#hellofutureme

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“I always wondered what kind of person could do such a thing, but now that I see you, I think I understand. There's just nothing inside you, nothing at all. You're pathetic and sad and empty.”

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After she spares Yon Rha, Katara tells him that he’s “nothing.” For the individual who clings onto the nebulous concepts of “meaning” and “purpose” for their entire lifespan, to be “nothing” is to be faced with eternal damnation. Someone who is “pathetic and sad and empty” is someone who lives but is not alive, running through the motions of each day mechanically and without feeling.

Perhaps the reason why Katara finds closure without forgiveness or revenge is that she chooses the ground in-between. She has found justice without needing to serve it because life, in its cruel and karmic ways, had already reduced Yon Rha to a shell of the man he once was. Had Katara been any more merciless towards Yon Rha, it would still have been merciful compared to how he suffers in his present life. Ending Yon Rha would be a waste of Katara’s efforts.

So Katara says, “I think I understand.”

And so we, the audience, think we understand too. Only then we remember what Katara had said before: 

“I always wondered what kind of person could do such a thing, but now that I see you…”

Katara is fourteen when she says “now that I see you.”

She was eight when she first saw Yon Rha.

In Katara’s flashback, the “kind of person [who] could do such a thing” is someone ominous, terrifying, and inhuman, a portrayal exemplified by the low-angle in which Yon Rha is framed in contrast to the high-angle looking down on Katara. In this shot, Yon Rha towers over Katara both in height and in authority. Thus, she has always imagined her mother’s killer to be the same way he has appeared to her when she was a helpless, vulnerable child - he appears as a militaristic man, an arrogant man, a powerful man.

The man Katara finds behind the door in the Fire Nation telecommunications tower is just that. As the captain of an elite Fire Nation scouting group, he embodies everything Katara would expect from the monster of her childhood, someone with a capacity for immense ruin and cruelty. So, lost in a memory where she is completely powerless, Katara’s grief and anger compel her to cling onto every iota of power she had gained through the years. Pushing her skills to the limits and past the limits, she inadvertently pushes herself to use the power she swore she’d never use - bloodbending.

“It's not him. He's not the man.”

Stricken, Katara walks away. Whether she is silent because of disappointment or shock is left up to interpretation, but no interpretation can deny the poisonous effects Katara’s hatred had on her. It consumed her body and mind, driving her to reach into someone’s veins and into their blood, tempting her beyond the one line she promised she’d never crossed. Stemming from hurt, grief, and rage, her loathing is intoxicating in the same way her memories of her mother’s death is so haunting. Because there was no humanity in the way Kya was killed, and so Katara dehumanizes her mother’s murderer in the same manner.

Maybe monsters deserve to die. Maybe monsters deserve to be bloodbended.

But monsters can only exist in memory.

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“Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.”

- George Orwell, “Revenge is Sour”

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Before, when Katara and Zuko fly on Appa with Whaletail Island in their sights, Zuko awakes to the sight of Katara looking forward to the horizon, back straight and eyes hardened with determination. In response to his request for her to rest, she tells Zuko, “oh, don't you worry about my strength. I have plenty.”

Later, in her encounter with the captain of the Southern Raiders, her strength is affirmed by her ability to bloodbend-

-yet this is the experience that plants that first seed of doubt into her mind.

These doubts are in full bloom by the time Katara and Zuko reach the small Fire Nation village that Yon Rha, now a humble farmer, calls home. They hide in the shadows, trailing behind him as he walks back home, and then, they wait.

And then, they strike.

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“That was him. That was the monster.”

- Katara

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Katara says that Yon Rha is the monster, but their roles are now reversed - Katara is the aggressor and Yon Rha is the victim; Katara looms over Yon Rha at a low-angle while Yon Rha is looked down upon from a high-angle. Ultimately, a monster is more than their cruelty and vileness; a monster has power; a monster has control over a nightmare.

Only now it is not Yon Rha in control, but Katara.

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“I'm not the helpless little girl I was when they came.”

- Katara

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In the end, the issue had never been about Katara’s strength - instead, it was about her weakness. As a child, she was vulnerable while Yon Rha was infallible, and so the image of Yon Rha looming over her is the one that persisted for years, plaguing her even as she grew up and grew stronger. Hence, the Yon Rha Katara saw as an eight-year-old is the Yon Rha she would have no qualms about killing. 

But that Yon Rha belongs to another time. He belongs to a time in which Katara was weak and Yon Rha was strong, and that time is the past and the past is unbreachable. Thus, revenge can only exist in the ghost of a memory; revenge can only exist in fantasies.

Perhaps the childish fantasy aspect of revenge is why the platitudes “revenge is empty” and “revenge is meaningless” are thrown around so carelessly today, so much so that they no longer hold any weight. Of course, these statements are true in many ways, but they also oversimplify complex emotional responses to trauma. For Katara, revenge is empty because it is not what she needs.

Consciously or subconsciously, Katara recognizes her needs the moment when they’re met - with her suspending shards of ice in the air, all pointed towards Yon Rha. Then, fantasies and illusions shatter, falling away like ice turning back to water and splashing on the ground, unused. Katara now has power, not only through waterbending and bloodbending, but through the present over the past. Stripped of all his height and authority, the monster that was the Yon Rha of six years ago had already been killed. Now all that is left is her, standing over the humble-villager Yon Rha, over her fear and grief and rage, over the past that once haunted her. Over her memories.

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“I wanted to do it. I wanted to take out all my anger at him, but I couldn't. I don't know if it's because I'm too weak to do it or because I'm strong enough not to.”

- Katara

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By the end of her journey, the ideologies at conflict during the beginning of the episode are still at war within Katara. Katara holds power over her memories, but she is not at peace with them. Katara is able to forgive some, but she is not able to forgive all. The loss of her mother still hurts, but the loss of Katara’s innocence is replaced by the affirmation of her maturity. She has not let go of her rage, but she is no longer blinded by it.

Still, no matter how bittersweet the ending to this story is, it is also full of hope and new beginnings: The hold old memories had over Katara is broken. Six years’ worth of hurt and damage, though it cannot be smoothed over the course of a few days, can finally begin to heal. The wounds have been cleansed; the ghosts have been chased away. Now, Katara is strong where she was once weak. Now, Katara has found closure.

Now, Katara is free.

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Works Cited

Revenge is Sour by George Orwell

As seen by how much I quote George Orwell throughout this meta, my philosophy on the meaning of revenge draws a lot of inspiration from this essay, a piece on how a shift in dynamics in the post-World War II world can lead to the oppressed becoming the oppressors.

The Cycle of War by HelloFutureMe

My analysis on low-angle vs high-angle shots and the role-reversal of victim and aggressor comes from this video essay, a piece on how the cycle of persecution and victimization perpetuates war.

Companion Pieces (metas) by yours truly

Rage, Compassion, and the Bridge in Between

An essay on Katara’s emotions and the reciprocatory relationship between her kindness and anger

Ideals and Idealization

My interpretation of Aang and Katara’s relationship in The Southern Raiders and an extensive study on how Aang idealizes Katara

selfish

A fanfiction that takes my analysis on Katara’s grief + the concept of revenge and explores it in story form (OR: a post-TSR conversation written from Zuko’s POV; implied Zutara)