From a Farouche Adolescent to an Important Part of Society. The Psychosocial Development of Katniss Everdeen In "The Hunger Games" Trilogy

Bachelorarbeit aus dem Jahr 2014 im Fachbereich Englisch - Literatur, Werke, Note: 1,3, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Keltologie), Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: The three books of Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" trilogy have been published between 2008 and 2010 and tell the story of Panem, a North-American state of a dystopian future, and how a slowly upcoming rebellion, led by the protagonist Katniss Everdeen, helped the people to overcome the political oppression of a totalitarian government. Throughout the first book, which appeared under the global title "The Hunger Games", the reader gets to know the main characters and the political and social situation in Panem, with the central problem of the Hunger Games as omnipresent fear for the entire society in the twelve districts. At the end of the first novel, after taking part in and winning the Hunger Games herself, the protagonist triggers more or less unwillingly a couple of happenings that slowly lead to the rebellious break out in the second book, which is appropriately called "Catching Fire", since it thematises the upcoming rebellious actions and how the Capitol tries to stop the rising number of rebels throughout the country. The entire last volume of the trilogy, "Mockingjay", deals exclusively with the revolutionary actions and the slow fall of Panem's Capitol and the totalitarian system. The main target group of Collins' trilogy are young adult readers, however, it is also able to attract adults due to its complex plot and the profound representation of the topic. Also, "The Hunger Games" trilogy is a hybrid novel, which cannot be assigned to one single genre as it includes aspects of a dystopia, romance and war literature; predominantly, however, it is a so called bildungsroman with two main focusses: On the one hand, there is a central socio-political statement, which has been created "very intentionally [...] to characterize current and past world events", according to the author herself. On the other hand, the novel deals intensively with the topic of growing up by highlighting both, normal psychological issues of teenagers, e.g. the first love, and the special circumstances, in which Katniss Everdeen grows up.