President Snow is the Dumbledore of The Hunger Games
If you have read The Hunger Games series than you know that president snow is a very cruel character. But what people don't realize and that I understood after watching Donald Sutherland's version of President Snow that Snow is a very diverse character.
"Hope is the only thing stronger than Fear." is a line that Snow says while talking to Seneca while in his rose garden. When I heard this line I immediately went back to the many line that Dumbledore has said throughout the Harry Potter series. At that moment Snow became a completely different character in my mind. He became a more vulnerable character. A wiser character. I realized that Snow wasn't just this cruel power hungry president. He was a person that like many others in books and in actuality became consumed by power and essentially let it get to his head. But at the same time he is scared. Every year he hosts the hunger games and tells the people of Panem that "we sacrifice your children so we don't have a repeat of the rebellion". He is supposed to be this confident idol that everyone looks up to just as our leaders in reality are. But just like in reality he has hiding something. He's afraid that out of these hunger games might come a child that will have the ability to restart a rebellion and beat him. He admits this to Seneca is the rose garden scene "Have you been to those districts? 11? 12?... I have... you wouldn't root for them either" When Katniss comes out as this strong rebellious character President Snow see's her as a threat. He knows that Districts across Panem are rooting for her to succeed. They view her as a light in their darkness. But Snow views her as the one person who could possibly take him down.
Even though we view him as this cruel person who sends kids into an arena to die. I can't help but feel sorry for him. If I could I would want to sit down with him and try to understand what's going through his mind during the hunger games and when he visits districts.
Most people wouldn't want to admit the similarities between President Snow and Dumbledore. But both these characters are so diverse that the only things different is that Dumbledore does everything he can for the good of him and his fellow wizards and President Snow does everything out of fear of being taken down by in his words "the underdogs".
If anyone truly read the books and watched the movies then you will know that Dumbledore was very wise but cryptic. It was almost as if he knew how everything was going to turn out but he refused to give Harry any insite because he knew Harry had to learn to do things on his own. He knew that Harry would give in to Voldemort and it would never end up the way Harry would have hoped. Dumbledore was always worried though. Like President Snow, he was worried that things wouldn't work out as he expected. Dumbledore was constantly worried that Harry would give up hope and give up fighting. Dumbledore knew that Harry would become, just as Katniss did, a light in the dark for the wizarding world.
There is one thing about Dumbledore that I myself find it hard to admit. That is, like President Snow, he was power hungry. Dumbledore did what he did because he knew he had power over people. He was looked to more than the ministry was. He has influence over the ministry even. He is the President Snow of the Wizarding world. They both have (had) a common goal of peace in their worlds. The difference in their plans were that while President snow had to force children into fighting, Dumbledore had volunteers willing to walk into a battlefield and fight to the death. Dumbledore knew this and he used it to his advantage.
Both these influential men had their wisdom, their power hunger, and their fears to guide them through our favourite books and movies. I hope that after reading this you will view them men in a different light and will see their similarities.
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