So! First post after everyone (including me) agreed how bored they were! YIKES! Here goes nothing! Previous entries can be found in the directory.Chapter 22
Katniss wakes up, thinking she's back at home, in her bed with her family. Psyche, you're in a shitty cave with Peeta! That's like when you're waking up and you half-dream that there's some really good food in front of you, like Chinese food, and then you reach for it and there's nothing there...and also you're in a cave with fucking Peeta.
He tells Katniss that he woke up and found her in a pool of blood. He bandaged her up, with what I am not sure (“Your bra.”-Peeta) and now proceeds to help her gain her strength back. ROLE REVERSAL! All in the space of like, 20 pages! There's a raging storm outside, and Katniss guesses that the Gamemakers are doing it to juice up the fight between Cato and Thresh. She tells Peeta what happened with the latter dude showing her mercy and Peeta mentions that they should hope Cato kills him so they don't have to. Seems crass, but I was thinking more or less the same thing. I don't like agreeing with Peeta, it makes me feel dirty.
Hearing Peeta talk about it gives Katniss her most human moment yet; she realizes that she doesn't “want anyone else to die” and is full of profound rage at the Capitol. But she doesn't say anything, for fear of like, bears ravaging their cave in retaliation or something. Could happen! Hover bears, maybe!
Later she asks Peeta about the area of the arena that seems to be Thresh's domain, he tells her it's an endless field of tall grass with a “sinister feeling to it.” So obviously we'll end up there sooner or later; Chekov once said if there's a field of tall grass in Act II someone has to run through it in Act III. Or mow it. Peeta's fear of the field (c'mon buddy, if there's grass in the field, you know?) causes Katniss to unfavorably compare him to Gale. Peeta grew up in a house that always smelled “like baking bread” whereas Gale graduated from the university of hard knocks, with a BA from the Kennedy School of Paranoia. He'd see the field as a risk but also a potential reward—and wouldn't, we gather, be as much of a pussy as Peeta is being. She wonders if the revolutionary rhetoric she and Gale used to toss around would “shock” Peeta.
Wait, wasn't Katniss the one having a political awakening like two chapters ago? Wasn't she finally realizing what Peeta and Gale meant when they trashed the government? I've got whiplash over here. Katniss's level of awareness and political savvy changes from paragraph to paragraph; she's like an Occupy Wall Street protestor. PEETA IS THE 1%!
I've been saying for a while that The Hunger Games will be a pretty good movie, but I might be wrong. Because here, Peeta thinks about food and Katniss guesses that the sponsor well dried up with the cost of those roofies. That prompts Peeta to earnestly beg her not to risk her life for him. Unsure of how honest Peeta is but realizing at any rate that this drama will make for good television, Katniss launches into soap opera mode. “Maybe I did it for myself, Peeta? Did you ever think of that?” she says, maybe throwing a glass of water emphatically. But then, finally, she starts thinking of what would happen if Peeta died, and is overcome with REAL emotion. Let's back up and go over what happened in that fucking paragraph again:
- Peeta either made a real confession about his fears and feelings for Katniss or is faking really well
- Katniss realized the potential for audience manipulation and began to fake-react to Peeta
- Her fake acting brought out actual emotions and the line blurred for her and us as to what she feels
Then Peeta notices her head is bleeding again, and the moment is ruined. Cockblocked by your own bleeding head, ain't that always the way? The next day the rain continues to pour and Katniss and Peeta are starving. She guesses that Haymitch and the sponsors want more than physical intimacy (which is weird, why wouldn't you just want MORE PHYSICAL INTIMACY, it's television!), and she wonders how to draw Peeta into such a conversation. And then point-blank asks him when he started crushing on her. Very smooth, Katniss.
So Peeta's “how long I've loved you story” is long and a little weird. Like, it turns out Peeta's dad used to love Katniss's mom. And his dad told Peeta that on the first day of school. COOL THING TO TELL YOUR SON! “Your mother was actually my second choice.” But she left Peeta's dad for a coalminer. Haughty child Peeta was like “Father, why ever would a woman forsake thee for a mere peasant?” And Papa Peeta says Katniss's dad had a lovely singing voice, and that's what won him the girl. That's what did it? Well, chicks love Michael Buble, so. Anyway that first day of school Katniss sang, and Peeta's been crushing on her ever since. (Holy shit, what if this book ends with Katniss becoming a pop star?) A bamboozled Katniss continues to try to square the increasingly circular romance:
For a moment I'm almost foolishly happy and then confusion sweeps over me. Because we're supposed to be making this stuff up, playing at being in love, not actually being it. But Peeta's story has a ring of truth to it.
A ring of truth as loud as a fucking belltower am I right? Peeta confesses to essentially stalking Katniss for her whole life and tells her she just hasn't been paying attention (“Go back and look at your family photographs. I'm in ALL OF THEM”).
“I am now,” I say.
“Well, I don't have much competition here,” he says.
That's not true! Have you heard Katniss talk about how “huge” Thresh is? But anyway, instead of feeling like she needs to put on a show, Katniss suddenly wants privacy. Oh my! She says “You don't have much competition anywhere,” goes in for a kiss, violins swell, rockets take off, etcetera.
But just as our lovers embrace, something lands outside the cave. Katniss snaps into killmode (which probably doesn't diminish Peeta's excitement level) but it's a gift from Haymitch: a whole fucking feast with like, unlimited breadsticks and salad and shit. Okay.
So I sort of feel like the “hunger” theme of this book is underdeveloped. I mean, yeah, in the feast is the same stew that Katniss raved about on TV before the games, which gives it the illusion of coming full circle, but Katniss hasn't really been that hungry so far, has she? You sort of get the sense it was worse for her outside the games, when she had to provide for her mother and sister and to a lesser extent Gale's family. The only other significant “hunger” thing I can think of is the time Katniss's “hallow day” foreshadows Rue's death. The rest of it has just been feasting on wild turkeys and mint leaves and berries. Some hunger, eh?
2 comments:
I don't think they're called The Hunger Games because the tributes are starving to death (doesn't she say the audience found that boring one year somewhere?). The winner receives food and wealth for the district for a year so their people don't go hungry since many of the people in the districts are poor and starving. There's the fact that The Capitol basically controls the districts' survival in many ways, including their ability to eat and the games are a representation of their ability to take that away if you don't comply with their wishes. Plus, there's the Panem et Circenses running theme and the title plays right into that concept. I've also read analyses where people propose that it's partly representative of the original rebels hunger for power. Either way, I don't think you can take it solely as the literal "tributes are hungry" meaning.
That line about Thresh and Cato (and really the whole exchange about Thresh and how they might have been friends in other circumstances) is one of my favorites in the book. It's such a throwaway you almost wouldn't notice it, but it really represents how appalling the idea of the games really is.
I was just going to say... "Hunger" Games is a misleading title. There were only about 3 out of 100 scenes in the book/movie of people (mostly Katniss) starving to death.
#imseriousbutnotreally
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