Katniss Everdeen, Role Model?
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It begins on page one o f the very first book when we are told that
she tries to drown a kitten that her sister had brought home, and the only
reason she didn’t is because her sister got her to stop by begging and
crying. Right off the bat, Collins is letting us know that there is a coldblooded side to Katniss. A ffiend o f mine argued that, to relatives o f hers
that lived on a farm, drowning a sick or unwanted kitten would not have
been seen as cruel or cold-blooded. I would argue, however, that
pragmatic M idwestem farmers were not the primary audience o f this
book. The book’s largest and most passionate following are teenaged
females who generally tend to have a different view o f drowning kittens.
Collins is most likely aware o f how her audience will read this action by
Katniss.
Quite aside from the drowning kitten incident, however, I think
the key to understanding the dark side o f Katniss’s character has to do
with the way she views relationships, which in tum heavily influences
her moral and ethical choices. She sees relationships fiindamentally in
terms o f debt, owing, and repayment. She uses the language o f debt,
owing, and payment twenty-two times in the trilogy. Jennifer Culver has
also noted this trait o f Katniss in her article, ‘“ So Here I Am in His Debt
A gain’: Katniss, Gifts, and Invisible Strings.” She says, “Katniss
evaluates the world through a lens o f debts and reciprocity.”7 Culver
notes that Katniss’s Orientation toward relationships is consistent with
what Marcel Mauss calls a gift culture.8 According to Mauss, in these
cultures “gifting” was a “state o f mind” so much so that everything in the
culture existed “for passing on and for balancing accounts.”9
Culver is correct about this, but there are three things that I
would like to add to Culver’s discussion. First o f all, to use another
f