Korra Analysis - Tumblr Posts

Korra’s Growth

Korra’s growth, at least for me, is the highlight of the Legend of Korra. She starts out incredibly brash, over confident, headstrong, and stubborn. She pays for these characteristics time and time again throughout the series and it is through these consequences that Korra is able to grow into the understanding and empathetic avatar of the series finale. “No good deed goes unpunished, no act of charity goes unresented.” This seems to be the template for Korra’s trials and tribulations because no matter how hard she tries to help she is always met with criticism and anger. Time and time again she is told that the world would be better off without her and that balance would be achieved with her gone. She begins to doubt whether being the avatar even matters and she has to discover herself and her place in the world to come to her own conclusion. She must accept the past and learn from it to move forward and become the avatar that the world and the people need and to create true balance within the world.

 Korra’s journey is the exact opposite of Aang’s in that his was about coming to identify himself as the avatar whereas Korra’s is about learning to identify herself separate from the avatar. Aang was allowed to be a child and person first before he discovered he was the avatar which lead to his ability to connect with other people, including his enemies even at the beginning of the series. Korra, on the other hand, was immediately thrust into the identity of the avatar so she based her entire being and self worth on being the avatar. She was put on this pedestal right away and didn’t have the chance to develop as a person outside of that identity which lead to her struggle to connect with other people, especially her enemies. 

Korra starts out overconfident in her still developing abilities, but actually grows to underestimate her abilities after being torn down by her enemies. This leads to humbling her and causes her to rebuild her self-esteem based on who she is and not what she is to the world. This mirrors her growth from trying to force change to mediating and refraining from fighting until necessary and being a conduit for change, which leads to balance. She goes through a pacifistic maturation. Korra’s confidence is broken down over the course of the first three seasons and is built back up through her self actualization making her confidence non-toxic to social, societal, and confrontational situations. Because Korra understands herself and her powers she is able to use them to be an effective force for change and balance.

Korra’s Growth (Book 3: Change)

In season three Korra is shown to be much more understanding of others right away when she connects with a random man who is scared at the top of a bridge. This is something that Korra wouldn’t have been able to do prior to the end of season two. It also shows her first major impact on the balance of the world with the return of the airbenders. She realizes that the airbenders where brought back through the opening of the portals during harmonic convergence and focuses on using it to help the world achieve balance instead of a notch in her status as an impactful avatar. She has become less focused on her possible legacy and comparisons to her past lives and instead focuses on how she can help now. The public reaction to her bothered her, but she didn’t let it drive her actions in this season like she did in past seasons. She actually thought her actions through and made sure her friends were in agreement with her and would help her before going through with a plan like in the Stakeout, In Harm’s Way, and Enter the Void. She even talks some sense into Lin over Lin’s misplaced anger alibi in her blunt straight to the point way. Korra’s emotional growth is on full display in this season. She has learned from her past actions and made a conscious effort to change. She is still emotional but has gotten much better at handling it and channeling it into the task at hand in a positive manner. This change culminates in her final decision, which she makes after seeking counsel from many other characters, to give herself up to Zaheer in exchange for the airbenders.

Her final decision to give herself up for the airbenders shows that she had really become a selfless avatar. She decides to give herself up knowing full well that she had a high chance of being killed. And for the first time in the series she is punished for a truly selfless act and is forced to endure physical and psychological torture. Her immense self doubt comes to the forefront as a result of this torture. It has been festering since the beginning, but until this point her end victory had always proven, at least to some extent, that she did have a place in the world. Through her enemies she has been told time and time again that the world would be better off without her, without the avatar. She starts to seriously doubt what it means to be the avatar and if the world really does need her. Being the Avatar has brought her nothing but pain. She has paid tolls that no one should have to, but, until this point, has kept moving forward in spite of them. Her enemies weren’t the people who pushed her over the edge during her internal crisis it was actually Tenzin. Korra is struggling to move forward after the traumatic events that the red lotus put her through and Tenzin’s final speech in season 3 echoes similar, unintentional, similarities to what the red lotus believed. In Tenzin’s speech during Jinora’s tattoo ceremony he declares that the new air nation will follow in Korra’s footsteps and step up and “take” her place in her absence working to bring peace to the world. It is one thing hearing her greatest fear from her enemies, but hearing it from someone she trusts and looks up to made her self doubt come crashing down on top of her. She is already at her lowest physically and mentally she was teetering on the edge. Tenzin’s statement made her think that her enemies were right, that the world didn’t need her, because it had people in it that could do her job for her. Zaheer preached that “new growth cannot exist without first the destruction of the old” and Korra feels like she is seeing the beginnings of a new force for change and balance through Jinora and the new air nation and that maybe the Avatar is the old, obsolete and unneeded . And in that moment she can’t hide the pain anymore and a single tear slips out. That single tear was Korra’s breaking point.

Korra has defined herself by being the avatar and once that is stripped of her she doesn’t know her place in the world or if her existence means anything. This book was about her becoming a more understanding and patient avatar but it was also about breaking down that avatar identity within her. She had begun to separate herself from the avatar subconsciously and was more able to put herself into other people’s shoes and understand others, but she continued to define her meaning in the world as being the avatar. As the avatar she has nigh infinite power within her universe which can make you distant from others especially if others around you constantly put you on that pedestal. Korra started the series having been put on that pedestal all her life while also being kept completely separate from the world and people she was supposed to bring balance to. This lead to her initial personality, attitude, and complete inexperience interacting with people. She is forced to experience the hardships that came as a result she managed to grow out of that previous mindset that was sort of forced upon her by her upbringing and be able to connect with everyday people, but to connect with her enemies she needed to discover how to define herself outside of being the avatar. She had to learn to define herself not only as a force for change but also as a force for balance. As in not every enemy needs to be defeated by force, but some can be understood and empathized with and brought down without force. That her enemies weren’t completely wrong in their philosophy and that to bring about balance their views can’t be entirely discarded. No one ideology has all the answers. And that comes with her journey for purpose and finding her own place in the world that starts out book four.

Korra’s Growth (Book 4: Balance)

Korra has been a character defined by her resilience. She is broken down time and time again and the tolls she is forced to pay become greater with each season. The biggest problem with her resilience was that to forge forward she pushed her pain back and with the breaking of her spirit and body in Book 3 she can’t push it back and avoid it any longer. This time she can’t move forward until she deals with the trauma of what has happened to her. People seemed to struggle with understanding Korra’s mental illness and even Korra herself struggled to understand it. Korra’s journey to recover brings her to a greater understanding of who she is and this understanding allows her to open herself up to her enemies and friends in a way she couldn’t before. She grows to realize that being the avatar isn’t really about being able to bend all the elements, but who she is as a person. The most influential avatars were able to enact real change during their time because of their ideals and their individual identities. Korra’s struggle to grasp this and discover her own identity is realized in this Book.

Korra was at her lowest point from the end of book 3 to the beginning of book 4. Her struggles with identity and ptsd don’t just go away and she can’t truly move forward until she faces them. She avoids them for many years and they fester into a negative mindset towards herself. She completely disregards her own wellbeing throughout the latter part of the Korra Alone episode and spirals into a state of self destruction in her desperation to get better and discover herself. Her recovery process is slow which frustrates her because the longer she is incapacitated the longer others do her “job” for her and the less her place in the world matters. Korra’s decision to go out on her own mirrors Zuko’s in the episode that this one was named after, Zuko Alone. They are both trying to discover for themselves what they should do and their identity separate from their birthright and their frustration at their inability to find what they are searching for leads to their inward anger turning towards an outward conflict. With Korra the outward conflict manifests differently in that she sees herself. That version of her is a manifestation of her trauma and the destruction of the basis of her believed identity. She tries to defeat it and destroy it, but fails time and time again. She takes a while to learn that she can’t destroy it but instead needs to accept it and learn to channel it positively because it has shaped her and made her who she is. She struggles with this and it leads her to Toph. Toph is exactly what she needs at this moment because Toph won’t hold back and will be frank with her. Korra needs to know that she isn’t in this alone but she also needs someone able to give her a reality check. She is so busy fighting herself that she hasn’t taken the time to think of what she is really running from and Toph opens her eyes to what exactly that is. 

Korra was completely broken after her confrontation with the red lotus. This was the third time that she had hit “rock bottom” and to her it must have seemed like everytime her rock bottom somehow got lower. She grows to subconsciously dread what could come next which leads to her inadvertently holding herself back from fully physically recovering. The fact that she has to be the one to take the poison out of her body shows that only she can make the decision to move forward and return to her duties as the avatar, no one else can do it for her. They can only help her get to that point. Toph not only opens Korra’s eyes to the reality of her physical state, but also teaches her how to see expand her view and see the world through a different lens in both a metaphorical and literal sense with the philosophies of her enemies and the spirit energy respectively. This widening of her scope makes it so that she can be found by the airbending siblings and in a way Korra has discovered a part of herself that she didn’t know about, her connection to the whole world through energy bending. Once Korra is found by the airbender children she decides to remove the poison and go with them to Zaofu. In this moment she decided to stop letting her fear hold her back from doing what she needs. She had conflicting feelings because she simultaneously dreaded the possibility of the avatar having no place in the world and the pain that came from being the avatar. Her decision to move forward in spite of these fears and face at least the physical part of her fear shows her desire to do what she believes is right and her resilience. In Zaofu she is brought face to face with Kuvira, the source of unrest. Korra tries to approach the situation with diplomacy first, much to the chagrin of Opal and Suyin, showing a blatant change from previous seasons. Korra admits that the “old her” would have jumped straight into physical conflict with Kuvira to end this, but she thinks that there must be a better way. Korra knows now that solving problems with force more often than not causes detriment to both sides and that trying to find a middle ground is the best course of action for everybody. Suyin tries to end the conflict with force by, what is implied to be, assassinating Kuvira which escalates the situation and leads to the forceful takeover of Zaofu. Korra takes considerably more caution and only uses violence when absolutely necessary, but mentally Korra still hasn’t completely recovered from the fight with Zaheer and sees the shadow version of herself projected onto Kuvira. Korra sees herself in Kuvira: the confident attitude, adeptness at the physical side of bending, and her penchant for physical conflict. Kuvira is a dark mirror to what Korra could have been if she hadn’t gone through the trials that she did. She is a dark version of what Korra’s trauma could have made her if she didn’t decide to change and also a dark mirror of what Korra could have been if she hadn’t learned humility, but this also gives Korra hope that Kuvira wasn’t beyond reason or redemption. Korra can’t quite reach Kuvira yet though because she hasn’t yet dealt with the mental and spiritual block she has that is preventing her self-realization. Korra hasn’t fully realized the similarities between her and Kuvira and found a way through to her. 

Korra is then pushed into a situation where she needs to confront the root of her spiritual disconnect and the man who pushed her to her physical and mental limits. She initially confronts Zaheer to say to his face that she isn’t afraid, but she’s lying when she says this and he calls her out on it. He calls her out on her denial. The problem isn’t that she’s afraid it’s that she won’t accept what happened to her and that she is afraid, she’s pushed it back like she did everything else. Zaheer guiding her into the spirit world marks a notable change within Korra in that she found a middle ground with an enemy and accepts his help. She realizes that his offer for help is genuine because he realizes that his actions have brought about the exact opposite effect of what was intended. Her acceptance of his help is where she enacts Toph’s lesson about learning from her enemies and it is through these actions of trust towards her enemy that she is able to grow to empathize with her enemies to the point where she can get them to trust her and end a conflict without force. By accepting what has happened to her she is able to feel whole and stronger than before. She has discovered who she is and is now confident in that identity. 

She uses this new understanding of herself to become the leader she was always meant to be. She leads the republic city forces against Kuvira’s colossus and cooperates seamlessly with everybody to infiltrate and take Kuvira and the colossus down. Once the colossus is down Korra tries to reason with Kuvira. Now that the weapon of mass destruction is no longer threatening anybody Kuvira no longer has her power over everybody and there is a greater chance of getting through to her now that she has lost her advantage. Korra realizes that to prevent greater bloodshed Kuvira needs to stand down. Korra deciding to protect Kuvira from the spirit energy blast was the culmination of her journey as a person and as the avatar. Her deciding to protect Kuvira shows her growth in empathy and desire to help not only her friends, but also her enemies. Kuvira and Korra are mirrored against each other again in the spirit world with Korra blue and Kuvira originally being a purple Korra. This visualizes what Korra herself has come to realize about the similarities between her and Kuvira. Korra uses this understanding to connect with Kuvira and be honest about her own struggles and find common ground. She has come to see that no one ideology has all the answers and that to truly achieve balance she needs to open herself up to change. Through her trials and tribulations she has remained resilient and picked herself up each and every time she fell. It is through this desire to keep going that Korra is able to find ways to grow. Korra had to find balance within herself and with that personal growth came spiritual growth and an ability to change the world for the better through lessons learned from her enemies.