#these characters' JOBS are prepping children to be slaughtered and consumed as they are slaughtered.

[metanarrates]

What Are your thoughts on cinna

***ALL OF THIS ANSWER IS PREDICATED ON BOOK 1. IF THIS IS ADDRESSED IN LATER BOOKS I WOULD BE THRILLED.***

cinna's job, his literal livelihood as presented in these novels, is packaging and selling children up to a live audience for eventual slaughter. it is horrifying. he is complicit, perhaps the most complicit a person could be, in all the exploitation that occurs. this at bare minimum should make him misguided, at worst horrifically sinister. he is not presented as either.

as of right now, he is being presented as a complete good guy. katniss is pleased and flattered by the nice clothes he dresses her in, his "girl on fire" image is treated as a gift because it gives her an edge, and his attempts to provide emotional comfort seem to be very genuine. katniss is not made uncomfortable by his efforts to package her into a palatable concept - she is glad that he is nice to her.

in a subtler work, I would take this to mean that katniss has been taken in by his outward image and is blind to the ways that he is using her to further his career. but the hunger games is incredibly unsubtle when katniss' viewpoint is meant to be unreliable, and the rest of the time, her viewpoint is always confirmed to be 100% factual even in situations where that makes no sense. it is not a work that hides it when a character is meant to be sinister. which is fine, because this is a story for middle schoolers. but it ruins a lot of the story's alleged societal critique if cinna is never treated as even remotely culpable for his role in the games. I don't have much faith in the story's ability to reckon with that, considering how many other interesting moral dilemmas the book tends to gloss over.