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ljwritesIn a previous post I discussed one of my reasons for loving Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was the rich character stories in the series. In this post I'd like to talk about the relationships between those characters and how they enrich and deepen the characters and the story.
Of Friendship and Growth
Relationship-wise, Avatar is primarily a story about teenage children interacting within their peer group and a few older mentors. This focus on the peer group is especially significant because the teen years are a time when peer groups take on increasing importance as part of the teen's growing independence. The main characters of Avatar, like real-life teens, are going through the process of defining who they are and what they want in life away from their parents and caretakers. In this sense the journey is internal as well as external; the physical journey is, in many ways, a reflection of inner growth.
This separation from the family is much more pronounced in the Avatar world than is usual in real life. Whether their families were lost through death (Monk Gyatso, Kya [Sokka and Katara's late mother]), separation (Hakoda, Ursa, Suki's family or caretakers), or by the teen's running away or being kicked out (the Bei Fongs, Firelord Ozai), the most important grownups in the kids' lives are all unavailable in some way. The teenaged main characters, even more than most teens, must rely on their own skills and resources to overcome life's adversities, up to and including bringing down a megalomaniac dictator saving the entire world. Easy, right?
And it's truly a pleasure to watch these kids grow into mutual trust and affection, helping each other through challenges ranging from attacks by obsessive Fire Nation royalty (most of Book 1, "The Chase" and "The Crossroads of Destiny") to beating Earthbending knowledge into a young Airbender's head ("Bitter Work"). Starting from understandable suspicion (Sokka toward Aang), irritation (Katara and Toph) and even hostility (everyone toward Zuko), they come to understand each other as people, work through problems together, and become indispensable teammates and trusted friends.
Their teamwork goes beyond overcoming external obstacles, however. As discussed above and in the previous post, the external challenges in the story often parallel and reflect the characters' changing inner lives. The children are companions in the inner journey of growth as well as the outer journey of increasing independence. Katara helps Aang overcome his rage and pain at the death of his mentor and indeed his whole people ("The Southern Air Temple"), and Aang does the same for her when she, in turn, is consumed with thoughts of revenge for her mother ("The Southern Raiders"). Katara, Aang, and Toph all give Sokka a nudge toward overcoming his sense of inadequacy ("Sokka's Master"). The list goes on and on.
Family and Friends, or Family versus Friends
I have previously said that Team Avatar's emphasis on the peer group is a good reflection of the teenage years, when the teen is becoming increasingly independent from her family. In this context, it becomes particularly interesting to draw contrasts and comparisons between the lessons instilled in the children by their families, and the lessons they taught each other in the peer group. How did the friends reinforce or weaken what their family taught?
First, let's look at the ways friends reinforced family lessons, starting with Katara and Aang. (I always seem to start these examples with Katara, probably because I try to go in roughly chronological order and she moved so much of the story and character development early on. In some ways I see her as the true protagonist of Avatar. Again, full explanation should be a post of its own.) In important ways, Katara's goals for Aang directly parallel those of Monk Gyatso's. We see in "The Storm" that Gyatso was the positive force in Aang's life who tried to give him a childhood even while the other monks tried to push Aang regardless of his need for fun and friendship. Katara, in "The Avatar State," rejected General Fong's proposed shortcut of inducing Aang's Avatar State at will because Aang's well-being was more important to her. To her he was a human being and her friend first, not a weapon of war.
Both Gyatso and Katara wanted Aang to fulfill his full potential as Avatar and save the world, but neither was willing to sacrifice Aang's humanity for that end. In fact, they both seemed to think Aang could be fully realized as an Avatar only if he retained his humanity. Both rejected the convenient way of turning Aang into a machine; Gyatso talked about Aang's need for fun and companionship, while Katara talked not only about her desire not to see Aang in pain but also the importance of training and growing instead of taking easy shortcuts. This is all the more remarkable when you remember how driven Katara is to see Aang save the world, something we were reminded of at the start of every episode. Yet dedicated as she was, Katara had the principle and self-restraint to overcome the seduction of an easy way around.
I believe this tender care of Aang's spirit was what culminated in his ultimately staying true to himself and bringing the war to an end without killing Ozai. During the final Sozin's Comet arc, he was faced with that same dilemma between expediency (killing Ozai) and humanity (the sanctity of life). All the previous Avatars who advised him seemed to think that killing Ozai was not just the easy way but the only way, and fellow Airbender Avatar Yang Chen even made it clear that the Avatar did not have the luxury of human considerations; that it wasn't about his conscience, but the world.
And yet, despite all his previous incarnations' sage advice, Aang followed his inner self and ultimately found a way to be both the Avatar and himself ("Avatar Aang"). It was a beautiful thematic culmination of the lessons Gyatso had instilled and Katara had confirmed. (Yeah yeah, she's OMG SUCH A MOM to him. Because, of course, being a good person and helping each other grow have nothing to do with romance. *snorts*)
Sometimes, the lessons you learn from family bear no resemblance to the lessons they thought they were teaching. This was the case with Sokka. When Hakoda left to fight with the Earth Kingdom against the Fire Nation navy, leaving Sokka behind. What Hakoda was trying to teach his son was that sometimes responsibility leads to difficult decisions such as their separation, and also that he loved Sokka enough to bear being parted from him for Sokka's own safety. What Sokka chose to learn, however, was that he couldn't live up to his father and that he had to work like crazy to amount to anything in his father's eyes. Thus his strictness to himself and those in his care starting right from the first episode ("The Boy in the Iceberg"), his nervousness about meeting his father after two long years ("The Guru"), and his falling to pieces during and after the presentation of his invasion plan ("The Day of Black Sun, Part 1").
It falls to Sokka's friends and sister to guide him toward appreciating himself, just as he was always appreciated by his father. In "The Guru" Aang reminds Sokka of how much his father loves him. The Gaang also, as mentioned above, give Sokka the push to realize more of his potential instead of feeling inadequate because of his lack of bending abilities("Sokka's Master"). And then, even as they help Sokka explore new possibilities, they grow to appreciate his existing qualities such as humor and organization. And that's not even counting the countless little gestures of camaraderie and empathy they give each other on a daily basis, the little things that count for the most in the end.
And then there are times when the Team Avatar group of friends weaken or help each other unlearn the negative consequences of their upbringing and family life. For a milder example, Katara's instinct to mother everyone she cares about, because she's pressured herself for so long to take her late mother's place. Both Water Tribe children, I've noticed, tend to react to stress by trying to control more of the situation: Sokka's uber-schedule and Katara's nagging are both manifestations of this pattern. In different ways, Aang and Toph show Katara that it's okay to have fun and let go a little; Aang by reconnecting Katara to the sensuous young woman she is in "The Headband" dance sequence, and Toph by pushing back against Katara's control in "The Runaway."
"*pant pant sweat sweat* No sir, this isn't sexual at all!"
Toph's is a more pronounced case of unlearning family conditioning with the help of friends. Treated as a helpless blind girl by her parents and acting the part to please them, the Blind Bandit persona her only real outlet, Toph was able to express her true self openly with Aang and his friends. Aang needed her as the Earthbending master she was, not as the object of protection and sheltering her parents wanted her to be. Her initial reaction to this new circumstance was a rather bratty insistence on total self-sufficiency, a reaction against her family's coddling and a continuation of the Blind Bandit. She eventually overcame this defensive immaturity with a little nudge from Iroh and by learning to trust her companions, finding an even greater freedom in togetherness than solitude.
Zuko's story is, of course, the most extreme example of unlearning lessons learned at home. Much as Toph was forced into a mold that was not her, so too Zuko's father forced him to be someone he wasn't. It goes even deeper than that, however, and to understand Zuko's full character arc I think it's necessary to understand a concept called learned helplessness. The way I understand it, learned helplessness is the state a subject falls into when he is made to learn, over and over again, that there is nothing he can do to control his stressing situation and lessen the pain.
A cruel experiment demonstrating this effect was one where a German Shepherd was locked in a cage and subjected to constant and painful electric shocks without any way to stop the pain or leave the area. At first he tried everything to get out or make the pain go away, charging the door, jumping, barking for help, but learned through repeated experience that there was nothing he could do. Not surprisingly, the dog eventually broke down and just lay there, simply accepting the pain. More heartbreaking still, the researchers later opened the door of the cage so that the dog was free to leave, it just had to walk out of there to leave the pain behind--yet he didn't, or couldn't, so complete was his despair, and just abandoned himself to the agony instead of freeing himself. You can see similar effects with victims of abuse and domestic violence as well.
What Zuko learned from at home was, above all, helplessness. He learned his mother could be taken away and there was nothing he could do about it; he learned he could be disfigured, stripped of his honor, and cast out by his own father and neither he nor anyone else could stop it. Being too proud to curl up on the floor whimpering, he had to cling to the one hope of capturing the Avatar no matter what a cruel farce it was.
Zuko, for all he wanders on sea and on land for most of Books 1 and 2, was in a very real sense trapped. Even when he was labeled a traitor, he couldn't take the simple way out of his torment. Iroh stood holding the door open for a long time, trying to show his nephew the exit from the vicious cycle he had fallen into, but Zuko no longer had it in him to take the exit or even to recognize it. Starting in Book 2 Iroh stops with the subtle hints and makes it explicit that Zuko has the choice to leave the quest for the Avatar and find a new path away from Ozai's will. In "The Crossroads of Destiny" the tension comes to a head, with Zuko facing the unavoidable choice between freeing himself from his cruel family and the Fire Nation they control, and on the other hand returning to the very family that hurt him so badly.
At that crossroad, Zuko walked away from that wide-open door deeper into his torment, because he has been taught a permanent, indelible lesson that he can't do anything about the pain, and will only be hurt the worse if he tries. Iroh, even betrayed and imprisoned, could not find it in himself to be angry at the boy. How could he be angry? Iroh might be the one behind bars, but Zuko was the one who was truly trapped. Iroh must have known true terror then, that Zuko's soul had been damaged beyond repair and both he, and by extension the Fire Nation, were lost. (I will talk more about the political angle in a later post in the series.)
Yet at the moment of his darkest fear, Iroh did the paradoxical and courageous thing that must have been one of the hardest acts in his life. This man, this general who was both able and courageous, who always faced life's challenges head on, let go of the nephew he had come to love as a son. He had done all he could for Zuko, and only Zuko himself could walk through that door to freedom and responsibility. Iroh chose to trust his nephew as only a truly loving and truly brave parent can. Letting go, of course, was not the same as giving up: Iroh would still guide Zuko, most notably in "The Avatar and the Firelord." But Azula had been right in one respect at "The Crossroads of Destiny," that the final choice had to be Zuko's alone.
There are a number of reasons Zuko finally found the strength to break with his father and sister. As previously discussed, he was faced with the ultimate choice that would define who he was: Either he had to stop his power-mad family or become an acessory to the deaths of thousands. Also, during Book 3, he had tasted everything he thought he had wanted--his father's approval, princely honor, the comforts of his station, the presence of friends and family--and found it hollow as long as he was untrue to himself. This was why it was so story-appropriate, indeed vital, for him to return home before he could be truly free.
But I believe there was a further catalyst that broke Zuko out of his learned helplessness and gave him the strength to walk out the door. And to understand that we need to examine another group of teenagers quite different from Aang and his friends, in fact precisely the opposite of the main group. And that becomes our diving board to the final part of this post, namely the role of romantic attachment in character development.
This post was broken into two parts due to its length. The next part is all about the Fire Nation teenagers, mostly Mai and Zuko, with a little about Azula and Ty Lee.
Of Friendship and Growth
Relationship-wise, Avatar is primarily a story about teenage children interacting within their peer group and a few older mentors. This focus on the peer group is especially significant because the teen years are a time when peer groups take on increasing importance as part of the teen's growing independence. The main characters of Avatar, like real-life teens, are going through the process of defining who they are and what they want in life away from their parents and caretakers. In this sense the journey is internal as well as external; the physical journey is, in many ways, a reflection of inner growth.
This separation from the family is much more pronounced in the Avatar world than is usual in real life. Whether their families were lost through death (Monk Gyatso, Kya [Sokka and Katara's late mother]), separation (Hakoda, Ursa, Suki's family or caretakers), or by the teen's running away or being kicked out (the Bei Fongs, Firelord Ozai), the most important grownups in the kids' lives are all unavailable in some way. The teenaged main characters, even more than most teens, must rely on their own skills and resources to overcome life's adversities, up to and including bringing down a megalomaniac dictator saving the entire world. Easy, right?
And it's truly a pleasure to watch these kids grow into mutual trust and affection, helping each other through challenges ranging from attacks by obsessive Fire Nation royalty (most of Book 1, "The Chase" and "The Crossroads of Destiny") to beating Earthbending knowledge into a young Airbender's head ("Bitter Work"). Starting from understandable suspicion (Sokka toward Aang), irritation (Katara and Toph) and even hostility (everyone toward Zuko), they come to understand each other as people, work through problems together, and become indispensable teammates and trusted friends.
Their teamwork goes beyond overcoming external obstacles, however. As discussed above and in the previous post, the external challenges in the story often parallel and reflect the characters' changing inner lives. The children are companions in the inner journey of growth as well as the outer journey of increasing independence. Katara helps Aang overcome his rage and pain at the death of his mentor and indeed his whole people ("The Southern Air Temple"), and Aang does the same for her when she, in turn, is consumed with thoughts of revenge for her mother ("The Southern Raiders"). Katara, Aang, and Toph all give Sokka a nudge toward overcoming his sense of inadequacy ("Sokka's Master"). The list goes on and on.
Family and Friends, or Family versus Friends
I have previously said that Team Avatar's emphasis on the peer group is a good reflection of the teenage years, when the teen is becoming increasingly independent from her family. In this context, it becomes particularly interesting to draw contrasts and comparisons between the lessons instilled in the children by their families, and the lessons they taught each other in the peer group. How did the friends reinforce or weaken what their family taught?
First, let's look at the ways friends reinforced family lessons, starting with Katara and Aang. (I always seem to start these examples with Katara, probably because I try to go in roughly chronological order and she moved so much of the story and character development early on. In some ways I see her as the true protagonist of Avatar. Again, full explanation should be a post of its own.) In important ways, Katara's goals for Aang directly parallel those of Monk Gyatso's. We see in "The Storm" that Gyatso was the positive force in Aang's life who tried to give him a childhood even while the other monks tried to push Aang regardless of his need for fun and friendship. Katara, in "The Avatar State," rejected General Fong's proposed shortcut of inducing Aang's Avatar State at will because Aang's well-being was more important to her. To her he was a human being and her friend first, not a weapon of war.
Both Gyatso and Katara wanted Aang to fulfill his full potential as Avatar and save the world, but neither was willing to sacrifice Aang's humanity for that end. In fact, they both seemed to think Aang could be fully realized as an Avatar only if he retained his humanity. Both rejected the convenient way of turning Aang into a machine; Gyatso talked about Aang's need for fun and companionship, while Katara talked not only about her desire not to see Aang in pain but also the importance of training and growing instead of taking easy shortcuts. This is all the more remarkable when you remember how driven Katara is to see Aang save the world, something we were reminded of at the start of every episode. Yet dedicated as she was, Katara had the principle and self-restraint to overcome the seduction of an easy way around.
I believe this tender care of Aang's spirit was what culminated in his ultimately staying true to himself and bringing the war to an end without killing Ozai. During the final Sozin's Comet arc, he was faced with that same dilemma between expediency (killing Ozai) and humanity (the sanctity of life). All the previous Avatars who advised him seemed to think that killing Ozai was not just the easy way but the only way, and fellow Airbender Avatar Yang Chen even made it clear that the Avatar did not have the luxury of human considerations; that it wasn't about his conscience, but the world.
And yet, despite all his previous incarnations' sage advice, Aang followed his inner self and ultimately found a way to be both the Avatar and himself ("Avatar Aang"). It was a beautiful thematic culmination of the lessons Gyatso had instilled and Katara had confirmed. (Yeah yeah, she's OMG SUCH A MOM to him. Because, of course, being a good person and helping each other grow have nothing to do with romance. *snorts*)
Sometimes, the lessons you learn from family bear no resemblance to the lessons they thought they were teaching. This was the case with Sokka. When Hakoda left to fight with the Earth Kingdom against the Fire Nation navy, leaving Sokka behind. What Hakoda was trying to teach his son was that sometimes responsibility leads to difficult decisions such as their separation, and also that he loved Sokka enough to bear being parted from him for Sokka's own safety. What Sokka chose to learn, however, was that he couldn't live up to his father and that he had to work like crazy to amount to anything in his father's eyes. Thus his strictness to himself and those in his care starting right from the first episode ("The Boy in the Iceberg"), his nervousness about meeting his father after two long years ("The Guru"), and his falling to pieces during and after the presentation of his invasion plan ("The Day of Black Sun, Part 1").
It falls to Sokka's friends and sister to guide him toward appreciating himself, just as he was always appreciated by his father. In "The Guru" Aang reminds Sokka of how much his father loves him. The Gaang also, as mentioned above, give Sokka the push to realize more of his potential instead of feeling inadequate because of his lack of bending abilities("Sokka's Master"). And then, even as they help Sokka explore new possibilities, they grow to appreciate his existing qualities such as humor and organization. And that's not even counting the countless little gestures of camaraderie and empathy they give each other on a daily basis, the little things that count for the most in the end.
And then there are times when the Team Avatar group of friends weaken or help each other unlearn the negative consequences of their upbringing and family life. For a milder example, Katara's instinct to mother everyone she cares about, because she's pressured herself for so long to take her late mother's place. Both Water Tribe children, I've noticed, tend to react to stress by trying to control more of the situation: Sokka's uber-schedule and Katara's nagging are both manifestations of this pattern. In different ways, Aang and Toph show Katara that it's okay to have fun and let go a little; Aang by reconnecting Katara to the sensuous young woman she is in "The Headband" dance sequence, and Toph by pushing back against Katara's control in "The Runaway."
"*pant pant sweat sweat* No sir, this isn't sexual at all!"
Toph's is a more pronounced case of unlearning family conditioning with the help of friends. Treated as a helpless blind girl by her parents and acting the part to please them, the Blind Bandit persona her only real outlet, Toph was able to express her true self openly with Aang and his friends. Aang needed her as the Earthbending master she was, not as the object of protection and sheltering her parents wanted her to be. Her initial reaction to this new circumstance was a rather bratty insistence on total self-sufficiency, a reaction against her family's coddling and a continuation of the Blind Bandit. She eventually overcame this defensive immaturity with a little nudge from Iroh and by learning to trust her companions, finding an even greater freedom in togetherness than solitude.
Zuko's story is, of course, the most extreme example of unlearning lessons learned at home. Much as Toph was forced into a mold that was not her, so too Zuko's father forced him to be someone he wasn't. It goes even deeper than that, however, and to understand Zuko's full character arc I think it's necessary to understand a concept called learned helplessness. The way I understand it, learned helplessness is the state a subject falls into when he is made to learn, over and over again, that there is nothing he can do to control his stressing situation and lessen the pain.
A cruel experiment demonstrating this effect was one where a German Shepherd was locked in a cage and subjected to constant and painful electric shocks without any way to stop the pain or leave the area. At first he tried everything to get out or make the pain go away, charging the door, jumping, barking for help, but learned through repeated experience that there was nothing he could do. Not surprisingly, the dog eventually broke down and just lay there, simply accepting the pain. More heartbreaking still, the researchers later opened the door of the cage so that the dog was free to leave, it just had to walk out of there to leave the pain behind--yet he didn't, or couldn't, so complete was his despair, and just abandoned himself to the agony instead of freeing himself. You can see similar effects with victims of abuse and domestic violence as well.
What Zuko learned from at home was, above all, helplessness. He learned his mother could be taken away and there was nothing he could do about it; he learned he could be disfigured, stripped of his honor, and cast out by his own father and neither he nor anyone else could stop it. Being too proud to curl up on the floor whimpering, he had to cling to the one hope of capturing the Avatar no matter what a cruel farce it was.
Zuko, for all he wanders on sea and on land for most of Books 1 and 2, was in a very real sense trapped. Even when he was labeled a traitor, he couldn't take the simple way out of his torment. Iroh stood holding the door open for a long time, trying to show his nephew the exit from the vicious cycle he had fallen into, but Zuko no longer had it in him to take the exit or even to recognize it. Starting in Book 2 Iroh stops with the subtle hints and makes it explicit that Zuko has the choice to leave the quest for the Avatar and find a new path away from Ozai's will. In "The Crossroads of Destiny" the tension comes to a head, with Zuko facing the unavoidable choice between freeing himself from his cruel family and the Fire Nation they control, and on the other hand returning to the very family that hurt him so badly.
At that crossroad, Zuko walked away from that wide-open door deeper into his torment, because he has been taught a permanent, indelible lesson that he can't do anything about the pain, and will only be hurt the worse if he tries. Iroh, even betrayed and imprisoned, could not find it in himself to be angry at the boy. How could he be angry? Iroh might be the one behind bars, but Zuko was the one who was truly trapped. Iroh must have known true terror then, that Zuko's soul had been damaged beyond repair and both he, and by extension the Fire Nation, were lost. (I will talk more about the political angle in a later post in the series.)
Yet at the moment of his darkest fear, Iroh did the paradoxical and courageous thing that must have been one of the hardest acts in his life. This man, this general who was both able and courageous, who always faced life's challenges head on, let go of the nephew he had come to love as a son. He had done all he could for Zuko, and only Zuko himself could walk through that door to freedom and responsibility. Iroh chose to trust his nephew as only a truly loving and truly brave parent can. Letting go, of course, was not the same as giving up: Iroh would still guide Zuko, most notably in "The Avatar and the Firelord." But Azula had been right in one respect at "The Crossroads of Destiny," that the final choice had to be Zuko's alone.
There are a number of reasons Zuko finally found the strength to break with his father and sister. As previously discussed, he was faced with the ultimate choice that would define who he was: Either he had to stop his power-mad family or become an acessory to the deaths of thousands. Also, during Book 3, he had tasted everything he thought he had wanted--his father's approval, princely honor, the comforts of his station, the presence of friends and family--and found it hollow as long as he was untrue to himself. This was why it was so story-appropriate, indeed vital, for him to return home before he could be truly free.
But I believe there was a further catalyst that broke Zuko out of his learned helplessness and gave him the strength to walk out the door. And to understand that we need to examine another group of teenagers quite different from Aang and his friends, in fact precisely the opposite of the main group. And that becomes our diving board to the final part of this post, namely the role of romantic attachment in character development.
This post was broken into two parts due to its length. The next part is all about the Fire Nation teenagers, mostly Mai and Zuko, with a little about Azula and Ty Lee.
