Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Discuss Hunger Games

This is topic Discuss Hunger Games in forum Discussing Published Hooks & Books at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Ferris (Member # 2819) on :

I have been reading The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. I am not quite finished yet, so please no big spoilers. Here is the question:

How is it that Collins is able to build such sypathy for the main character Katniss in such a short amount of pages. When Katniss is "chosen" as the tribute for the games, I genuinely felt for her and admired her. How did that happen when we just barely met her. Am I alone or did anyone else have the same reaction?

[This message has been edited by Ferris (edited May 12, 2009).]

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Interesting question, and grounds for at least one critical essay comparing Bella Swann (of the TWILIGHT books) to Katniss.

Both characters are very self-sacrificing, but I think Katniss is more sympathetic because Collins is a more experienced writer and has learned how to get the information that she is self-sacrificing across to the reader successfully, where TWILIGHT was Meyer's first book, and she didn't really know how to get the information across (she has improved, and she did a better job with her also-self-sacrificing character, Wanderer, in THE HOST).

It's very hard for a first-person narrator to come across as self-sacrificing because it's a trait that requires humility and not thinking about oneself, so the first-person narrator can't just say, "I'm very self-sacrificing." It has to come through in more subtle ways from what the character does and how she thinks.

Katniss risks her life every day to get food for her mother and sister, and the way she thinks about her sister makes it clear that she would do anything for her. And when she does, it's believable, and makes the reader care.

Bella Swann comes across to some readers (or so I've heard--she didn't come across that way to me) as whiny instead. I didn't realize she was self-sacrificing, though, until I read THE HOST and saw that Wanderer was self-sacrificing and realized that Bella was, too.

Anyway, that's my take on it. And one of the reasons why first person narrators can be very hard to get right.

Posted by Ferris (Member # 2819) on :

I think you must be right in that . . . I had thought that perhaps I just identified with her so much because of her role as a provider, but I think it is both. First she stepped up and saved her family when her Mom had checked out, became the mother figure for Prim, then became her savior when she sacrificed herself for her.

It was just amazing to me that I was so attached to Katniss in so few pages. In Twilight it took me quite a while before I cared about Bella.

Perhaps the difference was that the first thing we see from Katniss is that she is a strong provider who excells in a traditionaly man's arena of hunting and that she is doing it despite the risk of punishment/death. It isn't until later that we learn she wasn't always so strong. Perhaps that is the difference between Katniss and Bella.