Catching Fire Kisses: Empty & Full
For #ToastedTHG @everlarkedalways asked us to compare and contrast the kiss in the snow with Peeta to the kiss at the fence with Gale. Buckle up Everlurkers!
Gale's kiss is an empty experience for her. A lot of her phrasing is void-esque:
"he took" || "i think" || "vaguely" || "he let go"
"he was gone" || "hole in the fence"
The kiss with Peeta is a full experience:
"catches me" || "into" || "full of" || "underneath" || "brings to everything" || "not alone"
Peeta's kiss is described viscerally but Gale's is explained dryly. During the kiss in the snow she becomes overwhelmed with emotion to the point of wanting to cry. After Gale leaves Katniss she has to think on if the kiss made her feel anything at all, and it didn't, she felt and feels absolutely nothing. Not even resentment, even though she was completely unprepared for it. Which knowing Katniss, and that Gale supposedly knows how she feels about love and relationships, you would think she'd at least be ticked off. But she just feels nothing. That could be chalked up to her bad mental health except that she becomes emotionally overwhelmed by Peeta's kiss.
I think the most important distinction between these two kisses is the movement descriptor Katniss uses and how she uses it. She declares Gale's hands entrap her even though he isn't the one she is required to kiss. She describes the feeling of Peeta's kiss as steady. It's familiar, secure, stable. Peeta literally catches her and even though they slip and fall, he still cushions her from the fall. It's very metaphoric for their entire relationship through the series. There is a lot of togetherness in her language as well, "catches", "we" is used three times plus "our" and "underneath". That word "underneath" speaks to the experience being layered for her.
Gale's kiss is described as something that's all about him and his feelings, because he feels left out and wants to stake a claim whereas the kiss with Peeta is about him showing up for her, being in the show together despite how it might hurt him on a personal level. The kiss with Peeta is one paragraph and she uses the word me seven times! No words or phrases of being together are used when relaying Gale's kiss to the reader.
Even the imagery of the environment for each kiss fulfills what they represent. Right before Gale kisses her she says it happens at the hole in the fence. Peeta and her fall into the snow, thereby they are filling up a space within. I wonder if SC deliberately tries to confuse us here though. For this series we associate snow with, well, President Snow. Here maybe the snow is just meant to represent him, remind us that circumstances require the kiss to occur and despite that she still feels a connection when they kiss. And the fence, well the fence represents several things including freedom. Being beyond the fence is supposed to symbolize what Katniss loves but you have to look closely to see that it's contradicted by stating the kiss occurs at the hole in the fence and the emptiness that is that entire kiss. One could even say that the kiss with Peeta fills her with thoughts and emotions.
