For quite some time now I have heard that Katniss Everdeen is a strong female character, which is quite a perplexing rumour. It is one of those inexplicable misconceptions that annoy people who do not feel the same. Sure, the books were reasonably good (not amazing, not bad), but the protagonist was one of the weakest I’ve encountered so far.
To those that don’t know who she is, read (or watch) The Hunger Games, but I suggest you don’t do both, the movie will be quite ruined. She is the protagonist and, fair warning, this post will be rather full of spoilers.
Let’s go through what we know about Katniss. She comes from a tough neighbourhood where her family is one of the better off (her mother and sister are respected as the local healers, Katniss as the contraband meat supplier). She spends her time running around the local forest with some dude she doesn’t fancy but who fancies her. She does not like violence, yet ends countless lives on a daily basis, which makes her a hypocrite. Maybe she only wants to kill those that don’t fight back, which would somehow be even worse. She stands up for her sister when Primrose is picked to go to the Hunger Games. So she values someone else’s life above her own, maybe she is even suicidal (by that point it is painfully clear that she does not want to live how she has lived so far).
Going to the games she has constant trust issues concerning the other tribute Peeta and her mentor Haymitch. She hits borderline depression but gets slightly better when her dressing specialist makes a few pretty dresses for her. So she is insecure, but that can’t be too rare among fatherless teenage girls. She confides in the person she thinks will die soon. Once at the games, she pretty much dreams through the starting signal and ends up getting only one package or equipment while almost getting herself killed. The first person she has a confrontation with almost finishes her and then gets killed by a third party. After a little wandering she finds out her co-tribute has teamed up with her competition and is willing to kill to survive. She takes it as a huge betrayal because she hadn’t thought of making friends with other tributes, she wanted to go solo. She isn’t very bright. She climbs a tree and waits there until yet another tribute Rue signals her to look up. Without outside help, she could not figure out that she could use her surroundings in her favour. She definitely isn’t very bright. While stuck up in the tree she hears Peeta tell his friends to stop chasing her, thus protecting her. She ignores it, although by that time, Peeta has made it obvious he has feelings for her. She drops a nest, thus killing some inept tribute and makes off with a bow. She ends up hallucinating and requires even more assistance from Rue. Then she concocts a plan that gets Rue killed while she uses a bow where a rock would be more suitable. Not the brightest star in the sky. The first thing she does right is that she picks some flowers and gets some bread for it.
Hopping forward to the cave part of the story, she acts very on/off in regard to her and Peeta’s relationship. Sure, she keeps him alive, but only just. After countless hints and multiple people blatantly telling her that she is being shown on screens over the country, she finally figures out on a rare moment of genius that the people watching might actually be interested in what they are watching. While getting medicine for the poor lad, she ends up almost killed by some other girl, who happens to be so loudmouthed that accidentally not only saves Katniss, but also allows Katniss to retrieve the medicine without further danger. She got lucky that her ‘trained’ opponents are immensely stupid and honourable ‘killing machines’. A little before the grand finale she and Peeta manage to off yet another tribute by ignorantly picking poisonous berries. They got stupid lucky that a hungry dude did not eat some berries while picking them. In the end, Katniss yet again values somebody else’s life over her own.
It gets a lot worse as the story progresses. Important people around her start carrying around mockingjay pins, watches, whatever, and they make sure she would notice these objects, as if it was a sign or symbol or something. She remains completely oblivious to the constant mockingjay fandom, even though she knows fully well that mockingjays were a humiliation for the government and hence are in very poor taste among the upper class. Pretty much every reader figured out there was a group of rebels in the upper echelons of power ready to help her a few hundred pages before someone told her. Heck, she didn’t even get it when some of her most fierce opponents suddenly started working to keep her alive at any cost. Even when she gets out from the second arena (a process in which her bow actually becomes somewhat useful inside an arena due to a massive cockup by the other tributes) she runs around more as a mascot than as someone actually useful. And she fails to protect her boyfriend and her family.
All in all, she created a spark she did not mean to by being ignorant, survived by being helpless on her own and became a success because other people wanted that to happen. She had no regard for ethics or safety (other than when she climbed trees) and apparently thinking was not her strong suit. Note that I am not criticizing her education, but her ability to understand painfully obvious clues and make the simplest conclusions based on uncomplicated known facts. Now how is that a strong female character? This is a serious question that expects an answer, with proper argumentation would be best.
She created a spark but the fire would’ve been better off without her. A mascot is almost as good as a martyr.
“There are only two ways in which we can account for a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects: either experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make experience possible.”
Immanuel Kant
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