Severance Parallels ↳ 1.01 Good News About Hell // 2.10 Cold Harbor

marie howe, in an interview with krista tippett of on being

Something i didnt quite understand in the book is why in the arena they had to kill the game makers is theres any bigger piece to it or is it just pure brutality?

Thanks for your ask!

The answer comes from a few different places, but it ultimately leads back to David Hume’s essay Of the First Principles of Government. (It's a short read, and I highly recommend it!)

In Of the First Principles of Government, Hume discusses implicit submission. He maintains governing bodies derive their power from public opinion, and it is exactly why all of the characters acted the way they did in that scene. I will break it down by character, but first I want to examine some context in SOTR.

In the text, the training scene right before Plutarch begins to question Haymitch foreshadows the later scene:

“There’s this moment, just as I get to my feet, where I look around, and I’m armed, and they’re armed. A half dozen of us hold sleek, deadly knives. And I see that there aren’t many Peacekeepers here today. Not really. We outnumber them four to one. And if we moved quickly, we could probably free up some of those tridents and spears and swords at the other stations and have ourselves a real nice arsenal. I meet Ringina’s eyes, and I’d swear she’s thinking the same thing.” [...] “The more I think it over, the more my dismay grows. Every year we let them herd us into their killing machine. Every year they pay no price for the slaughter. They just throw a big party and box up our bodies like presents for our families to open back home.”

When you read this as context to the scene in the arena, it is the same idea. The armed tributes outnumber the Gamemakers, and in the arena, everyone is on equal footing. The tributes have the numbers and the momentum of days in the arena behind them. 

There are two lines that are thematically significant in this section. The first line is from a Gamemaker: 

The Gamemaker with the drill raises her mask and straightens up to a full height. "That’s right. And all four of you are in absolute violation of the rules. You must immediately withdraw or there will be repercussions." "That’d be a lot more impressive if you weren’t shaking like a leaf," observes Maysilee, fingering her blowgun. 

The only defense the Capitol worker has is that of governing status. She attempts to assert the rules of governance on her side by claiming that they are all in violation of the rules, and therefore they must submit to the Capitol by leaving them alone. Even she knows, as her shaking voice exposes, there is no true way to enforce this rule. This is where David Hume’s essay comes in:

"When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion."

The force is always on the side of the governed. The governed, in this case, are the tributes of the arena. Yet, in the arena, where the purpose, according to Dr. Gaul, is to strip man down to his base instincts, a governing body cannot exist. The government exists to make sure man doesn’t regress to said instincts. Therefore, the government cannot exist in the arena in the same way it does in the rest of Panem. Ergo, the public opinion needed to enforce the rules is obsolete, to the point where both parties are on equal grounds. There is no illusion of power. 

The second line is: 

Silka seems stunned into inertia as well. “What’d you do? Did you kill Gamemmakers? They’ll never let us win now!”

Silka still believes there are winners in the games. In fact, she goes so far as to say “let us win”, thus she recognizes that the Capitol has true control over who wins, and prior to this, she expected to be able to win. Now, she believes winning is a right that the Capitol can revoke, which lends itself to the idea of Hume’s secondary principles of government:

"There are indeed other principles, which add force to these, and determine, limit, or alter their operation; such as self-interest, fear, and affection: But still we may assert, that these other principles can have no influence alone, but suppose the antecedent influence of those opinions above-mentioned."

Because Silka expects to be able to win, she is stunned into submission under her expectation of particular rewards:

"For, first, as to self-interest, by which I mean the expectation of particular rewards, distinct from the general protection which we receive from government, it is evident that the magistrate's authority must be antecedently established, at least be hoped for, in order to produce this expectation."

On the other side, fear stuns Haymitch. Hume details how fear is a form of submission:

"No man would have any reason to fear the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear; since, as a single man, his bodily force can reach but a small way, and all the farther power he possesses must be founded either on our own opinion, or on the presumed opinion of others."

Haymitch recognizes how futile it would be to take down a few Gamemakers. It is the same reason he deduces when he reflects on his time in the training center. They may outnumber the peacekeepers in the training center, but what would happen? It would be a fruitless rebellion, and public opinion would squash anything that could potentially develop from it. Hume’s discussion of fear is not exactly fear of the tyrant himself, rather, fear of the power he possesses over others. Snow had public opinion on his side outside of the arena. Killing a few Gamemakers here would just bring upon the tyrant’s arsenal.

Maysilee and Maritte, however, both recognize that the perception of power via public opinion doesn’t exist in the arena. Both realize they cannot be punished more than they already are. I don’t usually quote the movies, but I think Reaper’s taunting of the Capitol when he rips the flag down in the 10th Games suits this philosophy extremely well: 

“Are you gonna punish me now? Are you going to punish me now?”

Both girls act because they are disillusioned with the power of the Capitol. They refuse to submit. They are free from the secondary aspects of self-interest, fear, and affection. Maysilee alludes to the idea that winning was never going to happen in the first place: 

Maysilee’s voice drips honey. “Still chasing that sad little dream, Silka?” 

While one can interpret this by assuming Maysilee means she was going to kill Silka, it can also be taken to counter Silka’s belief of a fair win, calling it a dream. Maysilee likely recognizes the Capitol can always give advantages to people they want to win, or send mutts on whoever they don’t like. We see this with Titus in his games. She doesn’t submit. 

I would like to cross reference this with the 10th Games in Ballad, where Coriolanus and Sejanus entered the arena. Dr. Gaul used Coryo’s experience in the arena about a lesson on human nature: 

“Without the threat of death, it wouldn’t have been much of a lesson,” said Dr. Gaul. “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.”

Later in the scene, she talks about how the death of Coryo and Sejanus would not have brought anyone closer to winning. This is the same idea, just from the perspective of what would have been the Gamemakers, had they survived: 

“What did you think of them, now that their chains have been removed? Now that they’ve tried to kill you? Because it was of no benefit to them, your death. You’re not the competition.”  It was true. They’d been close enough to recognize him. But they’d hunted down him and Sejanus — Sejanus, who’d treated the tributes so well, fed them, defended them, given them last rites! — even though they could have used that opportunity to kill one another.  “I think I underestimated how much they hate us,” said Coriolanus.  “And when you realized that, what was your response?” she asked.  He thought back to Bobbin, to the escape, to the tributes’ bloodlust even after he’d cleared the bars. “I wanted them dead. I wanted every one of them dead.”

Interestingly, he makes a point about human nature that calls back to what Hume is saying:

“I think I wouldn’t have beaten anyone to death if you hadn’t stuck me in that arena!” he retorted.  “You can blame it on the circumstances, the environment, but you made the choices you made, no one else. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but it’s essential that you make an effort to answer that question. Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need. Later on, I hope you can reflect and be honest with yourself about what you learned tonight.” Dr. Gaul began to wrap his wound in gauze.

While initially it seems to validate Dr. Gaul’s argument that humans, by nature, are violent creatures, his refutation actually provides the basis for the very reason Maysilee and Maritte killed the Gamemakers. “[They] wouldn’t have beaten anyone to death if [the Capitol] hadn’t stuck [them] in that arena”. 

The arena does not strip people of their nature. It forces them to submit for the very secondary aspects Hume provides. The governing body forces them to kill, and by stepping into the arena, where the Capitol has stripped itself and all beings of their own power to display what it believes to be human nature in its primitive form, it has erased the protection of public opinion. 

The Capitol holds no real power in the arena itself. Sure, they bomb it afterwards to clear out the four tributes. Sure, they sic the mutts on Maysilee and Maritte, but they do not govern in the way they do over Panem. 

Inasmuch, the Gamemakers died because the arena disillusioned Maysilee and Maritte to their implicit submission. The moment the Gamemakers entered the arena, they were powerless as of their own creation.

I hope this makes sense. Thanks for the ask!

This is so 🥹💗‼️

I’ve been the shadow of your shadow

Richard Siken, Peter Wever, Ilya Kaminsky, Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Richard Siken, @maieste, Madeline Miller, Holly Warburton, Shauna Barbosa, Benjamin Alire Sáenz

dead wife but your sister gets to have an alive husband attempting to make it big off his self-help books . wyd in this situation

This YouTube comment has been on my mind since I finished SOTR so this is what I came up with:

Lucy Gray was the mockingbird, living on the outskirts of district 12 and was there at the wrong time when they were forced to stay there after the Dark Days. They were subjected to the Capitol’s politics despite not being a part of Panem, technically speaking. Lucy Gray became part of the Games and, likewise, the mockingbird became affiliated with the Capitol through the jabberjay’s release into the woods, but it still continued to sing its own song.

Haymitch was the jabberjay, a Capitol tool that did what it had to in order to survive. The Capitol thought they could control them, but they retaliated in the form of rebellion. Haymitch refused to be a piece in their game and tried to end it, and the jabberjay, in the eyes of the Capitol, created a freak of nature that showed the Capitol’s lack of complete control.

Katniss was the mockingjay, a slap in the face of the Capitol, something that was never meant to exist. Together, the song of the mockingbird that lived on for generations and the stubbornness of the jabberjay that refused to die, the mockingjay had the best of both worlds. It was a symbol of rebellion and unity.

Nøkken by Theodor Kittelsen

in it’s true form and disguised as a white horse

The Last Shadow Puppets at Shangri-La Studios By Zackery Michael, 2015

my trick for getting through grad school is learning to navigate the quadrants with all their nuances