A Characterological Study of Seong Gi-hun Across Three Seasons of Squid Game
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This study analyzes the narrative transformation of Seong Gi-hun across Seasons 1-3 of Squid Game to examine how contemporary capitalist systems produce, manage, and limit individual resistance. Using textual analysis informed by critical cultural theory, the paper investigates how Gi-hun progresses from a debt-burdened, passive subject to a morally awakened but structurally constrained agent who confronts systemic inequality and elite domination. The findings reveal that while Gi-hun awakens to the violence and precarity embedded in neoliberal society, his resistance is repeatedly absorbed, redirected, or neutralized by the very system he seeks to oppose. Season 3 further demonstrates that awareness does not equate to empowerment, and that systems can re-incorporate dissent while weaponizing it as spectacle. Nonetheless, Gi-hun's final refusal to reproduce violence foregrounds ethical refusal and human dignity as forms of resistance when structural change is unlikely. This study argues that Squid Game offers a critical allegory of limited agency under late capitalism and invites reflection on the politics of refusal.
Abstract
This study analyzes the narrative transformation of Seong Gi-hun across Seasons 1-3 of Squid Game to examine how contemporary capitalist systems produce, manage, and limit individual resistance. Using textual analysis informed by critical cultural theory, the paper investigates how Gi-hun progresses from a debt-burdened, passive subject to a morally awakened but structurally constrained agent who confronts systemic inequality and elite domination. The findings reveal that while Gi-hun awakens to the violence and precarity embedded in neoliberal society, his resistance is repeatedly absorbed, redirected, or neutralized by the very system he seeks to oppose. Season 3 further demonstrates that awareness does not equate to empowerment, and that systems can re-incorporate dissent while weaponizing it as spectacle. Nonetheless, Gi-hun's final refusal to reproduce violence foregrounds ethical refusal and human dignity as forms of resistance when structural change is unlikely. This study argues that Squid Game offers a critical allegory of limited agency under late capitalism and invites reflection on the politics of refusal.