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Girl on Fire. HUM 3285: Postmodern Adolescent Literature Spring 2012 Dr. Perdigao April 11-13, 2012. Senior Design Ideas?. Muttations (185) Katniss Tracker jackers—attack Hallucinations—reality, illusion (192-3) Ways of interpreting the game
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Girl on Fire HUM 3285: Postmodern Adolescent Literature Spring 2012 Dr. Perdigao April 11-13, 2012
Senior Design Ideas? • Muttations (185) • Katniss • Tracker jackers—attack • Hallucinations—reality, illusion (192-3) • Ways of interpreting the game • “Destroying things is much easier than making them” (211): Stephens? • Mockingjays (212-13) • Katniss and song (234-5), for Rue • Song, Peeta’s memory (300-1) • Waiting for Cato, mockingjays: back to Rue (329)
Senior Design Ideas? • New muttations (331) • Something about them (333) • “Their eyes are the least of my worries. What about their brains? Have they been given any of the real tributes memories?” (334).
Trauma • Disembodiment • Screaming (194) (Adam?) • Rue’s death, making meaning (236-7), remembrance • Dream of Rue in trees (239) • Making Rue and herself “unforgettable” (242) • First kill (243) • Unreality—the moon as fabricated or real (310) • “There never will be anything but cold and fear and the agonized sounds of the boy dying in the horn” (339). • “I try to remember” (341)
Redefining • “No more fear of hunger. A new kind of freedom. But then. . . what?” (310) • Acquisition of food defining Katniss: “Take that away and I’m not really sure who I am, what my identity is” (311) • Hunting with Peeta, “I feel like I’m eleven again” (316) • Capitol as new institution, defining the tributes, even the victors (Trites) • Never leaving the games: “It’s the Capitol’s way of reminding people that the Hunger Games never really go away” (370). • Adulthood, no real security
Death and the Adolescent • “But in adolescent literature, death is often depicted in terms of maturation when the protagonist accepts the permanence of mortality, when s/he accepts herself as Being-towards-death” (Trites 119). • “Adolescents often gain their first knowledge of the pain permanent separation involves when they feel powerless because someone they love dies; the corollary that inevitably follows is adolescents recognition of their own mortality” (119). • Narrative structure, ends of chapters • “But in District 12, where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are all but extinct” (22).
Disempowerment: Empowerment • Weapons—new perspective (197) • Survival—District 11, sustenance • Careers “don’t know how to be hungry” (208) • Jonas—starving • Playing to audience (248), all construct for Katniss? • Story as censored for broadcast (270) • “remarkable memory” vs. “unforgettable” (302) • With Thresh’s death, “I promise to remember him” (309) {Mockingjay?}
Bicycling into Oblivion • Foxface, Clove—identifying others • Katniss as “Fire Girl” to Thresh (288) • Peeta—”boy with the bread” (297) • Dressing as a girl for the interviews (355)—innocent • “I begin transforming back into myself. Katniss Everdeen. A girl who lives in the Seam. Hunts in the woods. Trades in the Hob. I stare in the mirror as I try to remember who I am and who I am not” (371).