"And the song. I get to sing every note of the song. Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers. Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion" (Collins 363).
It seems that the recurring theme of governmental control and censorship comes up throughout the course of the novel. When I read this passage in the book, I could feel exactly what was happening to Katniss while I read it. When she said that she started to feel numb, I could understand that she was beginning to realize that no matter what kind of person she was, it didn't matter, because the people who broadcast the Hunger Games would make her out to be the character that they want her to be. If that character they want her to be is a relentless killer, then they can make her that way. It happens specifically in this passage when Katniss eliminates one of the competitors in the Games, but they omit the part where after she kills her, she covers her in flowers, because Katniss actually cares, and feels sorrow for having to kill another competitor, but that is just the nature of the Hunger Games. She adds a bit of irony at the end, saying that covering another competitor in flowers after killing them just screams rebellion.
Again, the purpose has to deal with the censorship of the government feeding viewers of The Hunger Games whatever information they want to feed them. Like previously mentioned, the author uses irony to convey the point of censoring meaningless things that wouldn't convey a certain message that wouldn't even have a huge affect on the viewing audience. It was just a kind gesture. The purpose that goes along with the passage is that by this point, Katniss knows what the game is, and to this point, she feels nothing, because her actions don't mean anything for her, they mean whatever the game makers want her to mean. Since the Hunger Games is so widely viewed as a sporting event like the Super Bowl would be viewed by us now, it is a form of propaganda to remind citizens that this is a consequence for the rebellion that happened in District 13.
It puts things into perspective and makes one think what if your life was only known by other people as portrayed by somebody else? That is in reality of the novel, what is happening in this passage. Their depiction of the future in connecting the Hunger Games to large sporting events today, reveals that in the present, we are heavily influenced by propaganda, and we may not even know it. The media can present whatever information they want to us, and we choose to believe it. The media uses images and language in a manner where, it seems plausible and believable, so we choose to believe it. But in the end, this passage shows that being human, isn't about what others see about you, but what your underlying character is that makes you a good human being as Katniss is.
This passage actually reminds me of the future of screen technology post that I had talked about before. The idea of the screen technology seemed far fetched to me when I viewed it. The user reshapes and resizes the screen to his liking, and in addition bends the concepts of physics and reality. But yet again, this is just what we choose to believe. This is what media is feeding to us, but in contrast to the Hunger Games, the idea of this touch screen seems too unbelievable to be true, and that is why I choose not to believe it.
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