Acting until it's Reality

     In the Hunger Games, it's made clear to us throughout the entire series that, while in the Games, Katniss, Peeta, and presumably all the tributes are told to act a certain way to curry favor from the audience- but, to the audience, everything they see they think is completely true. So what happens when the Games are over? All winning tributes are followed by cameras for the rest of their lives, so how can they stop pretending? The answer is, they can't. The lie that's given to them to save their life becomes their life, because what other choice do they have? To the audience of the Hunger Games, the tributes become friends, heroes to them- if it was found out that they lied, there would be outrage.
     This runs parallel to today's reality television. It's the same thing, really- think of shows like Survival, Wipeout- we like to think that the Hunger Games are a sick perversion of today's television, but we already watch people eat bugs and get hurt! It's really a very small leap to watching people kill each other. And that's acting too, really- it's a known fact that televised wrestling is all acting. We like to think that we're above seeing people kill each other and fake things about themselves, but just look at reality televison. We're really not.
      To add, the main thing I'm thinking off when I post this is Katniss faking her relationship with Peeta. In the end, before Katniss goes on an interview with Peeta, Haymitch hurriedly tells her that "Your only defense can be you were so madly in love you weren't responsible for your actions." That's where she realized that the acts she put on won't end once she's out of the Games- they'll go on until she learns to live them. Because the capitol audience loves their heros, and the heroes have to play to the audience.

Unexpected Things That I've Noticed

1) Katniss's character is actually really innocent in some matters. As in how she's uncomfortable thinking someone might view her as something other than herself. Like when Haymitch asked her to come up with an angle for her interview, she failed at everything that he suggested. Katniss can't act, and she needs to do something that inspires her. Further on in the Games, she decides that she has to put on a show for the sponsers or else she'll never survive. Whether it was intentionally or not, Katniss decided to help put together a story for the viewers.

2) Haymitch is behind everything. The first time that I read 'The Hunger Games', this was shocking to me. Even when he had been sending the gifts to Katniss with a certain timing to give her the messages of what he wants her to do, I never fully understood how smart he was. This becomes especially important in the second and third books.

3) When Clove was being killed by Thresh, she called out to Cato to help her. Just moments ago, she had been threatening to slice Katniss's lips off. I wonder if the person telling the story of the games censored that moment...? It shows that the people in the games don't necessarily want to kill each other.

4) Cato is more like a little kid. Maybe he got too much attention in District One, because I'm assuming that he volunteered for the Games. I think he was encouraged to volunteer by most of the people that he knew. He's made out to be a killing machine as he jokes around with the Careers and from his attitude about finding and killing Katniss. But why did he want to kill her? Katniss wasn't a danger to him, unless you counted her high score in training. Cato's score was lower than hers, so maybe he was jealous. I feel as if he's not used to someone doing better than him. Things have to go exactly his way, and when they don't, he gets scared and tried to hide that be doing something violent.

5) An eye for an eye. The theme appears in random places in the book. It first appears when Katniss knew she could never pay Peeta back for giving her the bread, and then again when she throws the cookies his father gave her out the window because she didn't want to owe him more than what she already did. It's there again when Peeta saves her from accidentally saying that she recognized an Avox, and when he claimed he was in love with her during his interview.

6) Glimmer had no value to the Careers. She couldn't shoot anything with the bow and arrows that she got from the Cornucopia, and she really contributed next to nothing as she fell asleep when she was supposed to be on watch at night. Yet she also had a ring with a poisoned spike as her token from her district. Where they aware that she wasn't a killer and trying to help make her into one?

7) Titus turned cannibal but he was eventually killed by an avalanche. Katniss thinks that it was Game-Maker engineered because they didn't want a cannibal to win. It made me think about what images they want victors to give. The Capitol really doesn't focus on Haymitch or any of the morphine addicts as much, which makes me think that they want the image of a happy, healthy person who is very attractive and living life to its fullest. Like how advertisements are with super models. Was it perhaps shocking to the residents of the Capitol that some of the lesser known victors became so old and decrepit?