I fly down the hall into my room, bolt the door, and fling myself onto my bed. Then I really begin to sob.

Damnit, Katniss.

I really do want to feel bad for her here.  She’s got a legit thing to be upset about.  And crying in the bedroom isn’t really an unrealistic reaction.  On the other hand, this is a book, and a book needs to be careful about what images it presents.  No matter how bad the situation is, if someone storms through a house and slams the door shut and cries on her bed, all I can think about is “god, she’s acting like such a teenager.”  It’s not like it would be that hard to have her do something other than the most stereotypical of stereotypical teenage responses. 

What will they do to me now? Arrest me? Execute me? Cut my tongue and turn me into an Avox so I can wait on the future tributes of Panem?

Do you consider these things worse than going into the Games?  Because it sounds like your options are “quick death” or “servitude” over “slow and torturous death after running around in fear circles, on national television.”  Why are you reacting as if these are worse?

Of course, I wasn’t, I was shooting at that apple because I was so angry at being ignored. I wasn’t trying to kill one of them. If I were, they’d be dead!

Pause for a moment.  Re-read that.  Let it sink in.

Katniss was faced with the people responsible for taking her away from her family and forcing 24 kids to fight to the death.  She’s faced with the people who will force her to kill and be killed.  And she’s angry at being ignored.  That’s all she’s angry about.  The rest of it?  She continues on with her trend of not giving a flying fuck, which is admittedly in character, but still counts as being a terrible character.

On top of that, she’s faced with the people who are responsible for bringing her here, and she has a bow in her hand, she admits she could have killed them or at least a few of them…and all she did was shoot an apple.  This is our hero, ladies and gents.  This is what we’re stuck with.  A girl who would rather shoot apples over bad guys and who hates other victims instead of the people in charge.

What really scares me is what they might do to my mother and Prim, how my family might suffer now because of my impulsiveness.

Well, has this happened to any other families in the past?  I mean, Katniss can’t be the first person ever to act up while at the games.  If they had a policy of killing the families of people who misbehave, then she’d know about it.

Oh, let’s not kid, we’ve all read the trilogy.  As we see next book, by the fact that they now have a barrier between the judges and the tributes, she is the first person to throw a weapon at them.  74 years of dragging kids away from their homes and loved ones, terrifying them, treating them like objects in a parade, telling them they’re about to die for the general amusement of others, and then sticking them in a room full of sharp pointy things, and Katniss is the first person to try and make a suicide run at the fuckers in charge.  And she didn’t even do that, so technically no one has thought to do that in 74 years.

This book is treating the games as if they’re voluntary, just you happen to die if you lose.  Everyone goes along with what they’re told and doesn’t show any anger about being there, which is something you’d really only expect if they agreed to be there, not if they’re forced to be there.

Since the training isn’t open to viewers, the Gamemakers announce a score for each player.

Why isn’t anyone allowed to watch?  It seems so arbitrary, especially since the betting is apparently so important.  If that really is the case, why do they set things up so that people can only bet based on the beauty pageant that’s going on?

Often, because of the variables in the actual arena, high-scoring tributes go down almost immediately.

Katniss cries about how a low score is basically death in front of the sponsors, then goes on to say that the numbers basically mean nothing.  If there’s no point to the numbers, they why would she assume that a low score is tantamount to a skull and crossbones?  And if the numbers are so useless at actually judging who will win and who won’t, then why haven’t the betters called for a change in policy?  Surely there’s got to be some millionaires who like to gamble and can use their clout to get the training sessions televised.

It’s as if I’ve thrown away all the good work they did on the opening ceremonies without a thought.

They are stylists.  Their clothes don’t make or break you in the arena and everyone knows it.  They have already accomplished their goals by making eye-popping outfits.  That’s their only job.  Chill out.

By the time I showed up, no one even bothered to look at me. They were singing some kind of drinking song, I think.

I don’t care how decadent you want to make your society.  This is not how people act.  It just isn’t.  If they have everything at the push of a button, they aren’t going to obsess about getting their booze every second of every day.  They’ll react basically the same as we do: work during work hours and drink during happy hour.  Seriously, we have food on demand in this society, and all we do is get fat off it, not completely ignore our work in favor of eating.

“Don’t think so. Wouldn’t make much sense. See they’d have to reveal what happened in the Training Center for it to have any worthwhile effect on the population. People would need to know what you did.

What?  No they don’t.  All they have to say is “Katniss misbehaved” and that’s it.  Look, if someone tells you “don’t fire arrows at the guys in charge or we’ll kill your family,” then you’re only warned away from firing arrows.  Probably you’ll expand that out to include all weapons.  On the other hand, if someone says “don’t misbehave or we’ll kill your family,” all of a sudden you’re going omg, what counts as misbehaving?  Talking back?  Not training hard enough?  Making funny faces?  Ack, I’d better just be on extra-special-good-best behavior just in case.  Not telling people what she did would make for a much more controlling effect, not less.

An image pops into my mind. “One man tripped backward into a bowl of punch.”

Alright, it’s imagination time.  Think back on your favorite Disney movie.  It almost doesn’t matter which one.  I like Beauty and the Beast.  Think of a point early on in the movie when something violent happens, but it’s light-hearted and funny.  Think…oh, when we see Belle’s father for the first time.   His machine explodes in the basement.  Now, we all know that exploding machines are serious and cause brutal injuries, but no one is nervous about Mr. Dad being injured because there’s all these audiovisual cues to put us at ease.  There’s bright colors and cheerful animation and funny sound effects.  Now think of something later in the movie.  Let’s say, when Belle gets attacked by wolves.  There’s dark colors all over, the wolves are drawn differently from the rest of the characters, there’s “danger, danger” music playing, so we know that this time someone can get hurt.  This time we should be nervous. 

The bowl of punch is the equivalent of bright, cheerful colors.  It’s a cue that we’re not supposed to take things seriously, that it’s not really dangerous, that we shouldn’t be nervous.  They are the guys responsible for putting on the child-killing murderdeath games but we’re not supposed to be nervous about them or take them seriously.  They’re just funny fat drunk guys that fall into punch bowls.  These are people who sit around all day and think “how can we make the death of children more entertaining,” but we’re not supposed to think of them as threatening. 

I would say it’s hard to get more fucked up than that, but I’ve read the rest of this book.

Then her eyes dart around as if she’s said something totally outrageous. “I’m sorry, but that’s what I think,” she says to no one in particular.

Here we have a very strong hint that Effie is under a lot more pressure than the book gives her credit for.  That, indeed, all the Capitol citizens are not living a life of peaches and roses.  She’s nervous about saying anything out of turn and knows she’s being watched.  It casts a whole new light on her cheery demeanor if we see it as her simply trying to not be axed by a ruling government that will do nasty things to people just for talking wrong.  She’s not cheerful because she’s simpleminded or because she actually likes being part of the death games, but rather because god-knows-what will happen to her otherwise.  And she does a fairly good job at keeping up under what is undoubtedly a lot of strain. 

But, hey, she’s a woman and she wears ugly wigs, so let’s mock her endlessly instead of acknowledge that.

“Scores only matter if they’re very good, no one pays much attention to the bad or mediocre ones. For all they know, you could be hiding your talents to get a low score on purpose. People use that strategy,”

Once again, why was Katniss crying about how her score is going to spell instadeath?  Surely she knows that’s a strategy.  She’s been watching these games her whole life.  The book gives her things to angst and cry about, but then goes out of its way to assure the reader that, no, don’t worry, Katniss is still perfect and can do no wrong.  But all that ends up doing is making her look like a whiney brat who sulks over nothing.

Katniss, of course, scores an 11.  But we just spend several pages assuring ourselves that high numbers mean nothing and, sometimes, are even a disadvantage.  So why all the cheering about how this is the greatest thing ever?

It’s Sunday. A day off at home.

Do they have any sort of religion in this world, or is this just an archaic hold-over?  Or does the author just assume that there’s something inherent to Sundays that make them rest-days?

but the animals would still be afoot when the snow buried my other food sources.

Yes, but there will be fewer of them and they’ll be harder to find.  The few that you do find will be skinny and stringy, because they’ll have as much trouble finding food as you will.  Autumn animals, on the other hand, are fat and squishy because they’re eating everything in sight to get ready for the lean months.  Shoot some of this things and then turn them into jerky. 

He was only fourteen, but he cleared six feet and was as good as an adult to me.

Because Gale has also never been starving in his life.  Starving 14 year-olds do not grow to 6 feet.  Come on, book, this is basic stuff!

I’d stood by while he received his medal of valor in the Justice Building, another oldest child with no father. I remembered his two little brothers clutching his mother, a woman whose swollen belly announced she was just days away from giving birth.

Why did his mother not get the metal?  Why is everything, absolutely everything, given to the males in this book (or the male-stand-in) and the mothers are only there to stand by and look pathetic and add pathos?

Because this book is feminist and don’t you forget it!

I call him my friend, but in the last year it’s seemed too casual a word for what Gale is to me. A pang of longing shoots through my chest.

If it weren’t for Katniss’s general brokenness, I could be on board with this.  When friends turn into more-than-friends, it can sneak up on you.  On the other hand, I’ve had this happen to me, and it was less a matter of “what is this strange feeling in my chest” and more a matter of “what is this– Aw, fuck, really?  Damn you, hormones.  Can I ride this out until it goes away?  Maybe it’s just lust and will go away.  Yeah, let’s pretend like that’s it.”  So I’m already a little ticked off that 99% of books that use this trope use it by making the protagonist completely unaware of her own feelings, and then I’m extra pissed off that it’s Katniss, because I’m sick of reading about how she’s emotionally useless.

Girls should be in charge of their own love lives, and that means being aware of what they are feeling.  Yeah, during the teenage years that can be confusing, but it’s not a complete and utter mystery like in so many books.  It’s generally more a matter of “how do I proceed with hormones” and “is it real” over “what is it?”  Taking that knowledge away from girls in fiction makes it feel like we’re presented as just slaves to our emotions, which is a trope that already gets played out in real life with devastating consequences.  (Have you ever heard someone say girls don’t make good leaders/bosses because we’re “too emotional”?  Can’t control what we do?  Too prone to mood swings or getting all sentimental?  Yeah.)  By taking away the idea that girls can work around and with their own emotions, you take away the idea that girls can be just as strong and in control as men.  And fuck that.