It’s no shock to anyone that President Snow is one of the most vile characters in all media ever, but what shocks me the most is his character’s portrayal in the new movie prequel to The Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Of course, the film portrays a slow descent into madness foreshadowed by his prior actions, but I don’t think it encompasses the book’s depiction of just how truly evil Snow really is.
The main thing the book includes that the movie lacks is Snow’s inner dialogue. In the book, we are able to get a sneak peek into the inner workings of his mind. While the movie makes it seem like Snow was fighting not to fall victim to this way of thinking, the books show a much more ingrained thought process starting as early as the first chapter. Here’s a list of the worst young Coriolanus Snow moments that prove he’s actually insane and not just a pretty blonde boy in love.
1. “He was glad about the erasure. It was just one more way to eliminate Lucy Gray from the world.”
I mean, can you even imagine saying that about someone you’re supposed to “love”? That you’re happy all traces of them are gone so they’ll never be remembered?
2. “’You’re mine and I’m yours. It’s written in the stars’ …. Although he did not believe in celestial writings, she did, and that would be enough to guarantee her loyalty.”
In my opinion, some forms of possessiveness can be cute (like when a guy says “my girl”), but Snow’s inner dialogue makes it clear that he sees Lucy Gray as an object that belongs to him. Although that’s arguably not even the most disturbing part of this quote. The second part shows that he knew how to manipulate her and was willing to play on her beliefs in order to gain her “loyalty.”
3. “His girl. His. Here in the Capitol, it was a given that Lucy Gray belonged to him, as if she’d had no life before her name was called out at the reaping.”
This quote once again shows that Snow has no regard for Lucy Gray as someone he loves or even as a person. The context of this quote makes it even worse when you consider the fact that this thought was because he was jealous of the song in which she spoke of a lover back in District 12. I would even go so far as to say that what he felt for her wasn’t ever even love, but a need to possess her wholly in a way that she didn’t exist or belong to anyone else but him.
4. “Poor Sejanus. Poor sensitive, foolish, dead Sejanus.”
WHAT DID HE SAY?!
5. “He felt a bit guilty, frightening her this way … The idea of life without him must be breaking her heart.”
Oh my God, narcissistic much? The world does not revolve around you, and I think Lucy Gray would be perfectly happy conceiving of a life without you.
6. “She was no great beauty, but she had a sweetness, a vulnerability that invited abuse.”
Huh? To be able to talk in this way about the woman who grew up alongside him and basically kept him alive, he’d have to be a psychopath. If he can’t see Tigris for the woman she is, I doubt he’d ever be able to see anyone as more than a means to get to the top, or someone to be used and discarded on the way to his ascent to power.
7. “What was Sejanus up to? Was he trying to outdo him and steal the day’s thunder? To take his idea of coming to the zoo and then dress it up in a way Coriolanus could never compete with, because he could never afford to?”
Your insecurity is showing, babe. I think this quote is so important because not only does it show the internal struggle Snow has always had about his family’s fall from wealth, but he also can’t even consider his “best friend” a friend. He sees him as nothing more than competition or someone in his way.
At the end of the story, Coriolanus becomes paranoid in the woods and begins to believe that Lucy Gray is trying to kill him. I think this quote could serve as a foreshadowing of his descent into madness, as he took an innocent action by Sejanus and believed it to be a calculated and targeted effort to belittle him. I fully believe that the delusions and suspicions of everyone around him made him incapable of love and as Snow said, “Before love, came trust.”
8. “Coriolanus had never really considered her a victor in the Games. It had never been part of his strategy to make her one. He had only wished that her charm and appeal would rub off on him and make him a success.”
If you weren’t convinced he didn’t truly love her before, this quote should do it. In Coriolanus’ mind, Lucy Gray was a pawn, and he believed her charm to be something that would gain him fame and recognition even if she didn’t win the Games. I also think that this shows the disturbing power dynamic between the two that makes any assumption of romantic love difficult. In terms of status within the Capitol, Snow was above Lucy Gray in every way imaginable, making an even playing field completely impossible. I think that any relationship born out of that situation could never have been equal and it was this understanding that tantalized him.
I love both the book and the film, but I would argue that they are two entirely different tellings of the same story. While the book was written from a close third point of view, lending insights into Coriolanus’s mind, the movie focused more on the story overall. I would say that the movie definitely played more into the “tragic dystopian romance” story significantly more than the book did. And while I love a SnowBaird TikTok edit as much as the next girl, I want people to understand the true theme of this series and not get distracted by the pretty blonde boy. Yes, I’m talking to myself too.
If you’re interested in all the other ways that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie differs from the book, make sure to check out this great article by a fellow Her Campus at FSU girlie!
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