Talk:Finn Collins/@comment-104.34.219.58-20150313044553/@comment-76.17.103.248-20150626165031

I wonder if you hated Bellamy as much. He promoted chaos, made people take off their wristbands for food, supported a lynching and kicked the stool from under Murphy, stole a radio that casued 320 people to die and he did it to save his own skin. Finn unintentionally cheated on Raven because he thought he'd never see her again and this one mistake arouses all this hatred. I will never understand this.

There's no doubt that Finn massacred those people, but it wasn't something he planned. Remember he told Niko, "Nobody has to get hurt. We just want our people back." Remember, he was leaving when the old man jumped the fence. Finn's reaction was typical PTSD. People with this disorder are easily startled. Finn had good reason to fear and distrust the grounders. They had slaughtered half of his people. Some of the villagers had rose to go after Finn earlier, but Niko had wisely made them sit back down. But when Artigas foolishly tried to rush Finn, he opened the flood gates. Finn perceived them all as threats and in his extreme emotional state, he panicked, much like Jasper did at the bridge. (True they were unarmed, but unarmed people can be lethal, too. Just ask Murphy.) It was all spontaneous, borned out of fear, desperation, despair, rage, and yes, PTSD. The writer, producer, Jason Rothenberg confirmed that Finn was suffering from this disorder. Finn was fragile and couldn't process all the trauma he had been subjected to. That often leads to PTSD.

Now, I'm not justifying what Finn did. He was definitely at fault. He should have listened to Niko and Murphy. But I can't hate him because he had been broken by all the hatred and violence of the war with the groundners. He was a flawed human being, like all of us, trying to maintain his moral integrity amid all the conflicts of the human condition, all the pressures put upon him. But he was overwhelmed. Losing Clarke pushed him over the edge.

IMO, the grounders are hypocrits for demanding Finn's death. The 100 were unarmed, innocent civilians, too. Yet, the grounders started slaughtering them for being in their territory. Territoriality is a self righteous vice that humans believe gives them the right  to take each others lives. Those kids had no choice but to try to defend themselves. But they weren't the aggressors. The grounders were going to wipe them all out. They were going to commit genocide too on the Arkers,( older people and children included), without so much as a conversation about their being fellow human beings trying to survive just like them. Why were the grounders not just as guilty as Finn?

The fact that Finn turned himself in when he knew he would be brutally tortured to death should tell you something about his character. Sure, he was in denial at first, although I didn't see any prancing. But he took responsibility for his actions. That's not someone I'd be eager to hate. We can be so self righteous. Where is the compassion and understanding for what Finn had gone through? We knew this boy. We saw his goodness. He wanted to be a decent, morally upright human being. He wasn't perfect. No one is. He did a terrible thing because he couldn't cope, and he deeply regreted it. His whole sense of identity and self worth had been destroyed. We don't have to justify what he did, but we don't have to be so eager to condemn him to death either. He wasn't a villain. He was an 18 year old boy, who was sent into a harsh environment that eventually destroyed him. That arouses my compassion, not my hatred. And I'm certainly not going to cheer that he died.