Free The Girl Who Was on Fire by Diana Peterfreund, Carrie Ryan, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Leah Wilson, Terri Clark, Blythe Woolston Page B
job is to create artifice, and yet confronted with Katniss, he sees that she shines best in her own light, with her own natural beauty and manner. And this is a clue to the “real” Katniss, the person she herself is not yet acquainted with.
Katniss frequently doubts her own motivations. For a time she even becomes caught up in Peeta’s post-hijacking delusions. Her own guilt about the devastation her actions seem to have triggered—the destruction of District 12, so many people’s pain, suffering, and death—mounts. Is she really a cold-blooded killer? She slaughters other tributes in the arenas; she longs to murder Snow. What kind of person does that make her? One incapable of feeling? She fears all this, and Peeta’s Capitolinduced rants home in on her own sense of failure and guilt and seem to confirm her suspicions: “Finally he sees me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly” ( Mockingjay ). She grows increasingly confused. If Peeta, the one person who has always thought the best of her, can be convinced of all this, what must others think of her? What should she think of herself?
A lovely summation of just what other people think about Katniss appears in Mockingjay right after she has failed miserably while rehearsing a scripted propo. Much to her chagrin,
Haymitch takes control of the situation and asks the group gathered in Command exactly when Katniss during the Games made them “ feel something real” ( Mockingjay ). The answers come, and with every memory we, if not yet Katniss, are assured she is neither a cold-hearted killer nor incapable of love. It’s her acting that is pathetic, not the state of her heart.
Because Katniss has been so hurt in the past, she has built a barrier around her heart. Or maybe, in the language of these Games, she has become ensnared by pain. She is defensive. She cannot believe people would love her—until in desperate circumstances she has no choice but to see that they do. Not just her closest acquaintances and friends, but strangers, like the injured in the hospital in District 8 who, even maimed or dying, recognize her face and reach for her, joyful that she is alive to carry on the cause—everyone who has been inspired by her fiery determination to right horrendous wrongs.
Ultimately Katniss is able to admit that at times she has acted from the part of her that is Snow’s—and perhaps Coin’s—equal. Her unerring instinct for survival has made her behave in ways her better self isn’t proud of. But ultimately, too, she is able to make peace with her role. By seeing and embracing who she truly is, good and bad, she is able to see through one of the Capitol’s greatest illusions: that she is responsible for the rebellion, rather than merely the means by which they were overthrown.
Katniss discovers that, even after all she has been through and all she has lost, she is still capable of love. That Snow and the evils of the Capitol have not stolen the possibility of new beginnings, or of having children, for whom the Games will be old history. In the end, the smoke clears and the mirror reflects only the truth—only what is real.
ELIZABETH M. REES is a writer and visual artist living in Greenwich Village in New York City. She has published numerous young adult books, including The Wedding , a novel set in fifteenth century Bruges featuring the painter Jan Van Eyck. She is currently working on a series of short stories about the afterlife and is continuing to weave a tale of an often elusive fat fairy named Maeve.
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
Power and Surveillance in the Hunger Games
LILI WILKINSON
The power in Panem all seems to lie with the Capitol—or more precisely, with President Snow and his government. In the Hunger Games, the same is true of the Gamemakers. After all, they engineer the action: they decide not only what will happen to the tributes, but also what the people at home will see. As the events of the Hunger
Katniss frequently doubts her own motivations. For a time she even becomes caught up in Peeta’s post-hijacking delusions. Her own guilt about the devastation her actions seem to have triggered—the destruction of District 12, so many people’s pain, suffering, and death—mounts. Is she really a cold-blooded killer? She slaughters other tributes in the arenas; she longs to murder Snow. What kind of person does that make her? One incapable of feeling? She fears all this, and Peeta’s Capitolinduced rants home in on her own sense of failure and guilt and seem to confirm her suspicions: “Finally he sees me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly” ( Mockingjay ). She grows increasingly confused. If Peeta, the one person who has always thought the best of her, can be convinced of all this, what must others think of her? What should she think of herself?
A lovely summation of just what other people think about Katniss appears in Mockingjay right after she has failed miserably while rehearsing a scripted propo. Much to her chagrin,
Haymitch takes control of the situation and asks the group gathered in Command exactly when Katniss during the Games made them “ feel something real” ( Mockingjay ). The answers come, and with every memory we, if not yet Katniss, are assured she is neither a cold-hearted killer nor incapable of love. It’s her acting that is pathetic, not the state of her heart.
Because Katniss has been so hurt in the past, she has built a barrier around her heart. Or maybe, in the language of these Games, she has become ensnared by pain. She is defensive. She cannot believe people would love her—until in desperate circumstances she has no choice but to see that they do. Not just her closest acquaintances and friends, but strangers, like the injured in the hospital in District 8 who, even maimed or dying, recognize her face and reach for her, joyful that she is alive to carry on the cause—everyone who has been inspired by her fiery determination to right horrendous wrongs.
Ultimately Katniss is able to admit that at times she has acted from the part of her that is Snow’s—and perhaps Coin’s—equal. Her unerring instinct for survival has made her behave in ways her better self isn’t proud of. But ultimately, too, she is able to make peace with her role. By seeing and embracing who she truly is, good and bad, she is able to see through one of the Capitol’s greatest illusions: that she is responsible for the rebellion, rather than merely the means by which they were overthrown.
Katniss discovers that, even after all she has been through and all she has lost, she is still capable of love. That Snow and the evils of the Capitol have not stolen the possibility of new beginnings, or of having children, for whom the Games will be old history. In the end, the smoke clears and the mirror reflects only the truth—only what is real.
ELIZABETH M. REES is a writer and visual artist living in Greenwich Village in New York City. She has published numerous young adult books, including The Wedding , a novel set in fifteenth century Bruges featuring the painter Jan Van Eyck. She is currently working on a series of short stories about the afterlife and is continuing to weave a tale of an often elusive fat fairy named Maeve.
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
Power and Surveillance in the Hunger Games
LILI WILKINSON
The power in Panem all seems to lie with the Capitol—or more precisely, with President Snow and his government. In the Hunger Games, the same is true of the Gamemakers. After all, they engineer the action: they decide not only what will happen to the tributes, but also what the people at home will see. As the events of the Hunger
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