My Notebook

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deirdre-of-the-sorrows:

My thoughts on the  ‘Gale killed Prim’ argument.

Blaming Gale for Prim’s death seems moronic to me. Of course he didn’t kill her, Coin did.

Gale came up with an idea, a concept of a bomb. But he didn’t design the bomb, he didn’t make it, and he certainly wasn’t the one who decided to drop it on a pen of defenceless children. He wasn’t the one who approved sending a thirteen year old inexperienced medic into a combat zone.

Gale was a hunter and a trapper. His tools are knives, arrows, snares. Simple things made with simple materials, made intricate by his own intelligence. He understands how prey thinks and it makes him a good hunter and strategist. It allowed him to think up the concept of a bomb, a brutal and effective bomb. A terrible beauty. A necessary one if they ever want any chance of defeating the Capitol.

But Gale couldn’t have made the bomb. He didn’t have the technical expertise to make such a sophisticated weapon. He has almost zero knowledge of electronics or explosives. Beetee made the bomb. Do we blame Beetee for killing Prim? No. Of course not, because he didn’t kill Prim either, though he arguably had more of a hand in it than Gale.

But neither of them are responsible. We should no more blame them for Prim’s death, than we blame Rue for Glimmer’s death. After all, it was Rue’s who spotted the Tracker Jacker nest and had to idea to drop it on the career’s below. It was Katniss who actually made the decision to do it. She was the one who sawed through the branch and dropped the nest onto the other’s below. Glimmer died as a result, and Katniss takes responsibility for her death. 

Coin killed Prim. She’s the one who made the decision to use the bomb. She’s the one who decided where and when the bomb should be deployed. She’s the one who sent Prim out into the field as a paramedic. She knew that Prim would be in the line of fire and that she would likely die. That was Coin’s intention. She wanted to kill Prim to get at Katniss. There’s no two ways about it, Coin murdered Prim.

The only real question is whether or not she intended for Gale to be blamed. Did she know that the original idea had been Gale’s? Probably. Did she know that Katniss would blame Gale for Prim’s death? Probably not.  I don’t think even Coin could have imagined that her plan would destroy Katniss and Gale’s friendship. How could she have even predicted that Katniss would blame her most loyal friend, the man who had twice saved Prims’s life, who had saved Peeta’s life, who had fought alongside her, who loved her?

Gale didn’t deserve to be blamed by Katniss and it’s a shame that he’s held responsible by so many fans of the books. Surely, the hate should be directed at Coin.