Female Empowerment In The Hunger Games And Catching Fire

Empowering young females through literature is one of the most important things that can happen in a girl’s childhood. When a female main character follows the timeline of the hero’s journey, she teaches the reader that girls can take on masculine roles and save the day without the help of a male figure. Specifically, this ideology of female empowerment can be seen repeatedly in the popular novels The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by author Suzanne Collins. In these novels, the reader follows the story of the main character Katniss Everdeen through her trials in a post-apocalyptic world. Although this idea has been studied by various scholars over the years, many articles lack information on how female main characters following the hero’s

In The Hunger Games, Katniss ultimately starts her adventure when she chooses to participate in the annual Hunger Games in place of her sister Primrose (21). Because she takes Primrose’s place, Katniss follows the path of the hero’s journey. This aspect greatly sets The Hunger Games apart from other fantasy literature because it shows a female taking the role of a traditional male hero rather than a heroine’s journey. Fran Norris Scoble, author of the article “In Search of the Female Hero: Juliet Revisited” suggests that when young girls read about main female characters who follow the hero’s journey, they start to picture the abilities of the female gender differently (Scoble 85). This same idea can be seen in the second book of this series, Catching Fire, Katniss’s call to adventure is when President Snow challenges her loyalty to the Capitol and threatens to act against her and the other districts (29). This is a major turning event in the novel because it shows Katniss’s rebellious character against an oppressive government. Scoble believes that when girls read stories of females such as Katniss on the hero’s journey, they start to view females as figures who have the same heroic traits as traditional male main characters (Scoble 86). In both calls to adventure, Katniss is showing the female reader that the embodies the courage of a traditional male hero which makes the reader view females as having masculine