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"Am I my brother's keeper?" But it's Norman MacLean calling out for Paul near the lake, years after his death. "Am I my brother's keeper?" But it's Charles sleeping in the outhouse to keep the house clean for Adam, after almost beating him to death. "Am I my brother's keeper?" But it's Cal trying to protect Aron from learning their mother's identity. "Am I my brother's keeper?" But it's Darry giving up his future to raise his brothers. "Am I my brother's keeper?" But it's Dean rocking Sam's bloodied body.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" But it's Mriganka frantically apologising while cutting lines across Dhruv's face.
i've been trying to pinpoint why haydove does not work for me, and I think it's john steinbeck's fault. In his book East of Eden, Steinbeck writes about a relationship between two characters, Aron and Abra. (Warning for heavy East of Eden spoilers)
Aron represents Abel. He embodies everything good. He is handsome, kind, and pure, and he believes the best in people. He builds them up in his mind to be perfect. Essentially, he puts them on a pedestal. To him, they can do no wrong.
He constructs an image of college, and when he goes to school, he finds he hates it because it is different than how he pictured it to be, and he wants to return home. He grieves his mistake and isolates himself. He wants to become a priest, yet he is uncomfortable when told a woman who runs a brothel attends his services. To him, the church is a pure place, where everyone is free of sin. That is how he goes about life— he creates perfect images of people that are not true.
He constructs an idea of his own mother, whom he believes to be dead, as a golden woman, a woman who has never sinned in her life. When he finds out she is alive and runs a brothel, he enlists in the army and gets himself killed. He cannot cope with the fact the images he has built of these people are not the truth.
As a child, he falls in love with a girl named Abra. Abra's namesake is a quote from a novel:
Abra was ready ere I called her name; And though I called another, Abra came.
It is revealed later that Abra's father wanted a boy, so when she was born a girl, he felt he had called for someone else, and she arrived. Hence why he named her Abra, but Aron does this, too. He calls for Abra, but he does not call for the true Abra. He "called another", as in, the idealized version of her.
Aron spends his life pining after Abra. They grow up together, but around his teenage years, he says he wants to be a priest. He crafts this image of her as a pure woman. When he goes off to the college that he found he hated, he begins to write to Abra. He sends her salacious letters, dripping with want and desire based on how perfect she is. He crafts her to be this woman she is not. He believes that she is composed of only goodness.
This makes Abra uncomfortable. She confesses to Lee that she fears Aron does not love her, but the perfect idea of her:
“’Course I like him. I’m going to be his wife. But I want him to like me too. And how can he, if he doesn’t know anything about me? I used to think he knew me. Now I’m not sure he ever did.”
“Maybe he’s going through a hard time that isn’t permanent. You’re a smart girl—very smart. Is it pretty hard trying to live up to the one—in your skin?”
“I’m always afraid he’ll see something in me that isn’t in the one he made up. I’ll get mad or I’ll smell bad—or something else. He’ll find out.”
“Maybe not,” said Lee. “But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Humans just do smell bad sometimes.”
She moved toward the table. “Lee, I wish—”
“Don’t spill flour on my floor,” he said. “What do you wish?”
“It’s from my figuring out. I think Aron, when he didn’t have a mother—why, he made her everything good he could think of.”
“That might be. And then you think he dumped it all on you.” She stared at him and her fingers wandered delicately up and down the blade of the knife. “And you wish you could find some way to dump it all back.”
“Yes.”
“Suppose he wouldn’t like you then?”
“I’d rather take a chance on that,” she said. “I’d rather be myself.”
She continues on to talk about the letters, and how Aron has fabricated an image that overlooks all the bad she could do:
“No. When he had all that about going into the church and not getting married, I tried to fight with him, but he wouldn’t.”
“Not get married to you? I can’t imagine that.”
“Cal, he writes me love letters now—only they aren’t to me.”
“Then who are they to?”
“It’s like they were to—himself.”
And when she finally burns his letters, she says this to Lee:
“I burned all of Aron’s letters.”
“Did he do bad things to you?”
“No. I guess not. Lately I never felt good enough. I always wanted to explain to him that I was not good.”
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. Is that it?”
“I guess so. Maybe that’s it.”
And they break up. Abra felt suffocated by the Perfect Image Aron created. Essentially, Aron called Abra's name, but another came. The real Abra, not the image he crafted in her likeness.
And Haymitch does the same thing to Lenore Dove.
From the moment we meet Lenore Dove, Haymitch tells us how he's afraid of her doing something rebellious:
“That’s a raven. The bird from my name poem,” she says softly. “It’s the biggest songbird there is.”
“He’s an impressive fellow,” I observe.
“She is. She’s smart as a whip, too. Did you know they use logic to solve things?”
“Got me beat there,” I have to admit.
“And nobody tells them what to say. That bird is who I want to be when I grow up. Someone who says whatever they think is right, no matter what.”
No matter what. That’s the part I’m worried about. That she might be saying something rash. Or even doing something beyond dangerous words.
Haymitch has seen the orange paint on the flint striker, the orange of her lips, and the orange on her nails. She has already rebelled by the time he leaves for the reaping. In fact he knows she has rebelled as a child, and it's important enough for him to press her on it:
It was her, though. Both times. I know it in my heart, even though she’s never quite admitted it to me or her uncles. She says all the Covey girls are a mystery, it’s half their charm. When I press her, she just laughs and says if it’s true, that information could put me in danger, and if it’s false, what does it matter? “Didn’t do much good anyway, did it? Clay’s dead and the reaping’s alive and well.”
Since that year, she’s had a clean record.
He's convinced that she doesn't make trouble any more. He's convinced that she doesn't rebel:
Comments like that make me feel like she’s still got the potential to make trouble, and that side of her is just laying low.
He has crafted this image of a reformed girl. He believes in the Perfect Image of her. He cannot believe that she would rebel again. In the phone call scene, he does not believe she sang to be rebellious. He believes, first, it was his doing:
“Arrested you? When? What for?” Is this because I just joked about the Peacekeepers buying white liquor? Are they taking out my waywardness on her?
And even after he's told, it's still not rebellion, rather, her trying to get herself killed:
“You? It’s entirely my fault you’re there! And I know I’m why you got that score. I as good as killed you, and that’s not something I can live with.”
And so she’s doing what she can to get herself killed? Now I’m mad.
And even still, he doesn't believe it was rebellion or a conspiracy to draw up attention:
It’s not like she’s part of some big conspiracy, so, hopefully, they won’t use methods to force her to talk.
Even in the reaping scene, his first instinct is to stop her from rebelling, not to help her free Woodbine:
This will not end well. Should I get in there? Pull Lenore Dove away? Or will I only make the situation worse? I feel like my knees are glued to the ground.
Rebellion does not work with the Perfect Image he has crafted of her. It cannot be true, because to him, she has a clean record. That part of her is in the past.
Abra, too, felt that Aron once knew her. Haymitch knew Lenore Dove, too, but he has crafted this Perfect Image of her. Her actions do not align with what he tells us. He does not know of her current rebellion, and rebellion worries him:
She worries me, and I’m an Abernathy.
Abra grows to feel trapped by the Perfect Image Aron created. She feels she cannot act. She must hold her breath, she must be conscious of how she smells, she cannot do anything bad, else risk the image Aron has created of her. She knows he loves the image, not her.
So when Haymitch insists she has a clean record, she has the potential to rebel but hasn't, and we know that isn't true from the orange paint on her finger nails alone, that she has continued to rebel, it's him painting this Perfect Image of Lenore Dove.
He does not love her, he loves the image of her. The non-rebellious, sometimes impulsive but never on a rebellious level, girl. Not the Lenore Dove we get to know through Maysilee or even the scenes she, herself, is in.
In his time away at the Games, just like Aron's time away at college, he thinks about his girl. He crafts this image of her more solidly. It's why she feels so dead-wife. Everything comes back to her. The bunnies, the mockingjays, the angels, the silk scarves, the bird songs, the flowers, the porcupines, etc.
He forgoes planning to think of her, escaping into the comfort of the perfect image of her, as Aron did Abra. Aron refused to go out or meet people. He would picture Abra, write to her. It became his only hobby:
I should be planning my strategy in the arena, but I just keep thinking about Lenore Dove, and how much I love her, and wondering if she’s home by now and how she’s doing.
He puts her no where near strangers, no where near crowds, only where he believes she would be safe:
I allow myself a moment with Lenore Dove, imagining her in the Meadow among her flock of geese or watching me on the ancient television Tam Amber manages to keep functional. Not on the square, where anyone can gather to see huge projections of the Games, but privately in the Covey’s funny, crooked house. Forbidden by her uncles to leave. Distraught, but unbruised, unbeaten, unbroken, and safe at home.
He credits his own resourcefulness to her:
I press my lips to the flint striker, hoping Lenore Dove sees me, knows this is a thank-you to her for saving me from the mutts.
He becomes sad when her gift becomes useless, despite needing to survive in a death match game:
Almost makes me sad, seeing Lenore Dove’s gift become obsolete so quickly.
His all-consuming idealization of her overshadows the fact he's currently being hunted. He is preoccupied with this perfect image of her every second he is at his version of Aron's college.
I reach for Lenore Dove for solace, knowing she must be keeping vigil at her television set, living through my last hours with me. It’s much worse for her, really. The helplessness. Thinking of her watching me makes me want to be brave, or at least appear to be.
All he can do is obsess over her. And yet, he doesn't know she does the things that worry him.
It is natural to remember someone through rose-colored glasses, like how Katniss remembers Peeta in d13, but when the "Perfect Image" of Peeta falls, they work through it. However, Katniss develops this image after Peeta is taken from her, not while she's lying with her lips on his neck under a raven's tree. He has the rose-colored image of her before she's even taken from him.
And it wouldn't work. Just like Abra and Aron, their relationship would suffocate both of them. The pedestal would fall.
He called Lenore Dove's name, and another came.
Lenore Dove was ready ere I called her name; And though I called another, Lenore Dove came.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
