Thoughts on Katniss

[aislinntlc]

OK, I pretty much never post here, and very few will see this, but I feel the need to get some thoughts on Katniss from the Hunger Games down on "paper". I'll put them behind a cut, (I hope) in case they end up on anyone's friend page who hasn't read Mockingjay or doesn't care. Given the fact I should be going to sleep instead, this may only be

Comments

[mlwl]

She doesn't see the bigger picture that Peeta sees, doesn't understand what he says to her on the roof about choices - at least, not until two books later. Her actions are very much in the moment, based on her feelings at that time.
SO true... Katniss is incredibly un-self-aware, the most obvious point being in her indecision about romance with Peeta and Gale.

I do agree with you, Laura, that I WANTED to see more empathy from Katniss. I was incredibly disappointed that she voted yes to the Hunger Games... but I wasn't surprised, either, and I don't necessarily think that it means that she hasn't grown. As Ann said, Katniss is first and foremost a survivor and a pragmatist; choosing to punish those who were instrumental in the tyranny over the districts for so long really is in character.... I just didn't want it to be.
However, I think her growth was in refusing Gale's love after he was responsible for deaths she found unjust. She gave up one of the two most important people left to her because she saw his action as a continuation of that same tyranny. I don't think that she would have chosen to associate with Gale after Prim's death even if he was in District 12... he is a harsh and calculating person, and while this particular weapon was a surprise, that part of his character was not at all for me. I'd been trying really hard to see the good in Gale just in case he was who Katniss chose, but I think we had serious signs of this side of him in Catching Fire. I saw growth in her realization of how she had wronged Peeta. I saw growth that she only helped the rebellion when it was acting fairly.

To be fair, on the other hand, I see Katniss's decision in that same vein. Technically it's as a punishment, but it still targets innocents in the effort to hurt the oppressors. I wonder if those Games would be gone through with after Coin was assassinated (which I had hoped for from her introduction... another really evil character, imho).

And, ultimately, even though I found a lot of places that Katniss changed, I agree with Ann: Collins wanted the reader to be uncomfortable with that decision. She has said that she wrote these first and foremost as war stories, and for those to be effective I think you have to see how fallible even the best characters are. The only two purely good characters in the whole series are killed off or mentally effectively so because there is no place for that in a war zone. That is what broke me... seeing Peeta as he was after the brainwashing; seeing Prim die. But it rings true. I don't feel cheated out of the character growth because I think it was there... just not in the places I had expected to see it.

[moosatcows]

Well, I do feel cheated out of the character growth in a lot of ways. Mostly because again, it felt so tacked on the end to me. Yes, there was character growth in other ways but on the whole it was very unsatisfying for me. I am well aware that these are war stories and not meant to have bubbly endings with rainbows and unicorns, but I wanted to see more of a resolution, if nowhere else than inside Katniss' head.

But to that end, seeing through Katniss' eyes has always been a problem for me with this series. I found her hard to relate to as a personality, and (or because of that) I found it really difficult to be 'behind her mask' while the plot was whirling around me. I felt left out about a lot of things and frustrated at even more that Katniss couldn't see around her.

So... again, not disagreeing with anything either of you are saying here. But what I would have liked, had I had control of these books myself, is a few less pages about the layout of the Capitol or weapons, and a few more about what made Katniss do the things she did. I know Collins had a great foundation to motivate her for these things, but I really missed some sort of thought process. Katniss herself makes that hard and the style of the book makes it hard, but that doesn't mean I didn't miss it.

Collins very effectively wrote a war story here. It leaves you feeling a bit skeptical of the world around you and a bit hopeless. But ultimately, I do think there could have been a smidge more room for a couple of in depth looks into Katniss' head.

[aislinntlc]

I just read somewhere that Collins' father is a Vietnam vet, and used to tell her stories as a child. I think that's really significant, in terms of how her story is told. Vietnam wasn't like WWII - it was a much more morally ambiguous war(not that war is ever the noble thing some would like us to believe it is). People talk about the WWII generation being the greatest generation, while Vietnam vets were vilified when they got home. War is ugly, it makes people do horrendous things out of self preservation, brain washing, a greed for power, the dehumanizing of others. If you haven't gone there yet, check out http://www.fallingwhistles.com/splash/index.php - the atrocities that are being perpetrated against the children in the Congo are just so chilling, and people should know this is going on in our world.

I understand the desire for resolution - I usually have a huge need for it in a story, and I love a story with a fully realized hero's journey, as they deeply resonate with me. For this specific story, (and this is just what worked for me, not how I would expect others to react), I really preferred that Katniss did not demonstrate that growth by the end of the war. She was a teenager who was so damaged by the third world conditions in which she was raised, the loss of her father, her mother's clinical depression, the treatment of her people as objects to be used by the Capital, her own post traumatic stress from not only her time in the Games, but the ongoing personal threat from President Snow, and later, Coin. From a psychological perspective, it's so much more realistic for her to not really be able to achieve significant growth until after things have settled down and she's got time to work through all of that. From a literary viewpoint, it wouldn't have been as effective to show those details, given the timing of when they would occur, after the climax of the plot.

[mlwl]

I agree... I feel like it would have really cheapened the story on the whole to have everything fixed for Katniss, including just in her head. She IS damaged goods, as are those around her.