#thg meta

lucy gray

lenore dove

primrose

i don't often see prim mentioned when it comes to covey lineage (most likely because her character is so aligned with their merchant mother in the original trilogy) but all three of these girls actively haunt the narrative.

lucy gray is the ghost whose songs of resistance endure in district 12 long after her name is forgotten. lenore dove paints her posters across the district and its haymitch's promise to her that forces him to keep going, keep fighting back until someone 'just like him but luckier' comes along to do what he couldn't. primrose is reason that katniss volunteers, she inspires a love so great that it defies the odds and brings her sister home.

they all have an immense strength but also an inherent gentleness - their love of animals whether this is lucy gray's snakes or lenore dove's geese or prim's refusal to hunt animals (not to mention lady and buttercup) - they are all drawn to creatures that are not widely seen as valuable or lovable.

they share a deep sense of optimism, each believe in the power of hope to transform one's circumstances. they each believe that a better world is not only possible but they are willing to take action to make it so. lucy gray uses her songs and performances, lenore dove engages in acts of sabotage and vandalises property. prim learns how to heal and chooses to enter a warzone in order to help people - in a world governed by violence, prim is first and foremost a healer.

Then Peeta throws a wrench in the whole thing. Because he loves her. And he wears it proudly. But even then, Snow is not worried. This is nothing new. Star-crossed lovers mean nothing. No alliance can last. One of them must kill the other, in the end. That is how this story goes.

She tries to sell the last things she can to survive. When no one buys, she drops Prim’s old clothing in a muddle puddle and leaves them there. She’s too weak to survive, too weak to kneel down and pick them up. She gave up. She was going to let the community home take them— give in to the one thing she had fought so hard to prevent:

Then, Peeta tosses her the bread. She doesn’t tell us if she goes back for the threadbare clothing, she instead runs home to Prim.

He didn’t just save her life, he saved Katniss’s reason to live: preventing Prim from getting taken to the community home.

If we examine this more generally as a metaphor:

Katniss had given up on kids. She dropped the last hope she had about having children in that mud puddle. She spent all day in front of adults, none of whom spared her any food or help. She realized she could not care for herself, never mind a child. The only person who helped her reclaim her position as protector was Peeta.

She was forced to leave the dream of caring for the child behind until Peeta arrived. Until the bread.

i’m not saying we know everything about her or that she’s a bad person or that she didn’t have rebellious thoughts/intentions with some of her actions, but she canonically doesn’t have ties to the rebels and they have to lie to keep her alive.

like yeah, she’s a victim of the propaganda of a totalitarian dictatorship. but that’s the point, i fear. she exemplifies someone who likely has the kindness to embrace change, but won’t bring it about of her own accord; she’s the archetype of the average citizen who witnesses firsthand the struggles brought on by a cruel system and still won’t do anything cos she isn’t encouraged to think critically.

again, this isn’t a personal attack on her, and i do find her an interesting character, but making her out to be more rebellious than she is for the sake of making her more likeable makes us as readers also stop thinking critically of her when she is quite literally a part of perpetuating the problem in her acquiescence.