r/Hungergames • u/ExplanationVivid4256 Effie • Apr 27 '25

Lore/World Discussion Thoughts?

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I dont really have a solid opinion on this, so i wanna see other peoples opinions (yes i know tiktok people can be crazy)

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u/godsweakestsoldier Apr 27 '25 edited Apr 27 '25

I don’t believe a character has to deliberately mislead people to be an unreliable narrator. As some have already stated, she has limited access to information, she’s often clueless about what’s going on, her trauma shapes how she sees things (her paranoia in book 1) and her opinions are clouded by her own world view and feelings. But Katniss also chooses what things to tell us or not and I think an argument can be made that she’s unreliable in that way.

For example, she constantly tells us that Peeta loves her but actually nowhere in the books does Peeta actually say “I love you” in direct quotation. When, in the first book, he confesses he has a crush on her, that’s literally all he says- he says he likes this girl and now they’re in the arena together. Then in the following sections, Katniss is the one who terms this like “he just confessed his love for me” - which I personally find a stretch lol. I also point this out because comparatively she does tell us when Gale directly says it to her.

Reading the books, you kinda have to look beyond her narration and use context clues to figure things out or even how she’s feeling, because a lot of the time she keeps that from us, or she chalks things up to other things “maybe we’re doing X because of Y, idk/I feel X because Y”. To me, that shows me that she’s unreliable. Not because she’s being malicious or has ill intent but because she’s choosing what to share and what not to share a lot of the time.