Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Character contrasts in the Hunger Games

This book was impossible to put down, with its ceaseless suspense and cutting insights into today’s culture. Like many, I completely fell in love with the tenacity and determination of Katniss and I am curious to see how she develops in the next several installments in the series. 
One of the most interesting aspects of Collin’s story is the contrasts between Katniss and Peeta; both are thrown into the ring, and both are fighting to survive and yet their strategies are radically different. Katniss immediately alienates the ‘career group’ and strikes out on her own while Peeta works the career group and befriends them, to protect himself and Katniss. Katniss is uninterested in people, Peeta works situations and people for his benefit. I found this two approaches very interesting; during the first part of the Games, Peeta seemed weak to me. Compared to Katniss’s impressive skill set and tenacity, Peeta with his cake decorating abilities, did not seem like a comparison.


However, Peeta is strong and brave as well; he warns Katniss when the careers are coming after her and part of his involvement with the group is to protect Katniss. His level head and strategy is quite impressive, especially considering how violent those tributes were. 

This contrast illustrates that strength comes in many forms and bravery is not always demonstrated by fighting.

3 comments:

  1. I thought Peeta's strategy was surprising as well, especially considering the intimidating nature of the Career pack. I never considered how much that connected to Peeta being a "people person", contrasted to Katniss' lonewolf strategy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was definitely cool to see the differences between them and how effective both of their strategies are for them, even though they are so different. Its also kind of funny how both characters are kind of draw you in, even though they are such opposite people.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It was very clever and interesting how Collins made a point in making Peeta and Katniss' personalities distinct and different but how also they were alike in many ways and how their choices in the game brought them together at the end...

    ReplyDelete