#also titus andonicus thg book club read?

[thesweetnessofspring]

Lavinia was likely named for the Shakespeare character from Titus Andronicus. It's been a while since I read that play, but Lavinia was engaged to one of the sons trying to take over Rome and he was killed, she was raped and her tongue and hands cut off. Also her father kills her because she was raped. Honestly the whole play is pretty crazy and I'm probably missing a ton of details but I've been planning on revisiting it for my (eventual) Katvinia fic. Based on this, though, I do think

Lavinia's father was in the military/very high in the government

She and the boy were in love

something to think about (because i've also been thinking about it lately) : the story behind Lavinia, how they killed the boy she was with but captured her

Ooo send me your thoughts! Here are some of mine:

How wild is it that Lavinia doesn’t remind Katniss of the girl in the woods, she is the girl from the woods. What are the odds? (I don’t think there’s any great rebellion conspiracy behind Katniss and Peeta being the 74th tributes, but it’s just another one of those luck/fate things that play into the story.)

Moving past that, I was trying to make parallels between Lavinia capture and the QQ: Katniss being ‘rescued’/spared and Peeta being left-for-dead/captured and used to punish Katniss.

then I pulled up the text and it felt very reminiscent of Rue’s death: the Mockingjays, the net, the spear, Katniss’s desire and inability to save both girls…

Lavinia’s Capture

“No, my friend Gale. Suddenly all the birds stopped singing at once. Except one. As if it were giving a warning call. And then we saw her. I’m sure it was the same girl. A boy was with her. Their clothes were tattered. They had dark circles under their eyes from no sleep. They were running as if their lives depended on it,” I say.

For a moment I’m silent, as I remember how the sight of this strange pair, clearly not from District 12, fleeing through the woods immobilized us. Later, we wondered if we could have helped them escape. Perhaps we might have. Concealed them. If we’d moved quickly. Gale and I were taken by surprise, yes, but we’re both hunters. We know how animals look at bay. We knew the pair was in trouble as soon as we saw them. But we only watched.

“The hovercraft appeared out of nowhere,” I continue to Peeta. “I mean, one moment the sky was empty and the next it was there. It didn’t make a sound, but they saw it. A net dropped down on the girl and carried her up, fast, so fast like the elevator. They shot some sort of spear through the boy. It was attached to a cable and they hauled him up as well. But I’m certain he was dead. We heard the girl scream once. The boy’s name, I think. Then it was gone, the hovercraft. Vanished into thin air. And the birds began to sing again, as if nothing had happened.”

Rue’s death

It's a child's scream, a young girl's scream, there's no one in the arena capable of making that sound except Rue. And now I'm running, knowing this may be a trap, knowing the three Careers may be poised to attack me, but I can't help myself. There's another high-pitched cry, this time my name. "Katniss! Katniss!"

"Rue!" I shout back, so she knows I'm near. So, they know I'm near, and hopefully the girl who has attacked them with tracker jackers and gotten an eleven they still can't explain will be enough to pull their attention away from her. "Rue! I'm coming!"

When I break into the clearing, she's on the ground, hopelessly entangled in a net. She just has time to reach her hand through the mesh and say my name before the spear enters her body.