Idealized Gendered Behaviors in The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collin’s trilogy The Hunger Games has become an international bestseller, and tells the story about Katniss Everdeen, a young citizen of District 12 in Panem. The object of this essay is to demonstrate that nurturing, being a warrior and pursuing beauty are the most idealized behaviors in The Hunger Games trilogy. By analyzing these behaviors from a gender perspective, based on the standpoint of Western society, I demonstrate how nurturing and pursuing beauty are feminine behaviors, and being a warrior is a masculine behavior. Furthermore, I outline how the characters’ behavior reflects their upbringings or the circumstances they are in. I conclude by considering what the popularity of Collins’s series indicates about contemporary perceptions of these behaviors, that are traditionally deemed as feminine or masculine in Western society. The result of the analysis indicates that the characters are being rewarded for both feminine and masculine behaviors. However, the characters showing a combination of both feminine and masculine traits gain more than the characters that possess either feminine or masculine qualities only. The contemporary views on femininity and masculinity are changing in Western society, and The Hunger Games trilogy gives us an indication about today’s view on the gendered behaviors in this essay