Introduction T1 112009009 Full text

However, after watching The Hunger Games, I didn‟t really get the attraction of why the novel was overwhelmingly popular. I believe that when there are films based on novels, usually the judgment goes to the book as being better since it has more clarity and detailed explanations. Therefore, I decided to read the trilogy and found it really interesting that it begins in a future U.S. In the movie, the history and other important details weren‟t clearly explained and tho se who haven‟t read the novel might find the movie confusing or even boring. After reading the books, I re-watched the movie and it seems to make more sense than before. It‟s interesting to learn the kind of government, different lifestyles, conditions and rules, along with the totally new tradition that they convey. The tale of KatnissEverdeen, who is the narrator and the protagonist in the trilogy, grabbed my interest. I like her personally for she is a tough first born child with a strong survival ability and is very protective of her family, that consists of her little sister and her mother. Reading through, I deeply followed Katniss‟ actions and thoughts in her adventures and struggles, and it prompted me to think critically about her surroundings. Actually, if you read the trilogy, the injustice and huge gap between the Capitol and the 12 districts under its reign can‟t be missed. The Districts are clearly marginalized with the capitol‟s government at the center of the oppression. Realizing the gap of power presented, the first theory that crossed my mind was Postcolonialism Theory which in this case happens in the “future”. It‟s funny to think that if „Post‟ means „after‟, how can this be applied to the future? Why do we never pass it and still have possibilities to continue struggle with it in the future? However in this paper, we will see more of the relationship between power and knowledge in Catching Fire through a Post-Colonialist reading. The pioneer of Postcolonialism, Edward Said, stated that power and knowledge are inseparable. That makes sense because when you have at least a higher level of knowledge than others, it will give you a chance to attain a higher standing than others. Having read the trilogy, this statement keeps bothering my mind. It is quite obvious in the third book, Mockingjay , that as Katniss‟ knowledge about the government of the Capitol increases, her power in rebelling also increases. However, Katniss‟ situation is very different in the first and second book where she knows ne arly nothing about Capitol‟s government and how to rebel against it but her actions give a huge impact to trigger an uprising among the Districts to stand against the Capitol which is very disturbing and upsetting for President Snow. Before she realized it, Katniss was already powerful enough to create quite a stir in the Capitol and even Panem. The second book, Catching Fire, interests me the most since in this book the main character is actually set to be the main part of the rebellion without knowing she is involved in the plan. This thesis will examine the second book of The Hunger Games Trilogy, Catching Fire , and excavate answers to the following question: How is it really possible for one to have power to fight for an equal place in society without having proper knowledge about gaining power? I will also make use of Postcolonialism theory to investigate the possible answers. Furthermore, since academic papers about Postcolonialism in Catching Fire are extremely rare compared to its first book, The Hunger Games, I believe that this research is badly needed. The trilogy was released in 2008, so it is not surprising that there has been little research done and theories applied to the trilogy. However, since its popularity remains high and the Catching Fire movie will be released in November 2013, research about it is important. Moreover, the study of Post-Colonialism continues to develop to suit the diverse modernity in our era and the era after us. Therefore, this paper may prove useful for other people in the future who are interested in the similar theme and aim to study a text with post- colonial studies, for it is important since we live in the world of inequality where huge gaps exist between races, the rich and the poor, men and women, also the Western and Eastern countries.

II. Literature Review

Postcolonialismhas become one of the most exciting, expanding and challenging areas of literary and cultural studies today. The world today is a world of inequality and much of the difference falls across the broad division between a center group of people who are dominant and other groups who are marginalized. As an example, Western countries are placed in the dominant group and other countries in Middle and Far East areas are classified as „Other‟ or „Orient or, in another word, marginalized. From this, a study called Orientalism emerged Khan, p. 2. As a founding text of Post-Colonial studies, Orientalism examined the Western depictions of the Orient. Orientalism was first defined by Edward Said, who was also the originator of the term Postcolonialism. Orientalism is the term used by Edward Said for the assessment of the attitudes and perspectives of Western scholars or Orientalists to legitimize colonial aggression against intellectually marginalized and dominated Eastern peoples Khan. Orientalism itself is a discourse that raised the issues of power, knowledge, representation and various other Postcolonial issues. Postcolonialism, however, is more applicable to other colonial discourse, a theory which analyses the discourse of colonialism and colonialisation; which demonstrates the way in which the theory points out the deep ambivalence of as well as the way in which the criticismconstructs both colonising and colonized subjects Ashcroft, p. 15, and other marginalization cases whether one side is West and the other is East or not. Orientalism is more likely to compare the dominant group somewhere in the West and the marginalized group somewhere in the East, while Postcolonialism is broader than that being concerned with how marginalization can happen in the West itself, not always outside the West. Also, Orientalism is no longer used because it is seen as racist and less appropriate. However, Orientalism remains the major source of Post-Colonial studies today. This is to explain that Postcolonial studies starts from Orientalism and both of them were first brought up by the same person: Edward Said. The ground of Post-colonial studies would not be what it is today without Edward Said‟s work. His work made a very influential statement on the nature of identity formation in the Postcolonialism that people know today. The term Postcolonialism means to propose both resistance to the colonial and its discourses continue to form cultures whose revolutions have overthrown formal ties to their former colonial rulers Khan. It is not surprising if Post- Colonial Theory is often used to analyze the marginalized and exploited side in making revolutions. Moreover in an unequal world, it is no wonder that this theory developed so well and thus other Postcolonial critics like Gayatri C. Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, and Frantz Fanon have appeared, influenced and transformed the theory Khan, p. 1. Postcolonial criticism has embraced a number of aims: most fundamentally, to reexamine the history of colonialism from the perspective of the colonized; to determine the economics of both the colonized people and the colonizing power Habib, p. 738. Marxist theory, which stated that money means power, has also been closely related to Postcolonial criticism. Both theories have been used to investigate literary works; such as Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Mansfield Park, etc. to examine their processes of „colonialisation‟. In The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms , Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray stated that an analysis of literary texts produced in countries and cultures that had come under the control of colonial powers at some point in their history is involved in „Postcolonial Criticism‟. Postcolonial Criticism, therefore, often examines countries and previously colonized places in both past and present times, and probably will continue to do so in the future as well.