Not sure if this has already been said but I was going through the illustrations for the Illustrated hunger games and I canât stop thinking of the depiction the artist took for Thresh.
In the original book, Katniss describes Thresh as powerful and intimidatingâa build on par with the Careers, strong and silent, a mysterious threat lurking on the edges of the arena that is able to hold out until the very last days of the 74th games. And you can see how this interpretation informed the casting choices made for him in the live action adaptations. For years, the only image weâve had of Thresh is of this strong, unstoppable guy who had to be taken out by either the physically strongest guy in the Games, or by monsters designed by the Capitol itself.
And then, you see Thresh as heâs illustrated.
The low angle. The backlight throwing almost his entire figure into shadow. The way he holds aloft the rock he just killed Clove withâthe fact that you can *see* Cloveâs corpse in the background. Everything about this image is designed to paint Thresh as this hulking berserker, moments away from beating in your skull.
But then you see his face. Those eyes, welling with tears. The look of disbelief. The way his mouth is openedâwhat is he saying? Is he asking Katniss if sheâs the one who killed Rue? The little girl who would sing when it was time to go home from the fields? Or is he stunned into silence as Katniss recounts how she buried Rue in flowers, how she sang to her in her final moments? In the books itâs mentioned that he never talked to anyoneâwas he preparing, like Katniss, to see everyone in that arena as a threat? How shocked must he have been that this random girl he never even spoke to, whose name heâs probably forgotten, go to such lengths to show kindness to someone who wasnât from her district?
More than anything, he looks so *young.* His eyes are large and expressiveâhis face is soft, still retaining a little baby fat. Throughout the book, Katniss categorizes her fellow tributes as potential threats first and foremostâshe often describes Thresh as a stoic, unflinching powerhouse, but then you see this and youâre taken aback. Because this? This isnât the calculating, powerful predator weâve been expecting. This is very clearly a *child.* A *boy*, whoâs been ripped from his home to fight to the death in an arena for the entertainment of the ruling class. Who probably got his strength from climbing trees, hauling sacks of grain, collecting food. Who was so deeply impacted by the death of his district partner that just the suggestion from another girlâs mouth that she had killed her sent him into a rage. Who, in the books, refused to interact with or fight any of his fellow tributes until he heard Clove talking at the feast.
You start wonderingâdid he ever want to kill anyone? Like Peeta, did the idea of the Capitol turning him into a killer make him sick? Like Reaper, was it a refusal to play into the hands of the Capitol? Like Katniss, did the fact alone that he had killed leave its own horrible mark? Did he spend his final nights jumping awake as he relived Cloveâs skull caving under the rock? When the mutts finally came for him, do you think he hesitated when he saw the tributesâ eyes staring back?
This is a *kid.* Theyâre all just *kids.* And thatâs what fucks me up so much about this picture of Threshâthat itâs not just a depiction of him, but of all the tributes who have ever competed in the Hunger games. That no matter how they are reframed as victors and monsters and killers and spectacles, at the end of the day they were all children. Boys and girls forced to fight each other to the death, while their true enemies watched on, laughing.
