the second movie of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, has broken box office records, and, like its predecessor, is an impressive yet gritty film. Suzanne Collins wrote a captivating series of novels for young adults, and the film adaptations have been well starring and well directed, especially the casting of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, the film’s star and lead. Lawrence manages to embody Katniss’s tenacity with apparent ease, as well as her youthful ignorance in the midst of the risky political situation in which she finds herself.
There has been a lot of talk about Katniss among Christians. In the first film, she volunteers to take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games, a battle to the death between 24 “tributes” from 12 districts controlled by the Capitol, a flamboyant and totalitarian consumer state. The contestants are selected by lottery, and when Katniss’s younger sister Prim is selected, she offers herself as a tribute and takes her sister’s place. Once in the arena, she is responsible for killing three people, although each case was, in one way or another, self-defense. At the end of it, only she and Peeta remain, her district partner who is in love with her. Instead of deciding to fight each other, they decide to commit suicide, but the games end abruptly and both are declared victors.
All of this is broadcast on television, and the entire nation is riveted in front of the television. Their refusal to kill each other sparks a furor in the other districts, and those in power see her as a problem.
ethical crisis
Katniss’s story presents a profound ethical crisis. Is she a hero? Is Katniss, as some Christians have supposed, a Christ figure, giving it all up, replacing Prim, and rising victorious from certain death? Or is she, as ND Wilson suggests, worthy of contempt for participating in these games?
Wilson has an interesting point. He argues that participating in these games is colluding with the Capitol. A real opposition, he tells us, would be to follow in the footsteps of Maximus in Gladiator, who refused to kill another slave when the emperor demanded, and gained the loyalty of the people as a result. But I’m not sure this example is the best. How many innocent slaves did Maximus kill before that time? (Only in the well-known scene from “Are you not entertained? I can count 6; Katniss’s double in the first full movie). It is evident that Maximus decided to kill to survive. It’s not until he approaches the Colosseum in Rome that he begins to think of a cause greater than survival. It is not until that moment that he refuses to kill. He kills many at first, and only then does he decide to stop.
Wilson thinks the Hunger Games author “should have made Katniss remove the pager from her arm the first night instead of participating and perpetuating the evil.” He introduces a Katniss who deliberately defies the rules of the game, protects the other tributes, and refuses to kill. This is an interesting idea, and perhaps Wilson should write this book. I would read it. But I think Wilson misses the big difference between a leading man like Maximus and a leading lady like Katniss, and in doing so he misses out on what this show is about. Maximus is a general in the Roman army, an experienced soldier, a tactician on and off the battlefield. He understands power and knows how to use it. Katniss is none of this. In her prime, she is a resourceful teenager who grew up in poverty and under the oppression of a totalitarian state. The brilliance of Collins’s books (and Jennifer Lawrence’s performance) is in the way she portrays how a teenager would act in these dire circumstances.
This level of oppression is hard to imagine from the outside, and herein lies Collins’ strength. She introduces us to this ordinary young woman who finds herself subjected to (and participating in) state-sponsored terror because she doesn’t know what else to do. She doesn’t take the tracker off her because the state is watching, and they’ll just come to the arena and put another one on her. And she may get beat up. The all-powerful state is the shadow that darkens Katniss’s entire life, and to defy that authority is to call horror on her and everyone she loves. That kind of paranoia is fundamental to totalitarianism, and Collins presents us in Katniss with a protagonist in the throes of this situation.
personal despair
I think if Isaac Asimov had written this trilogy, Katniss and Peeta would have completed their suicide. For no one to win the games would have been a profound political statement. For his part, Collins gives us a result that, although it is less powerful in its symbology, is more credible; if he gives him a chance to survive, the teenagers will take it. It is more an act of personal desperation than a political challenge. catching fire continue with this theme. Katniss time and time again chooses to survive rather than run. His voluntary acts of rebellion are small: going to the woods to look for rabbits and avoiding a friend’s whipping. And she quickly returns to fearful obedience when the state tightens its grip on her. The great acts of rebellion happen behind the scenes and without her knowing it. And when she sees them on her “Victoria Tour”, she is petrified. Here, once again, she is the pawn of others, subject to the wishes that she be a symbol of open rebellion against the Capitol.
So back to the original question: is Katniss a hero? While she’s not a substitute Christ figure, I think there’s another type to consider when looking at her story (especially the first two installments): the suffering servant. Consider the trilogy of The Lord of the rings as a parallel: The Hunger Games it does not give us an Aragorn, a warrior-king who unites the forces of good. Rather, he gives us someone more complex, a girl who inadvertently becomes the national symbol of hope and rebellion, whose walk is marked not with victory but with defeat. She is not Aragorn; she is Frodo, a brave young woman, carrying a load far greater than herself. Aragorn doesn’t have nightmares about the enemies he’s killed, but Frodo (and Katniss) will never sleep well. His journey toward rebellion against the state is not a triumphant march; it is a hesitant and wavering struggle.
On fire is the perfect title for this second film. The embers of rebellion in the other districts are beginning to spread, and though Katniss doesn’t start this story ready for war (she can’t imagine it, as no child raised in a totalitarian system could), but she’s starting to catch fire. little by little. The trilogy of The Games of Hunger reminds us that in some parts of the world, hope is an unimaginable but inevitable dream. Dehumanizing oppression is a power with an expiration date, as it always has been throughout history. The human spirit (or the image of God creating it) is too strong to remain crushed forever. It doesn’t take much – a child, or a mockingjay – but once it happens, it’s impossible to ignore.