It's been a while since my Hunger Games posts, but after seeing Catching Fire last night (it was good; go see it!), and after reading an essay on Neville Longbottom that typifies the kind of literary criticism I want to do, I want to return to my final commentary on the Hunger Games trilogy.
The topic here is literacy, and originally I saved it until last because at first glance, there doesn't seem to be much to say about literacy. But that, in itself, is highly significant in children's and young adult literature, genres which never quite get themselves away from asserting the importance and significance of reading. It's as if they're still aware that their primary audience is in school, and might need encouragement to read. With female protagonists in particular, it is a sort of young adult trope (since Anne Shirley, perhaps--or maybe Jane Austen or Jane Eyre) that the female character is unusual for being a reader, and consequently for being introspective. But the primary reason that I think writers who stress the importance of reading do so is because writers tend to be readers, and so they are fully aware of the benefits and joys of reading in their own lives, and want to share these with their own readers--much as I do. It is also always in a writer's best interest to stress the importance of reading, is it not? So when a young adult author seems to neglect this message, it can register as significant, particularly when the heroine is neither introspective, nor a reader.
The other reason an absence of literacy is suspicious and worthy of further investigation is that Hunger Games portrays a dystopia. And like utopian literature, dystopian literature always treats literacy in some way. I need to double check C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, but science rather than government is the primary danger in that novel, which calls into question whether or not it is a dystopia--but that is a different topic entirely. Take the two most prominent examples: 1984 and Brave New World. In both cases, literacy is strictly regulated if not forbidden outright, because ideas derived from reading pose a thread to the State. In both cases, this fact is played out in the text. Not so in the Hunger Games. Why? And where is literacy?
Well, let's look at the first question first. The question of Katniss. I have said before that as a character, I was not drawn to identify with her. I did come to admire her, for some of the same reasons the other sympathetic characters admired her--her strength, her loyalty, her ability to act, often without thinking. One of the reasons that I was not drawn to her is that I felt, as a reader, like I was kept at arm's length by the narrative voice. She is not an introspective character. In fact, we get the action as it happens. There is no reflection in part because the narrative forbids it--it is first person present tense. But as the story progresses, this becomes more natural. Katniss doesn't ruminate. She's not that kind of personality. But what if she did?
Returning for a moment to the character of Anne Shirley--it has been decades since I read Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, and I didn't particularly like her character. But she typifies, first, the slightly odd literate heroine--perhaps a bit more odd than some, since authors seem to be trying to make the reading heroine seem unique, special, normal, and popular all at the same time. I'm thinking here of Cassandra Clare's Tessa Grey in her Infernal Devices series, who, we are told, is very unique, interesting, and bookish, but who is actually just an empty brown-haired shell who likes books; the books supply the personality, in fact. But Jo March is another slightly odd literate female protagonist... and the list goes on... So Anne of Green Gables thinks and dreams about everything. In some ways, she is a female Don Quijote. She thinks about everything because she has read, and read, and read, and because she sees herself as living her own story, akin to the story in a book. And sometimes, for fear of what will happen next in her story, she becomes paralyzed, and unable to act. This typifies a character who is not only literate, but hyper-literate. A character for whom life is something to ponder, and to analyze, and in some ways, to construct. Such characters are also highly self-conscious. Early twentieth-century British literature has notable examples: J. Alfred Prufrock. Gabriel Conroy in "The Dead." They are dreamers and ponderers--over-thinkers, and they don't function terribly well in the real world. Both of those examples are men, as is Don Quijote. Looking back to Jane Austen, you have Mary Anne Dashwood the Romantic. While literate, Margaret Dashwood is more practical, as is Jane Eyre. When constrained by their social situation, it was perhaps difficult for female characters to be swept into inaction by introspection as the men were, or as Ane Shirley is; however, novels were often described as dangerous for other reasons, as in Louisa May Alcott's works, in which they were potentially a path to immorality for boys and girls.
This little survey is meant to illustrate that for a female (or male) protagonist, reading about life tends to skew one's impression of life, and to cause one to analyze, ruminate, and philosophize about the meaning of life, sometimes to the point of inaction. Immediately, it should become clear that Katniss cannot operate in the typical mode of a highly literate or hyper-literate character. Her circumstances require quick and decisive action. She is strategic, so there is no quesiton as to her intelligence. And she is capable of analysis, but not for the sheer sake of analysis. Analysis, for her, is a means to an end--to the specific end of deciding what to do next in order to survive. Survivial is her life, so in a way, she doesn't have time to read for its own sake--for pleasure, or for the development of her mind. And in a very real sense, because she has to survive, she doesn't necessarily want to analyze, to philosophize, and to ruminate, either on the purpose of her existence, on her past experiences, or on what she has to do to survive. She doesn't want to analyze the situation in District 12. Literacy doesn't offer a path for improvement. She doesn't want to kill the other tributes, but she has to. So she does what she can to keep herself from analyzing the problem of the Games. They are inescapable. It won't help her to dwell on them. And caught up in the problem of survival, there is neither the need to consume art, nor the leisure to create it.
Having said this, Katniss is literate. She and Prim go to school. Like the castes in Brave New World, their education is utilitarian and appropriate to their district's particular trade. But literacy neither defines her nor helps her. It is a very minor, utilitarian part of her life--for the most part.
To be continued in Pt. 2
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