Cartoon Profile: Sokka

Sokka and his sister Katara lost their mother to the Fire Nation during an attack. Then their father, Hakoda, went off to the war to fight, leaving Katara and Sokka to look after the tribe until he returned.

Sokka is now the only male living in the village (aside from young children) while the other men are at war. They left to go fight in the war sometime after Sokka and Katara's mother was killed by the Fire Nation in a raid. Sokka had wanted to go with his father, but he was too young at the time. It's probably the lack of male attention around that made Sokka the way he is: stubborn, loud, and with the idea that all girls can ever do is cook, clean, and sew... which is odd since he has such a strong and brave sister.

At the beginning of the show, Sokka saw Katara's water bending gift as something weird, mostly because she was the only water bender in all of the Southern tribe. Meeting Aang for the first time, he didn't trust him either.

Deep down Sokka is really sensitive but seeing it as unmanly he keeps it shut away until the moment becomes over-emotional and his mask breaks... mostly it's when his sister is the topic of the matter. Once when Aang was learning some fire bending he burned Katara by mistake and Sokka, enraged, yelled at Aang.

Sokka also has a couple of love interests in the series. The first was Suki of Kyoshi Island in Episode 4, but the more intense was the second, the Princess of the Northern Water tribe named Yue who was saved as a baby by the moon spirit. Sadly, it wasn't to be when Commander Zhao of the Fire Nation killed the moon spirit throwing everything into chaos.

The selfless princess gave back the life the spirit gave her; in turn becoming the moon spirit herself... but not before giving Sokka a kiss good-bye. As the series moves on, Sokka becomes more open little by little, and learns to stop thinking of women as weaker and below men.