Katniss Everdeen, and Character Strength from Unexpected Sources

[puella_nerdii]

The promised essay for womenlovefest. Some of this is taken from comments I made at Mark Reads; a lot of it is new. HUGE GIANT SPOILERS for Mockingjay, so be warned.

Katniss Everdeen, and Character Strength from Unexpected Sources
by PuelKatniss Everdeen is not the easiest character to like. She's distrustful, judgmental, and prickly; she reacts to kindness

Comments

[tiferet]

Well done.

[puella_nerdii]

*smiles* Thanks. This one took a while to put together, but it's been brewing in the back of my head for quite some time.

[liberty_witch]

That's why I love my girl! Well done essay you have here. It really hits upon why, exactly I love Katniss. Just, all I can do right now is give you a thumbs up for a fabulous essay.

[puella_nerdii]

Thank you~ I adore her too, and while she definitely doesn't get the hate flung her way that other female characters do, I don't always think she gets enough credit for her actions and character growth later in the series, particularly in Mockingjay. Sometimes I feel so alone in liking Mockingjay. ;_;

[liberty_witch]

You're not alone in liking Mockingjay! It just... hits you like a knife to the eye. Ow, ow, and again, OW. >.o It takes a while for the pain to heal, and see the hope it brings.

Whenever I sumerize Katniss' story for people they're just like "DAMN, how has she not killed herself yet? D: The poor thing!"

[puella_nerdii]

Trust me, I know. I spent about an hour just kind of staring at the wall and shaking after I finished the book and let's not even go into what I did when Finnick died OH GOD HONEYYYYYYY

But Katniss is still standing at the end of it, and trying to rebuild, and after EVERYTHING AWFUL IN THE WORLD happened to her, that says a lot.

[chiasmus]

I agree so much with all of this and it encapsulates all the reasons why I adore and respect Katniss throughout the series, and especially in Mockingjay.

[puella_nerdii]

♥ Thank you. I think a lot of Katniss's strongest moments come in Mockingjay, but they aren't always as flashy as some of the things she pulled off in earlier books, so they're easier to overlook.

...well, except when she shoots down a hoverplane, that's just badass.

[zorabet]

I love love love love this.

I'm really, really, really an emotional person and the first couple of times I read the series I didn't like Katniss. I thought she was cold and I felt no empathy with her and didn't really understand WHY she did anything she did. It took a third reading for me to kind of...get all this, that she IS compassionate, it's just bottled up and messed up, it's not like mine.

Also, I hate when people say, "oh, she got married and had babies because Peeta wanted to, she never wanted that." I think the epilogue is so important because she's only ever scared of that because of the Games. And then she's probably scared because of Prim. But she finally has kids and loves them as much as she loves Prim and they're ultimate signs of that moving on. Peeta's dandelion seed, if you will.

[puella_nerdii]

*nod* Like I said, Katniss isn't the most likable protagonist in the world, and she is so screwed up and out-of-touch with her emotions that she doesn't always know what she's feeling (and since the books are told in first-person present, the reader has to do a certain amount of extrapolating), and sometimes you just want to wave the clue flag in front of her. But she gets less hostile, even if it's a slow process.

That frustrates me, too -- granted, we don't know exactly how she and Peeta made that decision, but it took her a damn long time before she was ready and given how much Peeta respects Katniss's boundaries in the entire series before the epilogue, I can't see him pushing her into it. And I do think the kids are important thematically, because "what the hell are we going to tell our children?" is a question you need to ask at the end of a series like this. And well, the dandelion seed that you pointed out. :D

[gileonnen]

Chipping in to say, yes, all of this.

[puella_nerdii]

:D (Man, have I been sitting on this one for a long time.)