Great Character: Katniss Everdeen (“The Hunger Games”)
This month’s theme: Heroines. Today’s guest post by Jason Cuthbert features Katniss Everdeen from the 2012 movie The Hunger Games, screenplay by Gary Ross and Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray, novel by Suzanne Collins.
“The Lord of the Rings.” “Twilight.” Harry Potter.” There has been a wide range of successful book-turned-movie adaptations. But in just fours years, author Suzanne Collins’ 2008 post-apocalyptic young adult novel “The Hunger Games,” inspired by reality television, the Iraq war and the Greek myth of Theseus where youth are sent into a labyrinth to confront the Minotaur, exploded into a feature film in 2012. Director and screenwriter Gary Ross (“Big,” “Pleasantville”) co-wrote the script with Suzanne Collins herself, in conjunction with Billy Ray (“Hart’s War,” “Flightplan”), about a female Robin Hood named Katniss Everdeen playing a deadly game of survivor where killing the competition is literal and legal.
Jennifer Lawrence played the lead role of Katniss Everdeen as half of her two-part 2012 Hollywood take-over: “The Hunger Games” earned $691,247,768 on a $78 million production budget and “Silver Linings Playbook” grossed $236,412,453 with a $21 million production cost and earned a 22 year-old Jennifer Lawrence her first Academy Award. As it currently stands, the wise folks at the Lionsgate Films, who know quite a bit about diverse and underserved protagonist types(Tyler Perry’s Madea movies, “The Expendables”) formulated their franchise further, with sequels for “The Hunger Games” scheduled for 2013, 2014 and 2015.
The Hunger Games plot summary from IMDB:
Katniss Everdeen voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place in the Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death in which two teenagers from each of the twelve Districts of Panem are chosen at random to compete.
What makes Katniss Everdeen easy to root for and impossible to not feel emotionally connected to is the amount of responsibility and burden that she willingly is carrying on with at such a tender young age. With her father dead, a mother who is clearly not over it and a younger sister that looks up to her — Katniss is practically the “man of the house” in the generic sense of providing for and protecting her family. Imagining Katniss no longer present to support her sibling and mother when she is hauled off to fight in “The Hunger Games” is more nightmare than anything else. How will they function without her solid backbone to lift them up?
KATNISS EVERDEEN: You can’t tune out again.
KATNISS’ MOTHER: I won’t…
KATNISS EVERDEEN: No. You can’t. Not like when dad died. You’re all she has. No matter what you feel, you be there for her, you understand. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Katniss is also a very self-aware young lady. She knows that she is stronger than she appears to others, because she knows that she has to be. Living in District 12, where mandatory resources are scarce, Katniss has a hardened exterior that has been shaped by adapting to her surroundings instead of caving into them. This inner strength has become her duty to use it to defend those that may be weaker, such as her mother, sister, the smallest Hunger Games opponent Rue and her not-so-secret admirer Peeta Mellark.
KATNISS EVERDEEN: Throw that metal thing over there.
PEETA MELLARK: What? No. Haymitch said we’re not supposed to show our skills.
KATNISS EVERDEEN: I don’t care what Haymitch said. Those guys are looking at you like you’re a meal. Throw it.
Katniss Everdeen will not cower or submit, even if it might be in her favor to do so. She even refuses to appear subservient, and playing by the rules, making friends and expressing her feelings are the flaws that she struggles to overcome, when she is a not busy thrusting arrows through the flesh of blade-swinging peers.
HAYMITCH ABERNATHY: They aren’t very happy with you.
KATNISS EVERDEEN: Why, because I didn’t die?
The moment that Katniss Everdeen graduates from a skilled hunter to a full-blown heroine right before our very eyes occurs very early on when she refuses to let her little sister be chosen to be selected and most likely slaughtered in “The Hunger Games” as a 12 year-old “tribute.” When Katniss volunteers her life for that of her sister, forcing her way into the dark abyss of the unknown in the name of her sisterly bond, we are seeing a woman take shape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTyyKROkC3E
After already witnessing Katniss’ loyalty and dedication to her sister by putting her own neck on the front lines as a Hunger Games warrior, the tiny, shy little girl Rue becomes practically a substitute subject for Katniss’ big sister instincts, as she continues to play guardian, even though the object of the game is to kill everyone, even someone half her size. Katniss isn’t all cold, calculated, soldier, hardcore bravado. She has a heart that still beats to the rhythm of humanity, and if she refused to cry in the face of her own immediate family members, watching Rue suffer proves to be quite the emotional test.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ins2kYZqQ
For her ability to adjust to a harsh, accelerated road to womanhood, for her chosen role of caring custodian over the passive and less aggressive and her willingness to embrace love at the risk of it being a liability to her immediate survival — Katniss Everdeen is an incredibly GREAT CHARACTER.
Katniss is one of my favorite characters in recent memory. Forced to take on parental responsibilities, then offering to sacrifice herself to save her sister, she unexpectedly has to confront one of her biggest challenges: How to survive in a violent contest while getting in touch with her ‘feminine’ side. Such a perfect character for tweens and adolescents, beset by the roiling waters of “who the hell am I,” to see how Katniss deals with all of that in a highly pressurized situation.
Thanks once again, Jason, for another opportunity to explore a Great Character. Join us in comments to discuss Katniss Everdeen.
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