How Does Katniss Lose Power In The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games is a novel written in 2008 that showcases the binary oppositions, class and power segregations, and performances of genders between the people living in poverty in the Districts and people holding power in the Capitol. The novel shows the lower class status of the inhabitants in the districts suffering from hunger and the powerful upper class personalities of the Capitol with extravagant lifestyles. This hierarchy is presented throughout the novel bringing out the ideology of those powerful people who aim to make the event – The Hunger Games – an entertaining TV show by pushing 24 contestants coming from the districts to kill each other, leaving only one survivor in the end. In this excerpt Collins focuses

With his feminine appearance wearing make-up as well as presenting arrogant attitude, one can imagine that Flavius does not represent a traditional person; rather he represents a high class person with power. One can clearly sense this power when he says that Katniss almost looks like a human now, which implies old Katniss was more like an animal, and even though she has been applied body changes to make her beautiful, she still conveys animalistic features. According to George Dunn and Nicolas Michaud, “The Capitol’s citizens regard the tributes, along with the rest of the inhabitants of the districts, as ’barbarians.’ This is partly due to their appearance. […] District inhabitants are also exceedingly hairy compared to Capitol citizens, which no doubt makes them look more like nonhuman animals than human beings in the eyes of their hairless detractors” (81). Therefore, one can claim that the class and power gap in The Hunger Games shows this segregation’s impact on bodies and the performance of gender

Dunn and Michaud suggest that “the Capitol citizens focus on body modification and their social lives, the more self-focused they become and the less likely they are to notice or care about political injustices that don’t directly affect them” (251). Realizing this case, Katniss condemns that even though she does not even recognize food that the Capitol citizens eat, that food is beyond unattainable for her that is actually very ordinary for a Capitol citizen to eat it. Considering that in their luxurious lives decorating their bodies and thinking about nothing but entertainment, Katniss compares this space full of flamboyant and self-centered personalities with her hometown where there is non-existing possibility to consume beauty materials or, more importantly, food that shows a great imbalance between the Capitol and District Twelve. Katniss suggests that whereas she needs to hunt for days in order to have meal, it is very simple and ordinary for the Capitol citizens to have that meal. Also, one can see that power of the Capitol citizens takes place even in their accent and style of talking, since Katniss criticizes the way they talk and find their accent silly. Even though she does not like their attitude, she has to accept what they mention with respect to their power. When Flavius makes fun of Katniss’