"so she could've felt like she had to pitch it that way, as something from one of her "bright students with a bright future," as it were. First thought was really that she pitched the idea, mentioned where it came from, and suddenly everyone's all about Casca as the mastermind." @districtfourmermaid
It’s a phrase that will haunt me in the months to come, and it fascinates me just as much. I absorb it and incorporate it into my own ideas about what constitutes the canon (the version in my head).
Because, you see (apologies in advance, a very long rant is coming, also an important note: this is about a reading/interpretation, which I’m aware may have gotten a little out of hand, but eh), this is my argument. It was with @fairyhagmother that we once discussed the implications of Volumnia giving the credit to Casca and how it could come from the possibility of Gaul making Casca pay in some way / giving him a kind of lesson / forcing him to acknowledge his involvement and most important: his responsibility.
In this post, I explain a bit more clearly the idea about what I mean with responsibility, because by creating the Hunger Games Casca could be revealing his own prejudices and casual cruelty as someone born and raised in the most privileged circles of the Capitol. And here are some dialogues I highlighted before that I think support this point.
But there’s another aspect I’ve considered after a million rereads and I admit it might be a consequence of overthinking still, I will talk of it because I dare to say may Casca in text to be a bit sexist when talking about female characters. I think his case it’s one that fits that fine line typical of certain Collins characters, where one isn’t entirely sure whether the misogyny was intentional on the author’s part (that is, a trait consciously added to the character’s construction) or whether the author’s own bias are seeping into the character’s voices.
On the one hand, it’s true that Casca (especially in the book, in the movie he’s much nicer) is mean and rude in his personality. While Lucky isn’t a character I particularly like because he’s an idiotic clown, when I think about Casca basically mocking him in front of everyone on national television, yeah I rooted for Casca but I can recognize that Casca wasn’t very nice, and simply almost every interaction he had with Coriolanus (again, it’s important to distinguish between the book and the movie because deliberately giving a piece of pay to a student you KNOW has financial problems, and who probably has a poor diet, is being a JERK, and the fact it doesn’t happen in the movie, it makes him seem a thousand times kinder than he is in the book, or the incredible “The Snows are hard to kill” line before Coriolanus enters the arena, as if he didn't know his father and almost all the Snow family it’s death <3 Ah, Casca isn’t he charming?).
At the same time, I find it curious that while I know Collins never lets the characters swear due to the classification, a good portion of Casca’s crudest wording is reserved for female characters. The way he talks about Mrs. Snow for example, is very unflattering, even though he seems to have had some sympathy for her, given what he describes she went through as Crassus’s wife. Then, with Lucy Gray, in theory he gives her money, an apology for be victim of the games he hates and despises so much and that she have been a victim of, even so, the way he contrasts her with Mrs. Snow is a bit hard considering the current subject all the book about Lucy Gray not being a “child anymore” due to the fact that she has experienced certain stuff (heavily implied practice sex work as a minor) as are certain actions of him, to mention one, admitting that he allowed the peacekeepers to throw her to the ground to take by force the powder of Coriolanus’s mother off her.
But you might think it’s just part of his personality (which it might be, I don’t have a definitive answer, so let’s consider what I perceive, I’m incorporating it into his character), but here’s the curious thing: Crassus Snow, who betrayed him, the person he despises more than anyone else, Casca rarely directs such negative remarks when talking of him as he did toward the previously mentioned characters, and others as particularly Volumnia Gaul.
Casca says that he “loathed her so much” that he could never participate in class and that was the reason he was failing her class. He also calls her a monster, and while it’s true that Volumnia is a villain, a cartoonish one at times, at that, and she ruined his life by giving him the title of creator of the Hunger Games (since that’s what we see causes him the most unhappiness), I find it striking that he can act with a certain indifference and resignation when she interacts with her, that he doesn’t confront her directly and the narration even hints at a certain dominance on her part over him (Gaul has a little rabbit that she torture, narration compares Casca to the caged and tortured rabbit). And yet, despite harboring a more pronounced hatred and resentment toward Crassus, his most verbal, explicit, and direct expressions of hostility are directed at Miss Gaul.
This is interesting (and extremely sad) because while Volumnia was once again created by Collins as a repulsive antagonist, it’s revealing to see all the traits she embodies that make her that way for Collins. Much of her character is designed to be terrifying and unsettling. She is sadistic, strange, cruel, and vile, and yet she is a woman, an older woman, highly educated (particularly in the hard sciences), with political power (it seems behind the shadows as she spoked AFTER the president did, and while seems hold lot of influence, there's not much respect for her as her own authority beyond the fear she instills in others, and again, there’s a curious connection to the fear or discomfort she provokes, especially when you consider the traits that make her the kind of character she is. Casca. Did you loathe your University female teacher? She already did crimes against humanity by that point or...?), and not maternal (although she does fulfill a pseudo-maternal role for Coriolanus, and I personally believe there was some intentionality behind this, given that Volumnia is the name of Coriolanus’s mother in Shakespeare, we also know, in text that she used to be an obstetrician, and she wasn’t very good at it since she didn’t usually offer the comfort and solace that parents expected about their children), as far as we know, unmarried, and without children or family. Considering the film, Volumnia is a Black woman, in addition to all the details described above, which I think makes your proposal a thousand times more devastating but brilliant.
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