Hey everyone, two things I made a mistake, around 17:44 and said his sister, I meant his cousin lol my bad😭 And number two, it’s recently come to my attention that I tend to pronounce words like unfortunately like unfortunateckly? And it wasn’t untill this video did I notice that LOL💀 I have multiple accents and different enunciations, I use my American accent when making videos but I still mix words together sometimes: specifically with definitely & unfortunately hihi, I’ll definitely be aware of that! But if it comes out of me naturally, it is what it is😎🫶🏽 Thank you all sm, and I’ll be working a new analysis soon ❤

Rachel Zegler said “Lucy gray is a performer who had to fight, and katniss is a fighter who had to perform.” That’s a great way to describe them.

The fact that Tigris basically raised him even tho she was his age and he h still throw her away like she was nothing

Dr Gaul is definitely meant to be seen as a mother figure to snow. Her name is proof. Coriolanus is named after the general in the Shakespeare play about a very successful general with a distain for plebians. His mother in the play, who shapes his evilness, is named Volumnia. VOLUNMIA GAUL IS NAMED AFTER HER. Suzanne absolutely meant her to be his "mother". She was also an OBSTETRICIAN, someone who helps deliver babies and looks after them, before she worked in military strategy. Her whole character is based around motherhood. Also such an amazing point that Gaul could've seen punishing Clemmie as her way of protecting her "mutt", one of her "babies"

I also agree that Snow never loved Lucy. It was obsession. Throughout the book he (in a very possessive way) refers to Lucy Gray as "his". He doesn't even want her to have a life outside of him, and he couldn't care less about the songs she sings UNLESS it is about him. And just like with possessions, once he's done with her...he throws her away. In tbosas book this is all made much more clear. I guess the argument could be made that he loved her to the best of his ability..but even then I still think it was more obsession than anything.

this might be a stretch but that scene in the book talking abt his mothers eyes and how badly he wanted more traits of hers to me seemed almost like a foreshadowing that he was destined to see the world through his fathers eyes therefore taking actions like his father and the ideas bred into him by grandma’am like “when your president… you like your father…” etc almost makes him believe that being like his father and having power is the only way to survive

was it just me or did Snow give off major coloniser vibes? his mentality about the people of the districts in the original movies and books and the prequel is very reminiscent of the way wealthy European profiteers of imperialism felt towards the people they were colonising and stealing from. the relationship between the capitol and the surrounding districts also reflects that coloniser/colonised relationship.

Such a good point about Dr Gaul 'mutating' Coriolanus into the cruel person she wants him to be. Amazing analysis!

Something I kept wondering while reading the book was whether Lucy even had any feelings for Coriolanus, for all there's quite a lot of focus on if Coriolanus was really in love with her or just the idea of her or even just the idea of love, there's so little discussion as to whether Lucy loved him. Especially as what we know about her personality, backstory and relationships with others is told through Coriolanus' gaze. I always felt like she was just pretending to love him in order to survive the games and then have an easier time of it back in District 12. But it made me wonder if Snow subconsciously picked up on that and that was why he was so harsh towards Katniss too, when she was pretending to be in love with Peeta. Not just because of the charged political situation, but that innate feeling of hurt and betrayal was running underneath too.

Okay snow losing his humanity as he gives the pieces he has left of his mother away!! Such a good point. I’m rereading the series now because of the movie and and the way Suzanne Collins deals with gender in the whole series is so interesting and this is such a great analysis.

You did excellent job, one thing many people also noticed is at least physical similarities of Katniss and Peeta and Snow and Lucy as couples. It must have been nightmare to see them on screen even if he knew that at least Katniss pretended to love Peeta in first game. In his twisted mind he thinks Lucy betrayed him, he even said something like "At what point he (Peeta) become aware of your indifference"

This book and movie seems like a good lesson on how to spot toxic\socio arc men. There were several lines that Corio uttered that made me feel cold inside because they were verbatim lines my abusive ex had told me. Na example: yelling out at Lucy "are you trying to kill me? AFTER EVERYTHING I'VE DONE FOR YOU!".... As if acts of kindness are only a medium of exchange and not demonstrations of love.

I love your analysis. Here's what I think: Grandma'am did a lot. Thanks to her, the remaining Snow has lima beans to survive during the dark days. She placed huge expectations on Snow to restore Snow's family glory; her voice is probably why he favors power over compassions/goodness. Her warning Snow about district children is her imparting wisdom, though to us normal people it sounds classist. Dr. Gual groomed Snow. To say she influenced him is an understatement. Snow is an entitled character but not evil at the beginning of the story. He was an orphan with nothing to his name, and Dr. Gual targeted him. If his family riches are still available, would he still overstep and cheat the game to ensure his candidate wins? Maybe he'll do it for fame, or maybe he won't be so obsessed with winning, we'll never know. If his father is still alive and influential, would Gual throw him in the arena? would Gual target him? No. I think Snow, with the situation he's thrown at, has no choice but to be a monster to survive. He tried to do the right thing (study hard, get a ticket to university, restore his family name) but doing the right thing would not guarantee him success and in his case failure is unacceptable because he has no cushion to rely on (unlike Sejanus who has his family riches). To add to your point about Snow's discovery of Tigris's possible involvement in sex work to help the family survive, Snow instead of having compassion prostitutes tributes like Finnick later on in the series shows his complete transformation to be truly evil.

I also appreciated that Snow recognized the kindness and selflessness in Sejanus, Ma Plinth, and Tigris but could only replicate those actions after he saw an example. He was after the comfort of his childhood. Being kind in a totalitarian society is NOT comfortable. He sought the well paved road to relatively easy glory as the next dictator. Even though he was well equipped to lead a revolution with Lucy Gray and the heir of a munitions giant at his side and could have had longer lasting glory as a savior for the districts.

After watching this, my mind went imediatly to one of the last scenes when Coriolanus asks Tigris How he looks and she says that he looks like like his father, but the way she says it (kudos to Hunter for so much depth in a simple scene) it's like she realized all her effort in raising the both of them was not enough. It's a sad, dissppointed expression with maybe a glimpse of fear too? Also, when Coriolanus Tells her of what happened when he had to do in the arena after he went there to "save" sejanus, we can see (or maybe that's Just me impressed by this video) how she's so desperate to keep a Sense of humanity and kindness in him. By the way, this analysis was SO brilliantly argumented and crafted, I'm glad you took time and a lot of work to post this!

Volumnia Gaul is 100% intended to be a mother figure to Snow based on her name, so this is a really great point on your part. In Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, the eponymous main character’s mother is named Volumnia, and she is the one that pushes for his political career.

I think it's a cop out to call him a sociopath or a narcissist. It otherizes him and allows us to ignore the shadow in ourselves. Dr. Gaul is a sadist and probably a psychopath, but anyone of us, sociopath or not, could go down a similar path as Snow.

These ladies are foils of eachother. To give an example: Grandmam Tigris Both represent survival (remember Grandmam choose the beans early in the dark days and Tigris saves him by mending his clothes). Coriolanus dislikes Tigris' help because it is an uncomfortable reminder of them having nothing. She makes beautiful clothes, that lose their lustre in the presence of others. Whereas his grandmam still has this reputation of actually growing beauty (the roses which Snow will wear throughout his life).

As soon as I finished the book I wanted to write a thousand essays analyzing everything about it so I'm glad I'm not the only one with a lot of thoughts 😅

I think Dr Gaul remembered when Casca and Crassus were supposed to be working together and came up with the Hunger Games. I don't think she was trying to save Clemensia or anything, but she immediately realized that history was going to repeat itself and stopped it. Isolating her protege from yet another woman he might respect -and poisoning Clemensia. love this channel, love your analysis.

I think he did love Lucygray however his hunger for power ruined any true happiness he could have had.

You know the usual thing where a character talks about future plans just to die in the next scene, right? It makes you think about all the could haves. Lucy and Tigris show paths Snow could have taken. Already knowing what did happen made the experience delightfully painful.

Coriolanus says he killed his old self to flee with Lucy but he actually killed his old self by not aligning his values with her. The self that was attracted to her never tried to understand and truly love her. It's a pretty typical fate for many infatuations but his affection or attachment for her was more about survival than love. The instinct to protect and help her to escape was there but it didn't run deep enough and ended when she escapes and he starts worrying more about his own safety. There was never any real trust between them. In a matter of minutes of escaping together, he starts caring more for his own self preservation and his instinct to "protect" Lucy disappears into thin air and so does Lucy.

This just proves that a girl full of love and a little hope can win in the end

You did a great job in analysing Snow’s mother figures. As much as I dislike psychoanalysis as a paradigm of study I can’t help but feel that your dissection of Mrs Snow, Grandmaam and Dr Gaul neatly fit the Freudian definition of the superego, the ego and the id: Mrs Snow - the superego that acts as a self-critical conscience, the moral component of the psyche Grandmaam - the ego acting as the mediation between the id and the superego, the self that one wants to project outwardly towards others Dr Gaul - the id that contains all the primitive urges and impulses (eg. Her view of humans being in a natural state of chaos without government, who will murder each other for self-preservation) And as Coriolanus suppresses his superego (Mrs Snow), he gives in to the influences of the id (Dr Gaul), eventually shaping him into the psychopath we know in Katniss’ time

Nice job with this analysis! I think you picked a great thread to examine, I hadn't really thought about how all the most influential figures in Snow's life (who are actually present in the story) are women. I agree about his connection to his mother being ultimately pretty thin, though I think he also probably took a formative lesson from her death; we see that he has disdain for things he perceives as weak and, consciously or unconsciously, probably thinks about his mother's softness and warmth as an example of how not to be because she wasn't able to 'make it.' For me with characters from books and/or movies I feel like psychological analysis can only get you so far because at the end of the day they aren't a full being, they only exist so far as they've been conjured by the author... in addition to the psychological angle I think it's also revealing to look at Suzanne Collins' literary and historical influences, because a lot of times she's drawing pretty direct parallels. (And I don't mean this as a critique of your video, just wanting to share additional places to look for insight.) For example, in Shakespeare's play "Coriolanus," his mother, Volumnia, has some striking similarities to Dr. Volumnia Gaul in TBOSAS, so I'd say you're definitely onto something about Gaul being another mother figure. In the play Volumnia has a passage where she talks about sending Coriolanus off to war at a young age, in order to have him win honor and acclaim as a soldier - which is basically what Dr. Gaul does when she sends Corio into the arena and off to District 12.

Gaul orchestrates a lot of events in his life too.She sends him into the arena. She must give the compact to Highbottom, much like she manipulates the arena. And the talk of her as a mother figure made me think... are we certain Mrs. Snow died a NATURAL death in childbirth? Because... who was her OB? It seems suspect that the Capitol, with all its medicine couldn't save her (though not impossible, obviously).

Volumnia is the name of the character Coriolanus in the Shakespeare play. Genius!

This may sound very strange, but considering what I’ve read about Napoleon’s life, it seems like snow echoes some of his behaviors. For instant, they both grew up in a relatively aristocratic family but they were unknown, they were known for having complicated relationships with women, like how both Napoleon and Snow are seemingly obsessed with women like Lucy and Josephine. They both left them to be in a loveless marriage with different women for political reasons.

Oh wow, I legitimately just finished bingeing all your content on Ballad of songbirds and snakes about and hour or so ago mind you I JUST found your channel 😭 then you drop this that’s WILD

one detail i really liked about the movie is the opening scene. Snow and his cousin witness a man commit cannibalism and are attacked by dogs in a very war-torn capital, no doubt traumatizing for a child. When he gets home, he hopes with all his might that maybe there will be some comfort from his father. But Grandmam, the only adult woman in his life, reveals to him after all this turmoil that his father is dead and says that he (a literal child) is the "man" of his house now. I like to think inadvertently, this line from grandmam forever changed the way snow would view his role in the world. Hence why he justifies most of his cruelty and actions via his station as "one of the last snows" or for the betterment of his family.

I think the balance of men and women that Coriolanus spends his time with is interesting. He says he is close with some of his male classmates, but we see him interact with Arachne and Clemensia the most. The only men he interacts with meaningfully are Sejanus and Highbottom. Meanwhile, he is shaped by not only the women you focus on in the video, but also Ma, Maude Ivory, Mayfair, and (somewhat) the female scientist who worked with the jabberjays. He expects to have some connection with Mr. Plinth because he feels like he is better than him but actually forms a relationship with Ma.

This was such a good video!! I loved the analysis of Mrs. Snow. It really got me thinking of Strabo Plinth’s conversation with Coriolanus when he asked him “are you like your mother or your father” and how Coriolanus missed the point so deeply by saying he liked music like his mother. That was Strabo’s subtle way of asking “will you treat district people like me with respect.”

I'm binge-watching all of your Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes videos and i love them! I just had a thought: Other videos have speculated that Snow knew Katniss wasn't really in love with Peeta in the beginning of Catching Fire because Snow was once in love with Lucy Gray and knows what love is really like. I think it's the opposite: Snow knows that Katniss is using Peeta's love to survive and he fully recognizes this because that's how he also saw Lucy Gray.

I'm so sorry it's completely unrelated but I always cackled every time I hear about grandmothers general stereotypes, which is, kind, gentle, wise, warm etc. When my own grandma is just this loveless and vicious narcissistic manipulator with words like poisson and split tongue :v great video btw, I really love this discourse. I noticed a little about his relationship with women when I read the books, especially when the tBoSaS book came out, but I can't really put it into words but you explained so well and perfectly 👏🏾

It should also be noted that Coriolanus Snow is named after the Shakespeare play, Coriolanus. Which sees the eponymous character become a dictator descending into tyranny, bloodshed and finally his removal from power. In the play, Coriolanus’ mother, Volumnia, is emotionally manipulative-having a profound effect on his psyche. Instead of offering parental nourishment, Volumnia coaxes her son to further aggression. She takes credit for turning him into the deadliest warrior and for toughening him up. This exactly mirrors Coriolanus Snow’s relationship with Dr. Volumnia Gaul as she bares some responsibility for encouraging the killer in him.

great analysis!! Thank you very much for the work you've done/gen unfortunately, despite loving it, there is a statement i don't especially agree with, and it's about people being naturally kind, or givers, because most of the people who do good are usually motivated either by " no one is going to do it besides me", "i just gotta" or by " i've seen too much hurt to cause it myself " and it normally comes not naturally, but from the way and conditions they were raised in, their sensibility and believes they inherited. There might be someone who is kind because of being born this way, but i genuinely can't think of anything similar to such a case.

I will forever show this video and other analysis videos to people whenever someone tells me "The Hunger Games series isn't that deep". It is. It can be if YOU look deeper. Collins was very clever imo and you can tell she thought every character and plot point through before she even began writing the story.

Dr. Gaul is the true villain of the series More twisted than Snow and Coin

I’m so glad to see an analysis video of this! You did a great job

I’ve been hoping a review like this would pop up on my timeline! Cheers

I am absolutely loving the abundance of awesome video essays like this about THG stories and characters ❤

This was such an insightful video, and your voice is very calm and soothing

God this is just what I needed. Great analysis, esp on Gaul!

This was really great! Thanks for sharing and putting your perspective out there; it made me appreciate the books in ways I hadn't thought to before.

Beautiful done, thank you so much for sharing! It seems to me that works like these are so great because you get to work on your own person, and people don't always see how important it is. Have a nice day/night ❤

Your mind blew me away 🙌🏻 great analysis, deep and connected in a different way from what we're used to. Thank you for your video!

this was such an amazing take. side note your voice is so beautifully soothing!

This is the first time I’m on your channel and I wanna say that I think your video essay was beautifully done and it makes me wanna see the movie and read the book!

Ooooh your into is so textually supported and compelling. I need to learn from you

this is a masterpiece of video. my goodness. i love your thoughts on this book as a person who also has been obsessed with this book recently, especially after watching the movie, and you just fully blossomed a small idea i had in my mind that i thought i was maybe over analyzing.

wow I love this!! you mentioned some things I haven't thought of but I totally agree, great video

Really cool analysis!

Oh, this is one HELL of an essay. Subscribed!

Really enjoyed this analysis!! Thanks for making this ❤

Very good analysis! Thanks for the insights you pointed out!😍

Just stumped across your channel and your content is right up my alley. You’ve secured a new subscriber! Keep up the good work. I’m excited to witness the growth of your channel.

I personally wonder how much Coriolanus would have been different if his mother survived childbirth. Not only would he have a little sister who could’ve positively impacted him, and his mother living longer could’ve made a difference. Had she lived even to around the time of the 10th hunger games or even just lasted past the war, I wonder if his Mother’s influence would’ve made him a better person and set him up to be more comfortable with giving and comfortable with the spirit of freedom that Lucy Gray represented.

Ooh, this is a very interesting analysis! Loved the video.

Awesome analysis!

I just discovered your channel with this video and I gotta say I loved your analysis, you worded everything so clearly without losing the thread and I was really looking for a video like this haha. Loved the editing style too, subscribed

Absolutely stunning and brilliant analysis.

I love this analysis. Great job!

This video is outstanding analysis

I LOVED this video / analysis ! Tigris is one of the most tragic parts to me, that she put herself through so much to care for Snow/her family and he still cast her aside and did not value her work or opinion in the end.

thought this video was gonna have like 100k views but it only has about 2k! This is such an interesting analysis, brb im gonna reread the book again haha

Very well explained! Thank you for this. I enjoyed this video

This is such a good analysis! It makes me think - Snow tells Katniss throughout the books that she's like him, and they understand each other, which I think is part of why Katniss comes to see herself as selfish and untrustworthy. You say that he can't control what he doesn't understand. I wonder if he saw some parts of himself in Katniss (perhaps things that weren't even there in her, just like he projects his terrible qualities onto everyone else) and hoped he could control her by convincing her she was like him, so that she would behave predictably. He disregarded all the evidence that Katniss was drastically different from him and instead focused on what he could understand about her, trying to encourage those parts of her, trying to mutate her into another version of himself, the way Dr Gaul did with him. Very thought provoking analysis, thank you!

What about katniss and peetas mother. Mrs everdeen and mrs Mellark. What’s Susan’s think with not naming the mothers

i love these analysis videos so much

This was so interesting!

this is amazing

i love this take so much

I fully agree with all the statements mentioned . Thanks for doing this ❤

I actually loved this unpacking of the women in his life. Absolutely fantastic video.

This video is amazing. I love your insight into Snow. It takes the whole series to the next level for me

After reading the book I also agree I don’t think he truly loved her for what love really is. In the movie (which I saw first) I leaned more towards he did love her. After he found the guns in the book he already decided he wanted to go back to the capital. He wanted to leave her first. (I think from her POV she also wanted to leave, and they decided alone, at the same time.) that’s why he made up all the excuses that he could that she was a traitor so he could betray her and leave her in the wilderness, then knowing she knows he’s a murderer he knew he couldn’t leave her alive in case she came back to say something so, he decided in his head all of a sudden she was a horrible person to make the choice of killing her seem just.

I love you commentary so so much

So intresting video, great job❤

The bit at the end of the book where he questioned if his mum did like music backs this up

No because a full whiteboard video from you would eattttt 🤞🏻

This analysis makes me want to read the whole book. I have just watched the movie. It is surprisingly good.

It’d be fascinating to get a book on Dr. Gaul’s life

Very well spoken, thought out analysis! 100% agree with everything you said here and it only makes me wonder what women were in his life in between now and the 74th games. We know he has a granddaughter, so he must’ve been married at some point, but we never see a significant other in the books or the movies for him, nor do we see any children. Did he have them killed or were there other misfortunes in his life that further shaped and developed his psyche? 4 books just aren’t enough for this universe 😭

Great video and amazing analysis! though I do think people put too much of Snow's outcome on Doctor Gaul; he already embodied a lot of her ideology, i think she saw that in him. He had the potential to continue his legacy and did, but she was not the sole reason for his being.

this was incredibly fascinating, thank you for putting this together! wow! and thank you for emphasizing that Snow did NOT love Lucy Gray. not truly. it was a facade or an escape. the movie i feel makes you think she betrayed him when truly Lucy Gray was finally seeing his heart, he was not trustworthy, and she needed to escape.

great and interesting vid! thank you so much 😊

You have a really nice voice for some reason

Am I crazy or is she saying "unfortunakely"? With a k??

i want everyone who watched all the thg movies to see this THIS IS AMAZING

Dr gaul was my favorite character in both the movie and book; she's crazy yea, but brilliant, and ultimately the Creator of the capital as we first see it in the hunger games

I agreeded with everything you stated

Knowing how much he likes control and his possessive inner monologue, I think had she not ran that he would have just tried to possess her and take away her freedom so she would belong to him forever.

It's worth pointing out that snow grew up in a home with minimal amount of love, Tigris was the only person who showed some sort of love towards him. His grandmother constantly talked to him about upholding fhe family name and honor and how Snow was compared to his father. In that sense you could argue that Snow had very little understanding of love towards others so his ideas of what love was,or how it manifested itself was a new concept to him. Snow also had no father figure,so its easy to see how he turned out,in contrast to say Katniss who grew up in a home with love and affection and with both parents there. I do believe that snow was honestly in love with Lucy gray, at least love as he saw it in his mind. Yes he said that she was his but thats no different than a boyfriend saying that his girlfriend is well his or how a husband says "my wife" or vice versa "my husband." Snow cared only for himself to an extent yes but once again except tigris no one really cared about him, Lucy gray pretended to care for him just to use him to get back at the mayors daughter and for her own survival, Gaul used him to keep the games alive and keep her legacy alive and his own grandmother was only interested in the prestige and honor of the family which was put on Snow's shoulders. "Its the things we love the most that destroys us." Well what did destroy him if not his love for Gray and for those close around him, he wasnt lying when he said that he had killed his old self. Snow realized quickly that the world he wanted to create or preserve was the same world those around him wanted to destroy.

Hell yes you did good

i noticed something really interesting that shocked me in the theater. tigris tells coriolanus not to turn into his father and not to become evil. he eventually does (ofc). near the end of the movie, coriolanus asks grandmaam and tigris how he looks. when responding, tigris calls him coriolanus instead of coryo, which is a nickname she called him for the entire story. according the book, the word “coryo” has something to do with strong friendship and kindess, so tigris, along with close friends, gave him this nickname. she stops saying it after seeing the monster he’d turned into. and on top of that, she also says “you look JUST LIKE YOUR FATHER, coriolanus”.

I think Snow could understand doing things for people he loved in the beginning. He wanted to win the money for his family to have a better life with them originally, but once he was thrown into everything and District 12. He was scared, desperate, and manipulated. Then he took a way worse path. All people react to trauma differently. He reacted in a way that made him hateful, vengeful, and controlling. He wanted power over others. Others react in a way where they show kindness, compassion, equality, openness, understanding, and love for others. Everyone reacts differently to trauma. You’re not born bad. You choose to be based on your life experiences, people around you, and mindset towards life.

They aren’t just women he used. Dr. Gaul, for instance, used him.

bruh i cant finish this video bc of the way you say ‘unfortunately’

I haven’t watched the video yet but hope this comes up because it’s something i noticed in the books. Snow is CONSTANTLY looks down at sex work performed by women. when he considers tigress might have been forced to turn to prostitution he first evaluated how much she would be worth (gross) and then instead of feeling empathy and gratefulness he shames her. He does the same for Lucy Gray later. I think this really just shows his possessiveness and how he wants the women in his life to be only his and not “owned” or USED by any other man