In Suzanne Collins’s The
Hunger Games, the Capitol of Panem maintains strict control over its
Districts. The citizens of the 12
Districts are faced with severe punishments at the slightest acts of rebellion.
Those that speak out against the dictatorial
government or try to flee their Districts into the wilderness between the
Districts’ walls can have their tongues cut out, be flogged, or put to death if
they are caught. The severity of the
punishments for those that hint at rebelling forces most citizens of the
Districts to suppress their anger; Katniss learns to “hold [her] tongue and to
turn [her] features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read
[her] thoughts” (Collins 6). Katniss is
a survivor, and she knows that in order to survive and take care of her family,
she must hide whatever emotions about the Capitol she has. When Gale talks of running away and leaving everything
behind, Katniss does not “know how to respond [because] the idea is so
preposterous” (Collins 9). When in the
Capitol after Katniss volunteers for The Hunger Games, Peeta tells her “[he]
wants to die as [himself]…[he doesn’t] want them to change [him]”, but Katniss
does not understand “how [he could] die as anyone but himself” (Collins
141). Peeta wants to “think of a way to…to
show the Capitol they don’t own [him]”, but Katniss tells him “[he’s] not, none
of [them] are. That’s how the Games work”
(Collins 142). Katniss lives her whole
life up to the time she enters the Hunger Games just trying to survive. In Panem, acting against the Capitol and
surviving cannot coexist in Katniss’s mind, so she suppresses all anger and hatred
about her rulers and replaces it with the will to survive. Thus, Gale’s wish to run away and Peeta’s
wish to show the Capitol they cannot control him do not make sense to Katniss,
because those acts can result in severe punishment for resisting Capitol rule.
However, Katniss’s attitude toward rebelling changes upon entering
the Hunger Games. In the arena, Katniss
faces near-certain death more than she ever has while in the District. Her will to survive is pushed to the limits
on multiple occasions as she struggles to live, and she begins to question everything. When her friend Rue is killed, Katniss’s mindset
shifts completely. Peeta’s words from
before resonate in her mind, and she realizes exactly what he meant about
wanting “to die as [himself]” (Collins 141).
Katniss knows she is live on every screen in Panem and “Rue’s death [forces
her] to confront [her] own fury against the cruelty, the injustice [the Capitol]
inflicts upon [them]” (Collins 236).
Katniss shows “the Capitol that whatever they do or force [the tributes]
to do there is a part of every tribute they can’t own” (Collins 237). Katniss realizes the power she holds over everyone
in the country while she is in the Games.
She knows the importance of her message, and by decorating Rue’s body,
shows that the Districts do support one another. She resists to Capitol’s rule and proves to everyone
watching her that although the Capitol may punish and kill the citizens of the
Districts, the citizens will never be owned and they act of free will. With the same mindset, Katniss again breaks
free from the Capitol’s rule by making “the whole thing blow up in the
Gamemakers’ faces” (Collins 345) as she and Peeta attempt to kill themselves by
eating the berries. The frantic congratulatory
response by Claudius Templesmith shows that they have succeeded in breaking the
Capitol’s rules, that Katniss can no longer be controlled.
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Scholastic
Press, 2009. Paperback.
I think you make an interesting point about how Katniss’s mindset changes as the book progresses. I would ask of you, why do you think Rue’s death so deeply affects her, to the point that she is willing to openly rebel against the Capitol? It is my belief that up until she allies herself with Rue, she is thinking mostly of herself and of merely staying alive. Yes, her motivations for surviving in the arena are to be able to get home for her mother and her sister, but she is mostly concerned with her own survival. Teaming up with Rue reminds her a lot of why she was trying so hard to stay alive in the first place, saying that she wants Rue as an ally “Because she’s a survivor, and I trust her, and why not admit it? She reminds me of Prim” (p. 201). Rue’s subsequent death, then, is almost like seeing her own sister die. This wakes Katniss up and makes her hate the Capitol and all they stand for. After tipping the scales in her own favor by blowing up the Careers’ food, she knows she has a chance of going home, so most of her cations from there on out is not so much about staying alive, but rather rebelling against the Capitol in her own way. She teams up with Peeta because she wants to rather than to give the Capitol a good show. At the end, she refuses to play their game and kill Peeta, instead choosing to attempt suicide with him by planning to eat the nightlock berries. So Rue’s death, in a way, sparks all of the following actions Katniss takes in the arena.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the Capitol punishes the districts for rebelling, but even acts that are not intended as rebellion are punished. This is shown when Rue tells the story of a boy from her district being killed on the spot for taking a pair of night-vision glasses for fun. Rue describes how “everyone knew he was no danger” (204) and he “just wanted the glasses to play with” (204). Instead of just focusing on those rebelling, the Capitol uses its rule to even prevent any rebellion. They accomplish this by taking about any thought of the Capitol as benevolent or weak.
ReplyDeleteWhile the Capitol does have this immense control over the districts, the rebellion is starting to grow in this book. However, while you say that Katniss decorating Rue’s body was as direct act of rebellion meant to encourage others to rebel, I disagree. While she does recognize that rebelling in this way is a defiant act, she is not trying to get others to rebel. She is instead focusing on the Capitol and trying “to shame them, to make them accountable, to show the Capitol that whatever they do or force us to do there is. Apart of every tribute they can’t own” (237). She reflects on Peeta’s focus on remaining himself, and the act of decorating Rue’s body is also aimed at individuals remaining themselves, not a full-fledged rebellion.