she perceived from her family’s well-being keeps her satisfied and continue living without significant objection or protest to the social system, let alone trying to
change it. The sense of gratification keeps her attached to her role as the head of the
family and this makes her preoccupied. She devotes all of her time and energy into keeping her family alive and well, and this leaves her no time to contemplate
about her subordination to the social structure. The role as the head of the family keeps her mind and body busy, and fulfill her needs to be recognized in the family
and society as a capable individual. As a result, she ignores the social structure and focus on her family needs instead.
Somehow it all comes back to coal at school. Besides basic reading and math most of our instruction is coal-related. Except for the weekly
lecture on the history of Panem. It’s mostly a lot of blather about what we owe the Capitol. I know there must be more than they’re telling
us, an actual account of what happened during the rebellion. But I don’t spend much time thinking about it. Whatever the truth is, I
don’t see how it will help me get food on the table.
Collins, 2008: 42 The preoccupation to her role in the family which is sustained by her ego
gratification prevents her to deal with the paramount issue that threaten her family such as the marginalization of the working class in which her family is a part of,
or the existence of tesserae. The existence of the tesserae is actually a tool for keeping the working class dependant to the government, as well as subjecting
them to be the potential tributes of The Hunger Games compare to the middle class. However, Katniss’ resort to tesserae as she is entitled to her role as the
breadwinner in the family reveals that she does not consider the consequence of it,
or even if she realizes it she prioritizes her family’s well-being above the risk of taking government’s tesserae.
On May 8th, I went to the Justice Building, signed up for my tesserae, and pulled home my first batch of grain and oil in Prim’s toy wagon.
On the eighth of every month, I was entitled to do the same.
Collins, 2008: 51 Her hunting and gathering abilities trained and gained through her practice
with her father constitute her individuality and consolidate her superior role in the family above her mother and sister. As a result, she often feels detached from her
mother, to whom she previously relied on. When I am done with instructions about fuel, and trading, and staying
in school, I turn to my mother and grip her arm, hard. “Listen to me. Are you listening to me?” She nods, alarmed by my intensity.
She must know what’s coming. “You can’t leave again,” I say. My mother’s eyes find the floor.
“I know. I won’t. I couldn’t help what -”
“Well, you have to help it this time. You can’t clock out and leave Prim on her own. There’s no me now to keep you both alive. It doesn’t
matter what happens. Whatever you see on the screen. You have to promise me you’ll fight through it” My voice has risen to a shout. In
it all the anger, all the fear I felt at her abandonment.
Collins, 2008: 35 Even though Katniss’ hostility stems from her inability to forgive her
mother, it is enabled by her elevated position as the breadwinner of the family. She is the one who keeps her family going and she does not allow her family to
forget this fact, although her mother is now capable to feed her sister as she runs a small apothecary business. The superior feeling stems mainly from the habitual
ego gratification, the credit she earns from providing for her family. Nevertheless, this ego gratification also become the source of conflict between her and her
mother due to her independence and self-reliance.
Furthermore, ego gratification also enables her to detach her emotional feeling from the other people who become the victim of the Games, such as Peeta.
Katniss’ sheer presumption of superiority enables her to remove any symphaty or any personal attachment to her fellow tributes, even one whom she owes her life
to.
I’ve been right not to cry.
The station is swarming with reporters with
their insectlike cameras trained directly on my face. But I’ve had a lot of practice at wiping my face clean of emotions and I do this now. I
catch a glimpse of myself on the television screen on the wall that’s airing my arrival live and feel gratified that I appear almost bored.
Peeta Mellark, on the other hand, has obviously been crying and interestingly enough does not seem to be trying to cover it up.
I immediately wonder if this will be his strategy in the Games.
To appear weak and frightened, to reassure the other tributes that he is no
competition at all, and then come out fighting. This worked very well for a girl, Johanna Mason, from District 7 a few years back. She seemed
like such a snivelling, cowardly fool that no one bothered about her until there were only a handful of contestants left. It turned out she
could kill viciously. Pretty clever, the way she played it. But this seems an odd strategy for Peeta Mellark because he’s a baker’s son.
All those years of having enough to eat and hauling bread trays around have made him broad-shouldered and strong. It will take
an awful lot of weeping to convince anyone to overlook him.
Collins, 2008: 40-41 By wiping her face “clean of emotions”, she derives gratification and pride
of herself. She contrasts herself with Peeta, who she considers to be lesser than her due to his “years of having enough to eat and hauling bread trays”. He did not
experience the harsh life conditions that Katniss has been able to survive from, and this enables her to derives a sense of superiority from Peeta, a boy who came
from the higher social status than her. Moreover, upon finding him crying, she considers this as a mere strategy, even a defective one. This helps her to
emotionally detach herself from him as equal victims of the Games, as well as the
injustice social structure. In detaching herself, she puts distance between her and him, preventing the possibility of them making alliance or unity in which they
could fight for the common cause against the system. Therefore, self reliance and individualism enable the subjects to divert their awareness and efforts to change
the unjust social system by providing the false sense of ego gratification.
B. Commodification as a Dehumanizing Culture of Capitalism in Collins’
The Hunger Games
As one of the prominent Marxist critics, Georg Lukacs in Roberts, 2000: 38 expounds that the misery of the masses are based on either alienation or
commodification as the result of capitalism. Alienation refers to the detachment of the workers towards their products. Mass produced, the products of their labour
becomes alien to them, it has no workers’ features, no uniqueness that represents their relationship with the objects that they produce. Hence, they are in the state of
perpetual dissatisfaction because they feel no relation to their functions in the society.
Another equally dehumanizing culture of capitalism is commodification. According to Karl Marx’s definition in Tyson, 1994: 6, a commodity is valued
not in terms of it can do, or its use value, but in terms of “the money or other commodities for which it can be traded”, or its exchange value. Anything can be
commodified by this damaging culture of capitalism. Art can be commodified for the prestige it confers to the owners. A woman’s youth and beauty could be
commodified like the jewel she is wearing. Even human relationship can be commodified Tyson, 1994: 7.
Commodification is an inherent part of the American Dream Tyson, 1994: 6. It permeates Americans’ identity, seeing their worth according to what
they could buy and what they are wearing, even what they could derive from their relationship with other people. It shapes one’s sense of selfhood due to its
function in escaping the “existential inwardness”, the consciousness of one self as a creature that has to respond to her place in the world Tyson, 1994: 8.
Commodification serves this function by putting distance between the subject and their socioeconomic realities, such as financial worries, the inevitability of aging
and death, and the fear of emotional pain among other things Tyson, 1994: 8-9. The manifestation of commodification as a way to deal with the socioeconomic
realities is visible in literary works produced in America, including The Hunger Games.
As a Bildungsroman novel, Collins’ The Hunger Games deals with the coming of age, the odyssey of self that eventually leads to one’s understanding of
her position in the society. Originated from Germany, Bildungsroman genre is created as a part of the movement that called upon the shaping of Germany’s
national identity. The journey of growth and development of the main character is generally employed to inspire the unification of a nation Kontje in McWilliams,
2009: 6. When applied to The Hunger Games, the main character also experience arduous journey of selfhood starting from the loss of her father at a very tender
age and ended at her becoming a victor at the end of the novel, showered with wealth and high social standing that define her place in the society.
The journey of selfhood begins with the narrator, as well as the main character, Katniss Everdeen’s defined masculine attributes such as her ability to
provide for her family, her superior hunting skill, her inability to commit to any form of romance apart from her bond of sisterhood resulted from the
socioeconomic pressure, and her reluctance to submit to the authority. Those were all that defines her at the beginning. Those were her primal innocence, untouched
by the vulgarity of modernization. In this stage, Katniss has already assumed an authentic identity which marks her uniqueness in her proletarian community.
However, when she starts to volunteer to the Games, she was brought to the ruling city, the Capitol, and is introduced to the new notion of self.
At first, the new notion of selfhood occurs from the external fabrication, her succumb to the physical transformation in the hands of her stylists from the
Capitol. I’ve been in the Remake Center for more than three hours and I still
haven’t met my stylist. Apparently he has no interest in seeing me until Venia and the other members of my prep team have addressed some
obvious problems. This has included scrubbing down my body with a gritty foam that has removed not only dirt but at least three
layers of skin, turning my nails into uniform shapes, and primarily, ridding my body of hair
. My legs, arms, torso, underarms, and parts of
my eyebrows have been stripped of the stuff, leaving me like a plucked bird, ready for roasting
. I don’t like it. My skin feels sore
and tingling and intensely vulnerable. But I have kept my side of the bargain with Haymitch, and no objection has crossed my lips.
Collins, 2008: 61-62 At the beginning of her transformation, she is turned into a perfect being with no
physical flaws. Her natural attributes of an ordinary human beings are removed,
such as body hairs or imperfect nails. Even at this early stage, she has already felt
the commodifying treatment, as she consciously refers to “like a plucked bird, ready for roasting”
Collins, 2008: 62. By restraining her objections and
referring this as part of her “bargain” with Haymitch, she accepts her condition as
a commodity in the Games. Later on, she was transformed into something other than her old self. At
the beginning of the novel, she was identified by her “hunting boots”, simple “trousers” and “a shirt” with “a forage bag” Collins, 2008: 4, each marks her
simple upbringing and circumstances. When she agrees to follow her stylist, she was changed into an entirely different person, in Katniss’ own words, an
otherwordly being.
The creature standing before me in the full-length mirror has come from another world.
Where skin shimmers and eyes flash and apparently they make their clothes from jewels.
Because my dress, oh, my dress is entirely covered in reflective precious gems, red and
yellow and white with bits of blue that accent the tips of the flame design. The slightest movement gives the impression I am engulfes in
tongues of fire. I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am radiant as the sun.
Collins, 2008: 120-121 This physical transformation marks her commodification. In her own
words, Katniss is transformed into other being who is perfect and otherwordly, that even herself admits that she is closer to the attributes of “the sun” than those
of human. This transformation dehumanizes her by diverting the audience, and her own understanding that she is an ordinary human being, forced to compete in
a fight-to-the-death reality show, and instead glorifies her involvement in the Games. By emphasizing her difference with ordinary human beings, the Games
decreases the sense of relatability of the audience to Katniss as a victim of the system. Therefore, this commodification distort the people from seeing the larger
picture in which Katniss is not an idol that deserve to be celebrated, but a victim of a social structure instead. Using Eagleton’s words, this is the way in which
audience is alienated from a performance, preventing them to emotionally identified themselves which “paralyses” their powers of critical judgement 1976:
66. Human commodification is accepted as normality, or a festivity, in which individuals’ fame and popularity is paramount than their humanity.This is the
form of dehumanization, in which human is reduced into a commodity and treated as a thing that is valued based on its exchange value, such as beauty, physical
endurance, or ability do defeat others. These external transformation were not limited to the externals only, they
also began to slip into the inner thought of the subject.
The pounding music, the cheers, the admiration work their way into my blood, and I can’t suppress my excitement.
Cinna has given me a great advantage. No one will forget me. Not my look, not my
name. Katniss. The girl who was on fire.
Collins, 2008: 70 Previously being commodified by her surrounding, Katniss starts to
associates herself as commodity. She does this by assuming the identity that is given to her by Cinna, her stylist, the person whose job is to adjust her appearance
to follow the rule of the Games. She embraces the new notion of “the girl who was on fire” as an important part of her identity. Albeit this is not literally true,
this is merely a construction created by Cinna’s mastery in illusion; she accepts this as truistic to her nature and carries it throughout her journey of selfhood,
