![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Significant Hunger Games spoilers.
One of the problems that I have with the Hunger Games trilogy is that Collins always seems afraid of making Katness responsible for her position or of giving her any moral agency. There are never any difficult questions in the series except, perhaps, for whether she ought to pick Peeta or Gale for her beau - a totally different issue that I think is worth deconstructing later.
Her decision to take her younger sisters place in the games is arguably one of two decisions she makes in the entire series. As a character, I can hardly blame her either for volunteering for the games and that she's never really put into a position where she has to make a difficult decision. Instead, I blame Collins as a writer. It's time to get deep into spoilers territory.
As someone who's read both books, it was difficult for me not to compare Hunger Games (the first book, not the trilogy) directly to Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. The themes are similar enough that it's difficult to get away from but different enough for me not to want to, so I'm left with a frustrated comparison. Even so, the thing I recognized a little belatedly, is that the contestants in Battle Royale are both subject to circumstance while still being largely responsible for their actions within the confines of those circumstances while Katness never really is. Collins is perfectly happy with subjecting Katness to terrible things but seems to want to make sure that she can never make the 'wrong decision' or, to be more specifically, a decision that is morally difficult. Instead, she moves plot mountains to make sure she never has to kill a sympathetic character and her perfectly justified and even extremely rational suspicion of the motives of others is painted as something of a moral failing.
Her biggest moral failing, according to the books, is her suspicion that someone might try to kill her in a scenario where everyone is supposed to be trying to kill her. Or, perhaps, being a big meany.
I think that this takes a lot of the teeth out of the books. Katness is subject to the games not once but twice and each time, she's rescued before she has to make any morally dubious decisions. Anyone who dies, but is sympathetic, is conveniently removed from the games by someone else before she's forced to. Rue is killed by the terrible District 1 contestant, which is painted as a really awful thing to do but let's not forget that Katness herself would be forced to do that if someone else hadn't. Instead, we get to see Katness engage in the elaborate enshrining of the dead. She's given a pass on Peeta entirely, and even the District 2 life-or-death battle near the end is conveniently circumvented by mutated war dogs. The only thing this does is remove her culpability with the games because Collins is concerned that if she ever really takes part in them, then she loses any kind of moral standing with the reader.
Never mind that it's almost pointless, imo, to write a book that features this as a theme then whisk Katness out of the thick of it every time it seems like she'd be forced to engage in it in some way.
Moreover, after she and Peeta are saved at the last nick of time for the second time, she's basically given a choice between the two, and never decides; circumstances decide for her. She never really decides if she wants Peeta or Gale and never actually grows a backbone and says "Hey, look, I'm in a really difficult position and I feel strongly about both of you, but this isn't something I can actually do right now." or anything to that effect - never mind the fact that we rarely see anything like that since the role of male-female relationships always seems to hang on the question of who's inevitably going to hook up with who. The classification of Sue-dom hangs dangerously over Katness's head; everyone either loves, respects, or fears her.
She effortlessly and through no real doing of her own is catapulted to being the most important person in Panem, of the rebellion, and in everyone's heart. She's the only threat to two different presidents who just can't figure out how to deal with her even though one's capable of being the strong mind and arm of a clockwork-precise rebellion for years and the other is the head of a dictatorial capital where he's been able to control everything until Katness came along. She's immediately and without training better then every other soldier, everyone immediately believes in her, and she had her own amazing, unique weapon and outfit. Supposedly she's a little plain, but she's neither fat nor really too thin. After her makeover, everyone's infatuated with her.
I don't really have a problem with competence - even extreme competence. It makes sense that she might be an extremely good shot and a very skilled hunter, for example. Even that she might not be a great fit for the military but be very good in her own right - eventually, someone like her might crop up and pose an extremely irritating problem for the Capital. What bothers me is not that Katness makes this decision to be this thorn but that she becomes the victor without ever really doing much of anything at all. She's never placed in a position that might undermine her morally even though that's ostensibly the theme of book one. Her most profound action is inaction.
She's kind of a lousy protagonist.
One of the problems that I have with the Hunger Games trilogy is that Collins always seems afraid of making Katness responsible for her position or of giving her any moral agency. There are never any difficult questions in the series except, perhaps, for whether she ought to pick Peeta or Gale for her beau - a totally different issue that I think is worth deconstructing later.
Her decision to take her younger sisters place in the games is arguably one of two decisions she makes in the entire series. As a character, I can hardly blame her either for volunteering for the games and that she's never really put into a position where she has to make a difficult decision. Instead, I blame Collins as a writer. It's time to get deep into spoilers territory.
As someone who's read both books, it was difficult for me not to compare Hunger Games (the first book, not the trilogy) directly to Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. The themes are similar enough that it's difficult to get away from but different enough for me not to want to, so I'm left with a frustrated comparison. Even so, the thing I recognized a little belatedly, is that the contestants in Battle Royale are both subject to circumstance while still being largely responsible for their actions within the confines of those circumstances while Katness never really is. Collins is perfectly happy with subjecting Katness to terrible things but seems to want to make sure that she can never make the 'wrong decision' or, to be more specifically, a decision that is morally difficult. Instead, she moves plot mountains to make sure she never has to kill a sympathetic character and her perfectly justified and even extremely rational suspicion of the motives of others is painted as something of a moral failing.
Her biggest moral failing, according to the books, is her suspicion that someone might try to kill her in a scenario where everyone is supposed to be trying to kill her. Or, perhaps, being a big meany.
I think that this takes a lot of the teeth out of the books. Katness is subject to the games not once but twice and each time, she's rescued before she has to make any morally dubious decisions. Anyone who dies, but is sympathetic, is conveniently removed from the games by someone else before she's forced to. Rue is killed by the terrible District 1 contestant, which is painted as a really awful thing to do but let's not forget that Katness herself would be forced to do that if someone else hadn't. Instead, we get to see Katness engage in the elaborate enshrining of the dead. She's given a pass on Peeta entirely, and even the District 2 life-or-death battle near the end is conveniently circumvented by mutated war dogs. The only thing this does is remove her culpability with the games because Collins is concerned that if she ever really takes part in them, then she loses any kind of moral standing with the reader.
Never mind that it's almost pointless, imo, to write a book that features this as a theme then whisk Katness out of the thick of it every time it seems like she'd be forced to engage in it in some way.
Moreover, after she and Peeta are saved at the last nick of time for the second time, she's basically given a choice between the two, and never decides; circumstances decide for her. She never really decides if she wants Peeta or Gale and never actually grows a backbone and says "Hey, look, I'm in a really difficult position and I feel strongly about both of you, but this isn't something I can actually do right now." or anything to that effect - never mind the fact that we rarely see anything like that since the role of male-female relationships always seems to hang on the question of who's inevitably going to hook up with who. The classification of Sue-dom hangs dangerously over Katness's head; everyone either loves, respects, or fears her.
She effortlessly and through no real doing of her own is catapulted to being the most important person in Panem, of the rebellion, and in everyone's heart. She's the only threat to two different presidents who just can't figure out how to deal with her even though one's capable of being the strong mind and arm of a clockwork-precise rebellion for years and the other is the head of a dictatorial capital where he's been able to control everything until Katness came along. She's immediately and without training better then every other soldier, everyone immediately believes in her, and she had her own amazing, unique weapon and outfit. Supposedly she's a little plain, but she's neither fat nor really too thin. After her makeover, everyone's infatuated with her.
I don't really have a problem with competence - even extreme competence. It makes sense that she might be an extremely good shot and a very skilled hunter, for example. Even that she might not be a great fit for the military but be very good in her own right - eventually, someone like her might crop up and pose an extremely irritating problem for the Capital. What bothers me is not that Katness makes this decision to be this thorn but that she becomes the victor without ever really doing much of anything at all. She's never placed in a position that might undermine her morally even though that's ostensibly the theme of book one. Her most profound action is inaction.
She's kind of a lousy protagonist.
Tags: