Yesterday I picked up my iPad and carelessly flicked to my iBooks app, and right there, open, was the first book in the Hunger Games series. Next thing I know, 6 hours had passed, it was 4.30am and I had re-read the entire Hunger Games trilogy.
I love the Hunger Games series for one reason- Katniss Everdeen. She is an accidental, and unwilling heroine, and every choice she made was an inherent reaction to something. It was always circumstantial, and it was never her choice, never up to her. That's what sets the Hunger Games series apart from other fantasy novels. There isn't that moment of awakening of inner nobility, that turning point where she makes that decision to be all heroic and shit (well up until she decides to be the mockingjay at least, but even then it was to honour her promise to protect Peeta over anything), she just reacts to what circumstances she finds herself in. It's the survival instinct, the need to protect the ones she loves that really really gnaws at me long after I'm done reading the books.
More importantly, she has this ability to separate her emotion from doing what is practical. This sounds so ridiculous but it's comforting. Her strength, despite the pain. I probably sound really silly considering she's a fictional character but if she were real I would really, really respect her so much. Plus the fact that she is human, she has nightmares long after the war is over, that things don't just go back to normal. She struggles, and she breaks, and there are moments where she thinks she is going mad, but she stays strong.
Infragilis et tenera- delicate but unbreakable. That about sums up why the Hunger Games series means so much to me. Here's hoping the movie doesn't ruin it for me.
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