The Hunger Games — Chapter 5

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter's argument or narrative arc, then identify the central tension and evaluate whether the author handles it honestly.

Discussion Questions

1. Cinna designs a costume that converts Katniss into a symbol before she has any opportunity to consent to the conversion. The chariot ride creates 'the Girl on Fire' — an icon that will eventually carry an entire revolution. Examine the moral status of this authorship. Does Cinna's act represent the liberation of an oppressed girl into political visibility, or the appropriation of her body as a screen for someone else's political vision? The fact that the appropriation works in Katniss's interest does not necessarily justify it — argue rigorously for your position and engage the strongest counter-case.
2. The chapter contains an extended embedded passage in which Katniss converts the Capitol's lunch into District 12 labor — a wild turkey for the chicken, a second turkey traded for the orange, days of hunting and gathering for what now appears at the press of a button. Examine this passage as a piece of political economy. What theory of value is implicit in Katniss's translation, and how does Collins use a first-person narrator to perform a labor-theory critique of consumption that an essayist would have to argue for explicitly?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide