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Victoria Heckel
Professor A. Baldassare
WRT 201
May 5, 2014
Katniss’s Heroic Journey
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” (Campbell)
This quote was said by Joseph Campbell who also wrote The Hero’s Journey: A Summary of the
Steps. These steps begins with the character in just his/her ordinary world and ending with that
character, having gone through the most traumatic moment if their life, returning home and
achieving what they set out to do.
“Suzanne Collins has been widely praised for the success in March 23, 2012 of The
Hunger Games trilogy.” (Lex) This success is including its story design, characterizations,
pacing, writing craft, and allegorical and thematic content. The novel trilogy is among the very
best in the scifi/fantasy genre in the past decade or longer. The Hunger Games is set apart by its
lead character Katniss Everdeen, and the skill in which Collins portrays in this trilogy is centered
among a young female lead hero. Collins not only executes a strong female heroine, but also
makes her heroine’s journey from an nobody to a national symbol. “There are far too few stories
of this kind in the genre – or anywhere else for that matter – even amid the prolific storytelling
boom of recent years. For authors, screenwriters, and others struggling to figure out how to write
better female characters and better female-centered stories, The Hunger Games has to be at the
very top of the list to read, analyze, and learn from.” (Lex) In the article from Los Angelos times
they explain that this trilogy is:
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Suzanne Collins bestseller on which it is based, the movie about a teenage girl
fighting for her life in a televised death match in a dystopian post-apocalyptic
country that has replaced America has a whiff of political content. But that has
been enough to make a lot of people sniff out their own messages. The Hunger
Games has become the rare piece of Hollywood entertainment: a canvas onto
which disparate and even opposing ideologies are enthusiastically projected.
(Zeitchik)
Campbell points out that some heroes are bored or unhappy in their ordinary life, while
others are satisfied enough, but are forced to leave it for other reasons. Katniss Everdeen was a
girl who lived in District 12. Her father named her after a plant named Katniss, located in the
fields her father would illegally hunt in by their home in District 12. When she was younger, her
