Katniss Everdeen has to be one of my most favourite unreliable narrators ever. Like she doesn’t even lie to the reader, she’s just completely unaware of her own self and feelings that it’s incredible to read
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Such a good thread. Every time I reread the books or rewatch the movies, I feel like I find something new to ruminate on. One of my favorite series to talk about
"I dont know what i feel towards peeta but I will do anything to protect him" in Catching Fire.
Her obliviousness to the scheme to keep her and Peeta alive is also adorable. "Did finnick save my life and peetas an hour ago just to kill peeta after he hits a force field?" Girl use your brain haha
i always thought it was hilarious how shes the only teenage girl stuck in a love triangle with two great guys and literally couldnt give less of a fuck 😂
These are all good points, but I hate the general trend to use "unraliable narrator" in place of (on occasion):
- socially unaware
- emotionally immature
- irrational
- liar
- dumb
- sociopath
...
Just because one is the protagonist. 🤨
Are those not traits that make them unreliable when they are the narrator of the story? What should be used when talking about characters with those traits?
Katniss was a near perfect teenage protagonist in that respect. Any and all teenage protagonists should be unreliable at the core, because it’s the rare person that knows themselves, let alone a teen.
Katniss was the type of person to hide her feelings so deeply that she wasn’t aware of them herself. This could have been a terrible route for a narrator but Suzanne Collins managed to enhance the story with it because the Hunger Games was about survival and that’s all Katniss cared about.
“Peeta just complimented me and smiled at me and it made me feel all warm inside… he’s just trying to catch me off guard so he can kill me more easily in the arena. I’m gonna kiss him on the cheek in response, right on his bruise, that’ll show him” like GIRL
I knew I had grown and matured when I reread this series about a year ago and was 10000% on “Team Peeta” this time around and constantly crying over how stupid in blind Katniss was lol
As a teen when I read it the first time, I couldn’t stand Peeta.. but now I know how wrong I was
I wish I had fully appreciated the hunger games trilogy back when I was in college doing English bc I could’ve written a whole thesis about Katniss as an unreliable narrator or the importance of the Katniss/Peeta romance plot
Katniss spends so much of the first part of Catching Fire thinking Gale = rebellion and Peeta = fake/capitol but her relationship with Peeta IS rebellion. She thinks her relationship with Peeta is only something people in the Capitol care about but it fuels the fire of the districts.
This is true. It I think Katniss’ misperception is a common one - romance can’t be revolutionary, you see. Love, perhaps. But romance? That’s some soft shit. Meanwhile the whole country is turned upside down. A very fun plot.
It fuels the fire in people who want to fight for love and humanity. In Mockingjay when she goes to the hospital in district 8 (?), the people there ask her about Peeta and ‘the baby.’ They care about their relationship too, it symbolises love and why they’re fighting.
I will never be someone who says ‘ew why does X piece of media need a romance subplot’ bc I love love and I love romance in my books, movies and tv shows. It just so happens that Katniss and Peeta’s love story happens to be one of the best and absolutely central to everything else happening.
I love how her inability to understand her own feelings is completely understandable. Like, she’s been emotionally traumatized, she’s a dumb kid from a community that doesn’t talk about feelings, and then she has to perform love for millions to say alive. It’s so reasonable to be a mess
Exactly! And she’s also just a teenage girl! That’s already a confusing enough thing to be without throwing in a death arena and this boy who you’ve fancied forever but never spoken to. Like a recipe for chaos!!
It is such a good example of an unreliable narrator that it is easy to over look - most I can recall seeing are so "wink, nod, OK BUT DID YOU SEE" that they are obnoxious. As painful as sitcoms where they pause for the laugh track while the misunderstanding goes down.
The good ones are invisible.
Yeah like she’s not trying to trick the reader, she’s genuinely clueless and confused and that makes it so much more compelling. Like the reader can see things as they are and she’s oblivious 😭
It’s the main reason the movies don’t live up to the books for me, there’s no way to recreate that narration in a way that makes sense for film and it makes the character.
Yes! I think the cast did a good job and Josh Hutcherson was pretty much the perfect Peeta (the movies butchered his character though and ‘weakened’ him) but Katniss’s teenage brain is so central to everything going on
The inconsistent world building frustrated me on the first read, but Katniss is brilliant as a character. This is a story about child soldiers and the price they pay. It's a pinnacle of Dystopian YA.
So can't care because she loses everything she loves--because love is unreliable when you deal with trauma...it's such a study in PTSD and trying to be authentic through the tangle
Yeah I’m just looking at it in a lighthearted way rn in that thread but there’s so much to analyse and say about why she is the way she is in the books
Yeah--Love these books...Read them while in labor with the 2nd child...picked up the 1st and then prayed the rest were already out (they were), then read the 2nd and 3rd with labor pains my husband was like "these must be really good" I'm like, they are LOL
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Her obliviousness to the scheme to keep her and Peeta alive is also adorable. "Did finnick save my life and peetas an hour ago just to kill peeta after he hits a force field?" Girl use your brain haha
- socially unaware
- emotionally immature
- irrational
- liar
- dumb
- sociopath
...
Just because one is the protagonist. 🤨
Does Katniss fit the same definition of (e.g.) Verbal in The Usual Suspects to you?
Intention?
Awareness?
Pathology?
Just TRUE?
(and don't even get me started about author's theory, otherwise I'll use 50 Shades and JKR! 😉)
As a teen when I read it the first time, I couldn’t stand Peeta.. but now I know how wrong I was
This is the girl who said she “chose Gale” and then moments later wrote an entire paragraph about Peeta’s eyelashes. Katniss pls
The good ones are invisible.