Trauma and Tropes
Disability Representation in The Hunger Games Trilogy
When the Hunger Games trilogy was first popular, I was in an unfortunate “not like other girls'' phase and felt I was too mature for dystopian YA novels. Somehow, I made it to 2023 with only a cursory knowledge of the trilogy, and I have to admit, on first reading, I was pleasantly surprised. The books are quite compelling, and offer some decent “baby’s first” anticapitalist/revolutionary discourse (although it's painfully straight and completely fails to establish what a desirable alternative to Capitalism would look like, but that won't be my focus). I will be looking at the trilogy primarily from a disability perspective, and there is a lot of disability representation to discuss. The majority of the main characters are disabled, including the protagonist and narrator, Katniss Everdeen, herself. The trilogy features many other named characters with a variety of disabilities including amputees, people with brain injuries, trauma and mental illness, partial deafness, migraines and people who are nonspeaking. That being said, the books’ overall message about disability and the place of disabled people in society is a bit murky.
The trilogy is set in a dystopian future North America where the state forces children, randomly selected from 12 working class districts, to participate in an annual, highly produced fight to the death (the titular Hunger Games) for the entertainment of the wealthy. The books follows teenage Katniss Everdeen who, after winning the games, becomes a symbol of and fighter for the revolutionary war effort.
The majority of the disabilities portrayed in the novels are the direct result of state violence and neglect, as though disabled bodies are the marker of a dystopian society. Starvation is common in the districts, and we see people suffering as the result of unsafe working conditions, extreme poverty and lack of access to medical care. The cruelty and disabling force of the state is epitomised in the Hunger Games which leave nearly all victors in some way disabled. Disability is also used as a punishment in the state of Panem; “traitors'' have their tongues removed and several characters are tortured in ways that result in long-term disability and brain damage. This depiction reflects a trope identified by Alison Kafer; “utopian visions are founded on the elimination of disability, while dystopic, negative visions of the future are based on its proliferation”.1 While capitalism and state violence certainly contribute to a great deal of disability, the fact that all of the named disabled characters were disabled by the state is concerning. It suggests that disability is the tragic outcome of a fallen society, rather than a natural part of human life, and that a more just society might eliminate it entirely.
I have conflicting thoughts about what the trilogy says about trauma and mental illness. In many ways, The Hunger Games trilogy is first and foremost the story of a teenage girl's experience processing trauma. Katniss' experience of trauma is nuanced, realistic, and empowering. Her healing process is slow and often interrupted by further trauma, and the process is never complete. At various points she is able to survive only with the help and support of her loved ones. She finds solace in music, memorialising those she's lost, and building a new life for herself; but she is forever changed. Even in the epilogue, 20 years after the end of the war, Katniss knows the effects of trauma “won't ever really go away”.2 I really love this depiction of trauma as something that is not so much overcome as integrated and continually coped with; it rings true for me.
I also really love the depiction of Annie, who “went mad” after winning the hunger games.3 Katniss describes her as “less mad than unstable...she laughs at odd places in the conversation and drops out of it distractedly”. She often stares off intensely into space and “sometimes, for no reason, she presses both her hands over her ears as if to block out a painful sound”.4 Annie's depiction as a visibly mentally ill woman occasionally lost in her own reality is deeply personally resonant, and the fact that she is given (in my opinion) the most compelling romance of the series is delightful. Her marriage to Finnick fills her with joy, but in no way cures her of her disability. Instead, Finnick cares for and supports her, holding her hand, verifying what is and is not real, and comforting her when she’s in distress.5
Despite my love for Annie, I do have some concerns regarding the trilogy's depiction of neurodivergence and mental illness more generally. It concerns me that all of the characters come into their disability as the result of extreme trauma. In some ways it suggests that severe trauma, such as being a literal child soldier, is the only (or perhaps only acceptable) cause of mental illness and neurodivergence. Maybe this is an unfair thing to read into this text, but as a neurodivergent/mentally ill child, I felt a lot of shame about the fact that my disability could not be accounted for by any sort of major trauma because that was the only narrative of mental illness I had really been exposed to. In fact, I experienced a lot of the same symptoms that Katniss and Annie display in Mockingjay. I suspect that if I had read the book at that time, the empowering and hopeful elements of their narratives could have easily been outweighed by the sense that I had not earned the care or compassion they are afforded because I had not suffered what they had suffered. Once again, Collins is framing disability as the result of something bad that happens to an otherwise nondisabled person, while ignoring the experiences of people with congenital or otherwise naturally occurring disabilities.
Then there's the question of how the trilogy treats amputees. Peeta (one of the main characters) loses a leg in the Hunger Games and is given a high tech prosthesis by the Capitol at the end of book one. Although it's mentioned a few times in passing in book two (but never in book three), we get no details about this experience. We never learn how the prosthetic works or how Peeta feels about it. In fact, he never talks about it at all, which seems odd given how much he shares with Katniss about his other traumas. Peeta's amputation serves primarily as a metaphor for what the Capitol has taken from him and of his forced complicity in his own oppression. Before his first games, Peeta tells Katniss "I don't want them to change me in there".6 He doesn't appear to be talking about his physical body, but it's worth noting that, unlike Katniss, whose physical injuries fully heal, Peeta's body is permanently, visibly changed. In Catching Fire we are introduced to Chaff, who lost a hand in the games but has refused a prosthetic, presumably as an act of protest against the Capitol.7 This lends political meaning to Peeta's use of a prosthetic, transforming it from a neutral fact to an acceptance of help from the Capitol. Collins' use of disability as metaphor here feels trite and problematic. By giving so little attention to Peeta's amputation and prosthetic use, she has reduced them to flat signifiers of loss and trauma.
In terms of harmful disability tropes, there’s also the issue of our chronically ill villain, President Snow. In Catching Fire, when President Snow meets with Katniss in order to threaten her, she is horrified to discover that his breath smells of blood, and imagines him drinking it.8 Later, in Mockingjay, we learn that president Snow has repeatedly poisoned his enemies and rivals and has occasionally drunk poison to divert suspicion, resulting in permanent mouth sores.9 Thus, his villainy is permanently reflected in his body, or put another way, his disability renders him monstrous. In fact, at the end of Mockingjay he is described in explicitly monstrous terms: “his snake eyes shine bright and cold...he slithered into [my home] last year, hissing threats with his bloody, rosy breath”.10
The quality of disability representation in the Hunger Games Trilogy is complex and varied. There are many named disabled characters, the majority of whom are realistically and positively depicted; however, taken as a whole, the trilogy presents disability as a marker of a dystopian society, the outcome of trauma, and a metaphor for loss and villainy. Despite these troubling ableist tropes, I can't help but love the books for the disabled characters they introduced me to. I’m left wondering, can positive disability representation coexist with ableist tropes?
Feminist, Queer, Crip 74
Mockingjay 390
Catching Fire 347
Mockingjay 225
Mockingjay 240-242, 270
Hunger Games 141
Mockingjay 213
Catching Fire 30
Mockingjay 172
Mockingjay 355