i just am obsessed with how all the things katniss does that make her remarkable, that make people pay attention and get angry, are when she is radically, selflessly, kind. and she doesn’t even fully realise that what she does is so remarkable - of course you would take your younger sibling’s place if they were chosen to be killed. of course you would try to protect a younger child from violence, and grieve her and treat her body with dignity and love when she died. you should care about children and old ladies and mentally ill people. but everyone else watches and is amazed, because the world makes it so hard to be caring, to make the choice to be kind. because competition between individuals benefits the government, they have fostered and encouraged that selfish attitude - someone’s child is going to die, so better their child than yours. better it’s someone you don’t know that suffers, someone from another district. better your sister than you. and it takes someone rejecting that, showing that there can be trust and love and kindness, even in terrible situations, to start to unify people against the real enemy, rather than in competition with each other.
