Katniss’s depression, Peeta’s return, and why the movie did it wrong
After Primrose’s death, Katniss falls into serious depression, deeper than any before. (It parallels Mrs Everdeen’s one - when Katniss’ mother “almost stopped living” when her husband died.) After several weeks in a coma filled with hallucinations and sadness, due to her third-degree burns, she slowly returns to consciousness, and finds no joy in it.
Katniss does not speak. She is emotionally traumatized to the point she has nor the will nor the energy to talk. She distances herself away from the world, becomes passive - informations about the end of the war are brought to her and she listens, the doctors give her medecines and she takes it, Haymitch watches over her as she eats her food. She wanders, purposeless and dizzy, around the presidential mansion, falling asleep as often as she can in remote rooms and cupboards.
Grief buries her. Weeks pass, and only the thought of killing Snow keeps her going.
And then, one day she comes across Snow. He reveals her it wasn’t the Capitol who released the parachutes on the children. He makes her understand that Primrose was not killed by her Enemy, but by those she fought with. And that’s when Katniss speaks for the first time since Prim died.
I refuse for this to be true. Some things even I can’t survive. I utter my first words since my sister’s death. “I don’t believe you.”
It is important. Her confrontation with President Snow is what channels her emotions and her remaining inner fire, and allows her to do her last rebellious act - killing Coin.
In the seconds following the murder of Coin, Katniss attempts suicide, but Peeta prevents her from it by throwing away the Nightlock pill. Katniss is imprisoned in her training center’s room. She thinks of suicide daily, but there is nothing around her that would permit her to kill herself. She is under careful surveillance. She tries to starve herself but without success.
Finally after months, she is released (her trial ended) and Haymitch brings her back home to District 12.
Katniss enters a period of lethargy. She doesn’t move around the house, she doesn’t answer the phone calls, she doesn’t even shower.
I haven’t left the house. I haven’t even left the kitchen except to go to the small bathroom a few steps off of it. I’m in the same clothes I left the Capitol in. What I do is sit by the fire. Stare at the unopened letters piling up on the mantel.
Yet she doesn’t kill herself, although nothing stops her this time.
There’s no obstacle now to taking my life. But I seem to be waiting for something.
(for someone actually Katniss)
One day Greasy Sae (her neighbour who visited Katniss and made sure she ate) tells her that “spring is in the air”. And the next morning, Peeta is back.
It is his return that brings Katniss back to life.
Ater seeing Peeta with the primroses, Katniss rushes to her room and throws Snow’ white rose, which was there all the time. It symbolized not only his power, but also her past, the war that happened. As long as the rose is in the house, Katniss won’t be able to move on and will stay fixated on her past.
The evil thing is inside [her house], not out.
After seeing Peeta, Katniss finally removes her Capitol’s robe, showers.
After seeing Peeta, Katniss asks what happened to Gale and where he lives now.
After seeing Peeta, Katniss goes to hunt for the first time. She doesn’t manage, because she lacks the strength for such a physical effort, but she goes to the meadow, walks through District 12, breathes fresh air.
And Buttercup the cat returns after Peeta, too, the same day. Katniss finally releases her grief and emotions, opens her letters and calls her mother.
Slowly, with many lost days, I come back to life. I try to follow Dr. Aurelius’s advice, just going through the motions, amazed when one finally has meaning again.
It is meaningful that Katniss did all this after seeing Peeta, because as she says in the last paragraph:
I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
Peeta comes back to Katniss as spring starts, which in itself is symbolic. Spring represents the coming back to life, warm days, happiness. Just as Peeta gave Katniss hope years ago, he reawakens the energy and life inside her this time, too. Subconsciously, Katniss was waiting for his return. And he did not disappoint.
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