Katniss: Moral Role Model?

 

                   “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.” (Collins 21)
     Katniss Everdeen has suffered great loss and tragedy in her sixteen years of life. Her father died in a tragic accident when she was young, leaving her to assume the caretaker role for her mother and younger sister. She spends her days roaming to the forbidden woods to hunt and forage, honing her skills and becoming a great huntress and outdoorswoman. Facing such hardship in her young life, Katniss becomes a stoic individualist, with a strong moral code, skills, and cunning all which contribute to her success in the Hunger Games (Jansen 31). 
     Katniss displays strengths that have been traditionally attributed to males, simultaneously undermining and redefining the weakness most often associated with classic female stereotypes. Laura Burdine argues that Katniss’s story is that of a “heroine whose perseverance, resilience, compassion, and self-discovery yield the rare capability to expose truth and catalyze meaningful action”. Even after officials manipulate the rules of the game to expose weakness in the Katniss, she does not waver in her decision to defend herself and not engage (Burdine). In choosing only to defend herself when attacked, and to not engage in aggression towards other Tributes, Katniss displays her strong moral character and her desire to not “want anyone else to die” (Collins 293). This decision shows that Katniss is trying to navigate the impossible situation she has been placed in – kill or be killed. 
     Katniss also finds that the circumstances of her life back home have prepared her for participating in the games in other ways too. She has lived facing poverty and starvation most of her life, and she realizes this experience gives her an upper hand: “That the Careers have been better fed growing up is actually to their disadvantage, because they don’t know how to be hungry. Not like Rue and I do” (Collins 209).
     Throughout the novel Katniss finds that she is more prepared than most to survive the games due to the survival skills she has practiced and perfected since the death of her father. This realization teamed with decision to kill only if necessary to defend herself, help her keep the upper hand throughout the games, ultimately winning them and returning home to her family.

Works Cited 

Burdine, Laura. “The Hunger Games Questions Morality”. Daily Trojan. https://dailytrojan.com/2012/03/25/the-hunger-games-questions-morality/ Accessed 10 Jul 2022.

Collins, Suzane.  The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2009

Jansen, Brian. “Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, and Utopia as Process in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games: “It’s the Frist Gift That’s Always the Hardest to Pay Back.”” Jeuness: Young People, Texts, Cultures. Accessed 11 Jul  2022.