FACES OF THE FANDOM - More from Interview #1, with author, Valerie Frankel. Questions on favorite theme, scene, and interpreting The Hunger Games. 7. What is one of your favorite THG themes to write about? I love the kid power and heroine’s journey arc—too many books fail to deliver one or the other, but this trilogy’s really solid on both. 8. Do you have a favorite scene from one of the books? Why? Katniss’s “last arrow of the war” is so unexpected yet perfect, especially in context of the heroine’s journey. 9. If you’ve read comments on fansites, you know that interpretations of the events and characters in The Hunger Games widely vary. How would you defend your own interpretation of Katniss, symbolism, etc? Hmm. All literary criticism is subjective. For some details, like the Roman names, I feel quite solid. Collins used eighteen characters from Shakespeare’s Roman plays, so I don’t think anyone’s calling that coincidence. And as I’ve read the same sources as she has, I see parallels between her book’s themes and the theme of Julius Caesar that replacing the tyrant leaves the world no better than before (she used nine characters from that play). Other details, like the fact that Katniss Everdeen is named for Bathsheba Everdene in Far from the Madding Crowd, I wouldn’t have made the connection except that…well, the author said so in a published interview. (I read all I could find.) When I discuss the symbolism of each kind of food or the gender roles Katniss and Peeta take on…certainly that’s my interpretation. But I try to dovetail with Collins’s interpretation—she uses roses to symbolize Snow the mass murderer, so I began by asking myself how roses show up in violent symbolism (turns out, they represent war and blood a lot, for the color. A white rose symbolizes martyrdom). Anyhow, I feel that in literary criticism, it’s all valid if you can back it up.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 21:04:02 +0000