to death somebody get the brge even after he betrays sanus and gets him hanged he is convinced that he is still a good person when Lucy gray is singing a

song about him he's like really happy but when she's singing the song uh that she is named after the ballad of Lucy gray he just thinks to himself oh a ghost story uh boo so ridiculous and he is constantly referring to Lucy gray as his his girl that she belonged to him when he was forced to kind of dig through the Earth for worms he thinks to himself he knew this would be easier if he wasn't such an exceptional person the best and the brightest Humanity had to offer the youngest to pass the officer candidate

test if he'd been useless and stupid the loss of civilization would not have hollowed out his insights in this manner a little crazy a little crazy like Susan Collins says you still need to leave room for Snow's personality is he a project of nature or nurture everyone in his generation experienced trauma loss and deprivation and yet sanus tigis Lucy gray and Lys strata turned out very differently yes the story has a strong villains are made not born sentiment to it but there's also a strong undercurrent of villains do have a little bit of their own

say and their own villainy so far we've discussed all the ways that President Snow is influenced by his surroundings his nurture his childhood in the war everything that he has seen in the arena and of course all of Dr G's lectures to him have a profound impact on his worldview but the heartbreaking detail of the story is that there are so many instances where snow Witnesses human kindness and chooses to ignore it so Janus and L strata caring about the district children even though it doesn't personally benefit them so Jane is wanting to make the

world a better place Lucy gray saving him from under the rubble during the rebel attack even though she had the chance to run away and escape the arena lamina Mercy healing Marcus while risking her own life in the open arena Reaper commemorating the Fallen tributes also risking his own life standing in the open arena but never during any instance of kindness the snow conclude this is Humanity all the moments in which humans display cooperation compassion and love go straight past him but when caught in a moment of distress and violence he immediately concludes that this

is who humans really are in fact every single time that snow kills someone he comes to the conclusion that that is just an example of real human nature he's justifying his actions by saying that that's what everyone else would have done were they in his situation and I love how Susan Collins lays bear the thought process of people who say that humanity is naturally Savage when you experience kindness and goodness it brushes right past you but when you see violence and savagery you conclude that that's how humans naturally are what does that say about you

and who you naturally are do you believe yourself Savage and the tragedy of Snow's pessimistic worldview comes to a head in the final scene between Lucy gray and snow snow accidentally mentions to Lucy gray that he has killed three people when she only knows about two bobbin and Mayfair she presses him to tell her who the third person he killed was but he avoids her question not wanting to admit to her that he betrayed s Janus this puts a wedge between the to a break of trust trust which is so important to Lucy gray Lucy

gray says she's going to look for food leaving snow behind for a second and this is where he spirals in the movie This Is Where Lucy gray admits that she knows that she is the Final witness to Snow's crimes and I understand why in the movie they made her say this out loud because of course we can't look into Snow's inner monologue but in the book she never outwardly states that she knows she's like the last living witness she really just goes out to get some food and it is already here where snow becomes consumed

by his lack of trust he realizes that Lucy gray is the last living witness of his crimes and it makes him spiral into paranoia he assumes Lucy gray must have figured him out assumes she's not actually getting food but fleeing him and then assumes she's going to betray him and turn him in it is distrust upon distrust upon distrust she was hiding from him but why there could be only one answer because she'd figured it out all of it she must have figured out that sanus was the third person cor elanus had killed she was

giving him no choice but to hunt her down in the woods so he runs after her in the forest only to find her Shaw in the movie It's kind of suspiciously laying in a little Heap on the ground but in the book it is dangling from a branch as if caught by someone running by snow grabs the Shaw and a snake jumps out and bites him Lucy gray had tried to kill him this was no coincidence the trailing scarf the poised snake this was a booby trap and he' walked straight into it there's a very

good chance that the snake had just crawled into the shaw by accident but snow instantly assumes that Lucy gray had put it there on purpose and he assumes that she tried to kill him again it is distrust upon distrust this is the thought process of a person who expects the worst from Humanity everything that snow has learned about the world culminates in this moment he has slowly formed a worldview of humans being selfish chaotic violent and just like himself ready to betray each other at any given moment so when he realizes that Lucy gray has

the opportunity to betray him he concludes that Lucy gray must have indeed betrayed him to snow this is the only logical option that when given the opportunity it is all men for themselves he projects his own selfishness onto her and as a result he decides that she must die and he shoots her the tragedy of this scene to me is that there's a very real possibility that Lucy gray did just accidentally drop the scarf and was actually just looking for food we later learned that that snake wasn't even venomous we never get a definitive answer

on whether Lucy gray really did betray President Snow or if it was all just a coincidence but it doesn't actually matter the only thing that matters is how snow interpreted the situation I think it's easy to watch this movie or read the book and conclude that Lucy gray betraying snow was the defining moment in his villain Arc the straw that broke the camel's back the thing that made him evil but I would argue that this scene is not so much cause as it is effect it is a final demonstration of character the climax of the

movie in which we truly see what kind of person snow has become over the years fueled by his pessimistic worldview the scene does not show the cause of his wickedness it is the culmination of all the wicked ideas that he's been building throughout the story now fully on display for everyone as a viewer we see this scene for what it really is a paranoid man so convinced that other people are just as selfish and untrustworthy as he is that he kills the one that he loves unable to even trust her and although this scene with

Lucy Gray was already like a testament to Snow's ultimate mistrust of humanity we get it like spelled out for us again in the final scene of the movie one of the final scenes during his last scene with Dr Gaul snow has returned from his Peacekeeper days and Dr Gul asks him again Mr snow let me ask you one final time what other Hunger Games for this time he answers it differently they're not just a pun the districts they're part of the Eternal War each one is its own battle one we can hold in the palm

of our hands instead of waging a real war that could get out of control the reminder of what we did to each other what we have the potential to do again because of who we are creatures who need the capital to survive snow has fully subscribed to Dr GS and in turn Thomas hobbs' idea of humanity humans are naturally at war with each other and if you believe that the world is filled with self-interested Savage people how do you rule them by keeping them in check with an Iron Fist and Stern rules in the end

Lucy gray ends up just like the Lucy Gray from the ballot she was named after lost in the snow then a ghost coming back to haunt Cory Elena snow snow 65 years later in the form of Katniss everine singing a solitary song that whistles in the wind the Mocking Jays continuously whistle her song The Hanging Tree and after carrying the tune on the wind for years it is her song that fuels the Rebellion that becomes Snow's demise thank you guys so much for watching this video I really want to know all of your guys' opinions

and all of your theories please do let me know I want to give a special thanks to all of my Elite patreon members whose names you can see here and a warm welcome to our newest elite member Mr indecisive link to my patreon will be in the description um I really hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you soon with another one next week okay [Music] goodbye