Katniss Everdeen, Role Model?
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Katniss’s view o f relationships not only leads to a diminished
capacity to love, it also negatively affects her ability to forgive. She
mentions on multiple occasions that she is not a forgiving person. For
instance in the first book, in speaking o f her mother she says, “I try to
forgive her for my father’s sake. But to be honest, Fm not the forgiving
type.” 17 In Catching Fire, she mentions that the pose she and Peeta will
adopt in the procession o f chariots will be “unforgiving. And I love it.
Getting to be m yself at last.” 18 At the end o f Mockingjay, she wants to
teil Gale that she will “Forgive him. But since I can’t, I’ll just have to
deal with the pain.” 19 Gale doesn’t even try to argue his case, because he
also knows that Katniss is an unforgiving person.
Another thing that Culver fails to mention in her article on
Katniss and the gift culture is that in this kind o f culture, it is not only
gifts that must be repaid, it is injuries as well. The creators o f the Mosaic
Law in the Jewish Pentateuch well understood this when they laid down
the eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth law. Ironically this kind o f law
was intended to mitigate the escalation o f violence that is often inherent
in these types o f transactions. If I knock out your tooth, you are not
allowed to take my arm in retum; you are only allowed a tooth. In these
types o f cultures, an injury demands its own repayment in kind just as
gifts do. But viewing relationships in this way often leads to an everincreasing cycle o f vengeance with the repayment for an injury often
outdoing the original offense. For instance in The Hunger Games, when
Rue is killed, Katniss immediately kills the boy who killed Rue.
However she does not see this as settling the debt. She says, “F d kill
anyone I met on s ig h t. . . My hatred o f the Capitol has not lessened my
hatred o f my competitors in the le a s t. . . They, at least, can be made to
pay for R ue’s death.”20 We see not only the language o f payment but also
the escalation— death does not pay for death; there must be more
payment. Katniss’s desire to repay inj