Katniss: The Girl on Fire!

Being written in first person, it makes it easier to see how people feel and it persuades easier because one can see the true emotions and feelings of the characters in the Hunger Games. I plan to read Katniss and how she is positioned into a strong woman, who takes on the fatherly/manly figure throughout the novel. The way Katniss is portrayed in the book left me excited because it showed that women too could be strong and provide for a family. She goes against gender stereotypes and proves herself worthy to not only the people in the districts, but to the people of the capitol. Katniss’ personality and position is constructed throughout the entire book, therefore I cannot simply fixate on one moment in the novel.

Pierre Bourdieu was right when he said that “bodies are a record of cultural experience.” It is seen in Katniss, that her body is a kind of memory. One can see the past years of sadness, hurt, betrayal, and anger towards the Capitol.  The Capitol had taken the freedom of each of the districts after they rebelled over seventy years ago. That is why they created the Hunger Games. They bring the tributes of each district back to a state of war, as Hobbes would say. It is every man for themselves in the games. They do this because they want to prove that they have power over the districts, that the government can take the freedom of each district in a matter of seconds just like they did to district 13 (it does not even exist now because it was blown to smithereens). There is no state of nature with the districts or the Capitol. Rousseau explains this as well; men have gone away from the state of nature.

“Thus, as every man punished the contempt shown him by others, in the proportion to his opinion of himself, revenge became terrible, and men bloody and cruel. This is precisely the state reached by most of the savage nations known to us: and it is for want of having made a proper distinction in our ideas, and see how very far they already are from the state of nature, that so many writers have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires civil institutions to make him more mild; whereas nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state, as he is placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the fatal ingenuity of civilized man.”

The Capitol only hosts the games to communicate to the districts that they have power and that they can do whatever they want. However, the districts are more close to natural piety than the Capitol because they are positioned in the novel to have more innocence, goodness, and are closer to nature and the things around them. The Capitol is pushing the districts further away from civilization and freedom with the force of peacekeepers and continuing to pursue a fear in the people with the Hunger Games. These emotions toward the Capital are ideological and have made their way into Katniss.

From the beginning, you know that she is, overall, not fond of the games. She likes them because she can enter her name more times for the reaping in order to get tesserae for food. She doesn’t like it because the games show the power the Capitol has and she feels that some of the tributes are too young to enter into the games.  Every child in each district has habitus. Katniss believes that every person has value that everyone is apart of what makes the district what it truly is. Even Katniss has habitus; the way she provides for her family, how she can hunt whereas no one else really can, and her wisdom and thoughts all have value and make Katniss into the strong woman she is. The ideology behind this is that the people of the districts despise the Capitol for taking their freedom, and their feelings and emotions towards them are passed on to their children, into Katniss.

From the beginning, Katniss was without a father. He had died in a mine explosion. Her mother went into a mental depression and refused to care for her children; she was mentally ill. Katniss had to step up and become the father figure of the family. It took her weeks to build up courage to walk past the fence that separated district 12 from the meadows.  Once she did, everything changed. She was able to hunt to provide food for her sister and mother, and she also gained one of her first friends in the meadow, Gale. When the book first talked about Gale, I was rooting for him and Katniss to be together just because of their individual pasts is so similar and that they both needed the other in their life. Katniss and Gale would hunt together, go to the Hob to sell and trade what they have killed in order to provide for their families. They both had to conquer the loss of their fathers, pull themselves together, and be strong for everyone else. I feel that Katniss being strong is more essentialism than constructionism. If her father were to have been there her whole life, she would have turned out to be a gentle and fragile girl, just like Prim. Because he wasn’t, it was in the nature of Katniss to take on his role and to provide for her family. She was not nurtured into being strong, she was born strong.  The day of the reaping comes, and Gale suggests they run away together. I was positioned to be on Team Gale here because I didn’t want Katniss to go to the games. I wanted her to have a happy ever after. But, being the strong woman she is, she refused and goes to the reaping.

At the reaping, Prim was selected as tribute but, on page 21 in chapter two, Katniss says, “I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!” This shocks the entire district. Katniss knows what she got herself into, but she did it to protect her family. Here, again, Katniss is portrayed as a strong woman who will do anything to protect the ones she loves. Because of this, I fell for Katniss’ personality and couldn’t help but root for her in the rest of the novel to win the Hunger Games.

Katniss is clearly positioned as a strong woman who cares for her family and will do anything to protect them. Being so strong she forgets about all other aspects to her personality and appearance. She tries to be strong when saying goodbye to her family and Gale. “I’ve ben right not to cry,” Katniss says on page 38 in the book. She sheds no tears because she knows it will hurt her appearance in the games. I can’t help but continue to cheer for her because of how strong she is being when she knows she is going to die. I personally would be a wreck and not be able to hold myself together! I find it funny when she gets to Capitol and the stylist crew begins working on her. They say things such as, “You’re just so hairy” or “You almost look like a human being now!” I had to laugh when these things were said because they simply do not know where Katniss has come from and she does not care for her appearance.

            During training for the games, Katniss has her time to show the game makers what she is made of. On page 97, the game makers ignore her and fixate on a roasted pig. This angers Katniss, and shows her determination and attitude. She shoots an arrow at the apple in the pig’s mouth and bows, says “Thank you for your consideration,” and walks out without being dismissed. Here Katniss is again positioned as a strong woman, but also as an irritable person. She finds that time has habitus and should not be wasted, so when the game makers waster her time, she is upset and shows them what she can do.

         

  Katniss fights for her life in the games and also tries to help rescue Rue and Peeta. She shows concern for each of them, and regrets not being able to save Rue in the end. This shows that Katniss is an ordinary human being, who was brought to the state of war by the Capitol. She had been placed in an arena where she was against every other man in there. She did not break down, give herself up, or kill people just to win. She killed to survive, she hid for days, and rescued others when she could. Katniss is positioned to be a strong woman in this book. The audience is positioned to love her and root for her because of the many things she has been through. I rooted for her the entire novel! I was excited when I read that she and Peeta had won the games because I know it meant that their district would be awarded with food, and that their families would not have to fight to survive anymore. Katniss is definitely one of the strongest women I have known about; she has fought to survive, had to feed her family for years, and had to deal with the Capitol when they threw her into the arena where she entered the state of war and was against everyone. I can’t wait to read the other two books to see how Katniss will react to the Capitol and President Snow, if she will continue to hunt for her family even though she is set for a long time, if she will go back to the love of Gale or settle for Peeta, and to see how she will grow as a person after winning the Hunger Games.