Phase 2: Trained Dog

"All I can think is how unjust the whole thing is, the Hunger Games. Why am I hopping around like some trained dog trying to please people I hate? The longer the interview goes on, the more my fury seems to rise to the surface, until I'm literally spitting out answers at him" (Collins 117).

          This passage actually reminds me of Fahrenheit 451, when the main character Guy Montag from one of my previous posts began to re-evaluate the reason for not reading books. In this passage, Katniss begins to evaluate her role in The Hunger Games and society in itself. I would be furious at the thought of being somebody's puppet as well, and since she has been this way her whole life, no wonder why she feels this way. It is even worse for her, because the government is full of people whom she hates, yet she has to comply to any one of their demands in fear of the fact that at any moment, her rebellion could mean her demise. As she is further being interviewed in this passage, she seems to get filled with more anger, more rage, at the thoughts of her domestication in the games.
          Collins purposefully takes this passage as a way to develop the character of Katniss more. Throughout the book, we can see that Katniss begins to rebel more and more against the government, as she sees that this really is a governmental taken over society. The author uses this passage to establish pathos to further connect with the reader, since at this point of the book, the reader fully realizes the fury bottled up inside of Katniss. Unfortunately, at this interview, Katniss can't even begin to talk about the reality of the games, and automatically censors herself. If she hadn't then she would have had to suffer a grave fate. This is just another example of the censorship that Katniss has to go through, hiding the fact that The Hunger Games are barbaric, unjust, and awful, and as a result she sits there in her anger, giving answer after answer to the interview questions.
          A vision of the future such as this one prompts me to evaluate the government of the present.
Perhaps the government already has too much power, and we don't realize it. But thinking about our censorship laws, they seem plausible and our government doesn't seem to have too much power over us. From what I see as a normal citizen, most of the laws are meant to protect us. But what if that is what I am supposed to think? Maybe I have already fallen into the trap. Though, one can never really know the underlying reason for many of the government's decisions, they could as well be hiding information from us, which I am sure they are. Maybe there is a lot more to the present that we don't even know about yet. At this point, maybe I am beginning to take shape into a Guy Montag, and a Katniss Everdeen, and becoming the dystopian protagonist I mentioned in one of my earlier posts.