The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins tells the tale of Katniss, a determined, independent, and complex woman trying to keep her loved ones safe and protected. Katniss’ personality and appearance contradict traditional leading lady norms, and her relationship and eventual romance with Peeta show the defiance of traditional gender roles in romantic relationships. Katniss and Peeta redefine gender roles in The Hunger Games as she stays true to her raw looks and personality, he embraces thoughtfulness, and as they both take on different romantic roles than society normally sees in romantic relationships. Scholars, Lem and Hassel, argue that there are gender roles seen in media, but I would like to go farther to say that kindness is a more …show more content…
Collins shows that Katniss is a talented individual to foreshadow that her bow and arrow skills will come in handy in the future, and to show that women have widespread talents that are often overlooked in the media. The task of being the sole breadwinner of the family is rarely seen as the job a a woman. Katniss ignores the law that hunting is illegal, especially in the banned parts of town. This shows that Katniss is rebellious and often disregards rules. Katniss makes her own rules which is one of the most blatant examples of gender defiance in the book. Women are so often forced to conform and follow the rules of society, and Katniss changes every norm by rebelling against societal norms. Katniss shows women that it is okay to make your own rules and to be different than the traditional leading lady that is so often presented in the media.
There are many female characters throughout the novel that serve as foils to Katniss’ minimally feminine character. As written by Ellyn Lem and Holly Hassel in “Killer” Katniss and “Lover Boy” Peeta,” Lem and Hassel describe the differences in the female characters in comparison to Katniss. Lem and Hassel describe Prim as “innocent and naive” and Katniss’ mother as “emotionally fragile” (123). Lem and Hasssel describe Effie as “shallow and vain” (123). These adjectives are more commonly seen when describing females. The adjectives also all have negative connotations with them that come with being a
Another important idea that Katniss makes the audience think of is Love. She helps the audience see this because the main driving point of the novel is Katniss’s love for Prim. This is the reason she volunteered for her at the reaping and why she is in the Hunger Games in the first place. This love is shown when she buys Prim her goat, “She (Prim) was so excited she started crying and laughing all at once.” This tells us that Katniss was willing to spend her money on a goat for Prim that she could’ve spent on something else that would’ve given them better prospects or saved the money. Instead, she chose to give her sister something that she could look after, love and give her lasting memories of fun and happiness. Katniss also shows love for Peeta when she nurses him back to health in the cave. Even when she thought that their love was fictional she still fought to get to him and helped save his life when he was
Throughout the novel, she remains a hunter and a survivor. She has little interest in boys and is instead focused on her responsibilities, and though she develops feelings for Peeta and becomes aware of feelings for Gale during the Games, romance is not a priority for her. “Females are more likely than females to be depicted as parents (52.2% vs. 40.4%) and in a committed relationship (59.9% vs. 47.4%) in motion pictures.” (Smith and Cook, 14) The Smith and Cook research put females, from G-rated movies, ambitions into three categories: as daydreamers, derailed, and daredevils. Katniss would fall under the daredevil category. Daredevils are protagonists that express a goal or make choices that will move them toward their ambition. (Smith and Cook, 17) “…daredevils may encounter romantic love but are not willing to relinquish their initial pursuits or accept romance as their own prize.” (Smith and Cook, 17) Katniss’s ability to stay the course despite developing feelings for Peeta should be seen as a win for her character and not become a derailed, someone who can easily forget their goal because love. Katniss first and foremost is a survivalist. She keeps her identity and never loses sight of who she is and what she wants to
Katniss Everdeen is not a normal girl, she is a teenager who had to grow up fast within District Twelve. After losing her father to a mine accident, Katniss had to become an adult and be the sole provider for her family. Her mother detached herself from her role as a parent, which meant Katniss not only had to become the provider but also the nurturer of the family. This gives her the role of being the mother and father to her sister
In the novel Katniss’ intelligence contributes to her qualities that make her a hero. This is conveyed through her ability to outsmart the other tributes during the course of the games. This is made evident to the reader when she says-“ I position the knife in the groove… the nets bursts open like an egg.”- The use of simile allows the reader to imagine how Katniss’ let the tracker-jacker go. This is further seen during the Games where Katniss is highly aware of her surroundings. - “The bow and arrow is my weapon… Sometimes, if I've wounded an animal with an arrow, it's better to get a knife into it, too, before I approach it.”- This is made evident when Katniss is able to track and hunt down things in a protective and secretive way. The use of an explicit metaphor is used when describing her motives which demonstrate her thought processes. Thus it can be seen that Katniss empowers the qualities of a hero through her intelligence.
Economics is the study of scarcity within a systems of rules. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins’ can be translated into such, with hunger being scarcity and games being a system of rules. In the Hunger Games, we are introduced to a country called Panem. The country of Panem is divided into twelve different districts and the Capitol, where the government resides. Each district has their own different specializations and they have distinctive economies. The government regulates the trade and each district rely on trade from each other district and the Capitol for the goods they don 't produce. All of the districts and the Capitol is interdependent.
The composer Suzanne Collins of ‘The Hunger Games’ demonstrates that Katniss is a good hero through her courageous qualities. This is evident through this quote “how could I leave prim, who is the only person in the world I am certain I love” (chapter 1 page 11). Katniss demonstrates loving and having lots of courage through volunteering pushing her sister and taking her place proving this is seen through these words “who is the only person in the world I am certain I love”. The effect of emotive language and short sentences making us feel the emotion of katniss like we are there and can hear her. We can hear through these effect s that katniss doesn't think about what going to happen next only caring about prims safety. Throughout this book we can see that katniss has a lot of other qualities.
Males and females can be so different, but at the same time so alike. The traditional masculine role is most dependant on working at some of the most jobs that require strength. Men are usually in the spot in which they must hunt for food and work for money. While the traditional feminine role is cleaning and cooking, but in the story “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, Katniss and Peeta-the main characters- are reversed in their roles, where Katniss is seen as a masculine role and Peeta as a feminine role, which is agreeable. Seeing the book their personalities and what they do are revered in the female and make aspect.
Katniss is a strong female lead in The Hunger Games because of her background and how that shaped her to become who she was in the novel. After facing the tragic death of her father, Katniss became the official breadwinner for her family. She had to mature at a very young age, so that she could take care of her little sister Prim, and her mother, who fell into a state of depression after her husband’s death. As a result of growing up faster then she should have, Katniss came to be a selfless, responsible and mature young girl. She knew how to take care of herself, and she was understanding towards the people of the districts because she knew how hard life was and the struggles the people faced everyday . Persephone on the other hand, didn’t understand the responsibilities of life and how everything worked around her. She was fortunate as a child to grow up having everything being taken care of for her. Persephone and Katniss have one thing in common and that is their love for their families. They would do anything for their families, which is how Katniss entered the Hunger Games and how Persephone wouldn’t fully give her heart to Hades because of her mother. These ladies are so different from one another, yet they are still bound together by their strong will and determination.
Throughout The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Peeta Mellark endures a dramatic change and grows into a much more dominant person. Katniss is up in a tree when she realizes that the tributes (other people in the games) are coming her way to kill a competitor within her area, and she sees that unexpectedly Peeta is with them. Katniss tells her readers "An argument breaks out until one tribute silences the others. 'I'll go finish her and let's move on!' I almost fall out of the tree. The voice belongs to Peeta," (Collins 160). If gender is just an imitation of an ideal, at that time Peeta really proved that stereotypes are true by being the alfa male of the group. So Peeta definitely proved that in the end he
Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games, decided to do something different with her main protagonists, Katniss and Peeta. In the book, they seem to have flipped gender roles that society does not see males and females in such a way. For example, women have often been seen as housewives by society, which has set certain occupations and responsibilities they must abide to. Furthermore, women were allowed to handle activities such as cooking, cleaning and caring for children and men. On another note, men have also had been told they are only capable of engaging in masculine activities. This was limited to working and providing for the family, nothing more. According to the book Handbook on Gender Roles: Conflicts, Attitudes and Behaviors by Amato and Booth, these gender roles are classified as traditional. In the book, Collins tends to switch what each societies gender norms; she challenges what each character is meant to do because of their sex. She wants to prove that men are capable of doing a woman’s job and a woman being capable of completing a man’s job. Katniss and Peeta both do not meet the expectations society has set them to do; in fact it is the total opposite.
In the Book The hunger games Katniss Everdeen faces overwhelming adversity when she finds herself found in the clutches of the capital stuck in the hunger games. Katniss is able to overcome this adversity by having strong characteristics like her intelligence, resourcefulness and being courageous, these characteristics will be discussed throughout the essay outlining exactly why these characteristics help katniss in the games.
Due to this fact, on arrival in the Capitol Katniss is stripped of her masculine characteristics and portrayed as a Love interest of Peeta. This shows how sometimes people change who they are either by choice or forced to do so in Katniss’s sake. As Chuck Palahniuk states “Personal identity seems like it’s just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ to Jay Gatsby in ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you are given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?” this is an interesting concept because without a doubt at least once in people’s lives they dream of being something or someone else. But as can be seen from ‘The Great Gatsby’ in particular that creating a new persona doesn’t always work out in the way in which you may have imagined. In terms of personal identity and trying to fit in its important to remember, don’t change so that people will like you. Be yourself and the people that matter will love
In the novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, the main character and protagonist is 16 year old Katniss Everdeen, a strong and selfless young woman who is far more mature than her age suggests. As the main provider for her family after her father died, Katniss had to become responsible and resourceful at a young age, which forced her to participate in rebellious behavior in order to keep her family alive. She is an unselfish and protective character, putting herself in danger in order to keep the ones she loves safe, especially for her little sister Primrose. Even after the pain and hardships she has had to go through not only in the games, but in her life, Katniss maintains her
In life there is always some sort of violence and there always seems to be a good and a bad side. The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross is a movie about 24 tributes fighting to the death for the Hunger Games crown. The prize is riches, fame and freedom from ever having to physically fight in the arena again. It is a game of violence, ferocity, and blood, and only one tribute can win. Even though stories often have a Battle between Good and Evil, it is Katniss’s internal conflict confronting her own good and evil that portrays humanity with a longing for destruction, violent inclination, and sense of separation.
Katniss from the Hunger Games rejects the gender roles of her society. She is not a healer or a seamstress. She is a hunter, a role usually reserved for men. Katniss started providing for her family at the early age of twelve, after her father passed away. She declares that she doesn’t want to get married or have children. According to Linda Lowen, “If even the smallest fraction of readers get the female empowerment message that intelligence, resilience and loyalty trump beauty, popularity and wealth, we have Katniss Everdeen