The English Teacher look into Point of View and Protagonists vs. Antagonists.

MILD SPOILERS OF TBOSAS That is quite the title, but anyway, before I start talking, I want to say that I have no idea what I'm talking about. If you want to read and get a second opinion go for it, but I'm telling you this whole paragraph is a bunch of crap. Anyways! I was taking my FAST exam (end-of-the-year test), and I was reading some of the passages that gave me this idea of how do we see basic elementary skills in modern literature and movies. So, I asked this question: In what ways do we see an antagonist become a protagonist? We see this simply through a different perspective and often a different timeline. Digging deeper into perspective, we often see it go from a third-person point of view to a first-person point of view. , BUT this is easily changed and still has the same effect, such as first person to third person, as seen in 'The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes' is in a third-person point of view. The original trilogy is obviously in first-person point of view; it follows Katniss' journey through The Hunger Games, and we learn her thoughts on the way her country is set up. We see her very strong feelings towards President Snow and how much she hates him. We also learn about her values in life, such as why she doesn't want to have kids and how she thinks her mother has lost herself. Before 2020, we saw (and still do) Snow as this evil guy who enjoys watching kids fight to the death for entertainment; he is also a very respected person in the capitol, for one thing. His Status. He uses Ethos to get people to trust him and get them on his side, which in Katniss' eyes is manipulation (she's not wrong,) but in 2020, "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" was released, and later, the movie which saved Rachel Zeglers career but that is a story for later on in the blog. Anyway, this story is a prequel that shows us how Snow came to be president. We learn about his goals, family, and values in life. As his story is in the third person point of view, we also see some of Lucy Grays's thoughts through Snow; how does he perceive Lucy Grays's feelings about her reaping and whatnot? The "official" point of view would be Third Person Limited because we are only able to clearly see Snow's thoughts and feelings; the book just tells us how he thinks other people feel. This is instead of third-person omniscient, which is used when one character is all-knowing and tells the audience things that even the characters don't know yet. I think this tactic is used as a way to keep viewers interested and think, "Oh, how will they find out?" My first thought of this was 'Mean Girls,' but If you think more on that, it really is just a first-person POV, following Cady through her high school years; she narrates the story and tells us how she is hurt by Regina blah blah blah, you get the point. Getting back on track, the way the prequel is set up is admirable; it makes us want to pity Snow and feel empathy toward him, making the audience almost ignore the fact that he is this evil guy. This is also part of the casting; I mean, whoever decided to cast such a fine man like Tom Blyth is a genius; he had my attention the minute the movie started. I mean, you can't cast a hottie like him and expect people to not take his side. As well as casting Rachel Zegler not only because she can sing and looks the part but because of her whole Snow White thing that happened. This might have been a back thought for people making the movie, but as soon as I heard she was going to be in it, I bought tickets to see it. I wanted to see why she was chosen for this and not Snow White. I have seen people say that, like Snow White is the snow that ruined her career, and Coriolanus Snow is the Snow that brought it back, which literally has nothing to do with this, but I wanted to bring it up. Casting aside, I really like this movie and feel like it answers a lot of questions we didn't know we had, such as: Why did Snow automatically hate Katniss? And why didn't we see any of his family except his granddaughter? Where was his wife? In conclusion, this story did an excellent job at reeling in fandom again and taking part in starting the Josh Hutcherson revolution, which I could talk about for days because of how perfectly it was set up. Anyways that's all for now sorry I wasted your time 🫶

Signing off,

Hailey <3