And we're back! So, lots of you turned out in the comments to reassure me about the deflating twist we just experienced. To you, I say: WE SHALL SEE. But hey, that was a good discussion, dudes! Keep it up! Previous entries can be found in the directory (which I have now updated).Book 3: The Victor
Hmmm, I wonder who that will be...
Chapter 19
Katniss sits in her tree and considers the implication of the literal game-changer she just heard: with only six fighters left, the Gamemakers have decreed that there can be two winners provided they are from the same district. Now, two of the six contestants don't even fit that description: there's the so-far entirely unseen Thresh, who is from Rue's district, and the girl Katniss somewhat bitchily calls Foxface. No help for you dudes, sorry! This rule change is an almost totally transparent assist for Katniss and Peeta, in other words (unless Cato and the girl from his district have been banging for the Capitol cameras back at basecamp), and Katniss she probably has Peeta to thank/blame for it.
The star-crossed lovers...Peeta must have been playing that angle all along. Why else would the Gamemakers have made this unprecedented change in the rules? For two tributes to have a shot at winning, our “romance” must be so popular with the audience that condemning it would jeopardize the success of the games.
Much like some of the more insufferable pivot sections of Twilight, it's hard to know where Katniss ends and Suzanne Collins begins. (Also: In the comments last time Suzette wondered how “star-crossed lovers” would have made it all the way into the Panemian zeitgeist. I'm guessing it didn't come attached to Romeo & Juliet, since one of the big draws of that play is that THEY DIE. So the phrase is just some cultural shrapnel left over from the cultural and physical wars that have resulted since. Does that work?)
What would be great is, now that we're stripping away plot elements, is if Katniss would clear up her own feelings about Peeta. Like if she'd say, right now, “And the truth is, I don't find him attractive. He's a goof, and probably uncircumsized and that would be weird for me.” Because then we could focus on the media angle and the false perception of their relationship and Collins could do some fun commentary about the shiny object of “Katniss & Peeta” distracting from the evil machinery of the Hunger Games. As it stands now, there's so much blurry ambiguity that Katniss and Peeta's true feelings are the only thing you can really latch on to.* And I don't really care about that!
(*Katniss deliberately smiles after hearing the announcement, making sure the moon is lighting her face for the cameras. Her smile is prompted by a genuine thought about Peeta, but it's the thought that he “wasn't a threat” all along. STUFF ABOUT THIS THAT IS AMBIGUOUS: 1. Whether Katniss feels affection or just relief 2. How exactly Katniss wants her gesture to be perceived by the public 3. How the public actually IS perceiving this whole situation 4. Whether the public view of Katniss/Peeta is making them question the motives and effects of the Hunger Games or if it is just adding a level of tabloid enjoyment to the whole amoral proceeding 5. How Peeta feels. At least a few of these things should be clear for it to make any sense, but none of it is. So the potential social criticism/parody elements of The Hunger Games have kind of fuzzed out of our grasp, and now we're just wondering if we should be Team Peeta or not. Boring!)
The next morning Katniss cautiously sets out tracking Peeta after a ridiculously long train of thought in which she retraces his every move so far, only to conclude that he's just probably somewhere along the stream she's been to a few times. Before she sets out, she starts a big fire “to confuse my enemies' minds.” For someone who is supposedly being cautious I wish she'd be more careful about redundant phrases. As she walks, Katniss wonders if Peeta will be willing to ally with her and again speaks in the voice of the author:
He's very hard to predict, which might be interesting under different circumstances, but at the moment only provides an extra obstacle.
“I'd enjoy that unpredictability in the sack, but when I'm trying to write a coherent setpiece—I mean, when I'm trying to walk down this stream, it's just annoying.” Eventually Katniss comes across some bloodstains on rocks, and hears a “hoarse” voice asking if she's come to finish him off (“Nay!” Katniss making a hoarse/horse joke, which would have been kind of great). She can't find Peeta until she realizes he's right under her (“Upskirt, baby!”-Peeta), having camouflaged himself to hide in plain sight along the streambed. It's “the final word in camouflage,” she says, which is the tagline for my new clothing line (we only make camo shorts and camo thongs), but it turns out our man is pretty badly wounded. Katniss sets out to help him, but first he quietly reminds her that she should kiss him for the benefit of the cameras. (“I also kept my penis under this convenient leaf flap, so...”-Peeta) She doesn't yet, though.
Instead she tries to roll Peeta to the water to clean him up, but can only get him to the edge before it's too painful for him. She gets his shirt off (ladies) and cleans the burns and stings all over it (never mind, ladies). Then she gets his pants off (come back, ladies!) and finds an oozing, festering, horrible wound (false alarm, ladies! Fuck, sorry). It's a bad enough wound that Katniss's first instinct is to bail. But she sticks it out, and if you like reading about pus, this chapter is for you! I'll skip the next few pages, but to summarize: pus.
There's a weird moment where Katniss wants to wash Peeta's “undershorts” and asks him to cover himself with a backpack while she does. He's like, “I don't care if you see my dick baby,” (Though he says “see me” which is kind of adorably quaint) and she's like “No, you're probably uncircumsized and that would be weird for me.” After getting him cleaned up, she tries to move with him and finds that he is not road-ready. Instead they take shelter between some rocks, and Peeta tries to bring up what Katniss should do if he doesn't make it.
Our hero is struck by her fear of such an outcome, and ends up kissing Peeta on his pretty little maybe dying mouth. Katniss immediately dismisses it as an “impulse,” but a few minutes later she steps outside the cave (my brain automatically starts scanning for Plato references when people step out of caves, but no dice) and a parachute lands with some broth. Broth? These things never fail to be underwhelming. When are you going to send Katniss a fucking UZI, Haymitch?!
But Katniss realizes the broth is a reward for the kiss, and that she'll need to put on a show for the rubes at home to nurse Peeta back to health. STRIPTEASE TIME, baby! No, she thinks back to the way her mother lovingly treated her father and tries to channel that, returning to Peeta and kissing him awake. He gazes at her contentedly, and she muses about what a good actor he is. IRONIC (MAYBE)!
Stray Notes & Questions
- Stephenie Meyer never had trouble convincing me her narrator was stupid. But on both the romantic and political front Katniss is at once extremely perceptive and extremely dense. I don't have a read on her at all. Suzanne Collins can't sell dumb like S. Meyer!
- Does the multilevel ambiguity bother you? Is the problem that I'm reading too slowly? Commenter Kim has a new website about YA fiction, which you should all check out, and in one post she discusses the case for reading YA fiction like you would any other form of Literature. That in many cases, it stands up to close critical scrutiny. I think that is certainly the case, but is probably not the case for The Hunger Games. Do you disagree? Come at me, bro.
- Re: yesterday's Kristen Stewart story--watch this blog for updates. I'm following this story like whoa, guys.
1 comment:
I've seen some pretty impressive analyses of the individual books so I do think you can critically analyze them, but I kind of think the series as a whole can stand up to scrutiny much better than the individual books, simply because they are so dependent on each other. She sets up things in this book that you don't fully understand until the second or third book. Whether or not that's a bad thing depends on how you view trilogies/series, I guess. Like if you think they should be taken as a whole or each book should be independent. I actually prefer a combination, which is probably part of why I enjoy this series.
I don't think Katniss is dumb, I just think she's sheltered. Yes, she lives under an oppressive government and she's basically been one rabbit away from starvation, but she's still very naive about certain things like politics and love in the larger sense. She's playing the game while only understanding half the rules. Does that make sense?
I also think her characterization is more slowly revealed than, say, Bella. With Bella, you pretty much see it all up front and then you're just continually reminded of it. With Katniss you learn more of her and her motivations a little bit at a time. At times it's set up like the reader is learning it at the same time Katniss herself is. Possibly Collins was going for a deadly crazy situations teach you who you are angle or possibly I'm just reading that into it now since I can't really remember exactly what I thought of her the first time I read the book.
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