The Panem Companion

by V. Arrow

  Katniss understands her race to be Seam, basically, because she identifies ethnically as Seam and because the Peacekeepers, merchants, and others in the Seam identify her as Seam. Katniss denotes herself as similar to Gale with as much ease as she notes herself as different than her mother—from whom she first feels separated at the same time in her life that she becomes fully aware of the societal difference between the Seam and the merchants: after her father’s death. Katniss’ negative feelings about her mother began at the same stage in her life that she saw firsthand the extent of cruelty and racial/ethnic hatred of the merchants towards Seam people, like Katniss herself.

  There was a clatter in the bakery . . . [Peeta’s] mother was yelling, “Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! Why not? No one decent will buy burned bread!”THG30

  Katniss, with her olive Seam skin and black Seam hair, was just found starving and picking for food in the bakery’s trash by blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Mrs. Mellark. Mrs. Mellark is aware of Katniss’ presence but would still rather have Peeta feed the burnt bread to their pigs than let Katniss have it. Her phrasing attacks Katniss’ “decency” as an ethnic girl of the Seam, and implies Katniss’ worth is less than even a pig’s. At this moment in her life, Katniss, who looks nothing like her merchant-class mother or her well-loved and blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned sister, has been left to fend for herself in her time of extreme need by her merchant-class mother and now, as she realizes the gravity of her situation, is being abandoned again by another merchant-class woman: told by her mother to starve out of circumstance, and told by Mrs. Mellark to starve because she lacks “decency.” It is no wonder that Katniss self-identifies so passionately as Seam and dwells on the marked differences between herself and her merchant-class mother, who, even after four years, she has difficulty trusting:

  My mother’s parents were part of the small merchant class . . . My father got to know my mother because on his hunts he would sometimes collect medicinal herbs and sell them to her shop to be brewed into remedies. She must have really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father’s sake. But to be honest, I’m not the forgiving type.THG8

  Prim, in contrast, has no issue trusting Mrs. Everdeen—and incidentally, Prim also does not share Katniss’ outward markers of being Seam. Prim, like Mrs. Everdeen, appears to be of the merchant class, with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. She is also, by Katniss’ repeated admission, the better-liked of the Everdeen sisters by the other residents of District 12, particularly—or perhaps only, because Greasy Sae and the Hawthornes seem so partial to Katniss—the merchants.

  It’s easy to say, “Of course Prim was better-liked; she was sweet and kind and tenderhearted!”

  But.

  Katniss could have kept her hunting spoils for her own family; instead, she traded in the Hob and sold to other families—which allowed them to eat when perhaps they couldn’t feed themselves, either. She brought home an injured goat for the sister she loved and didn’t kill Buttercup the cat (against her own better judgment) because he made Prim happy. In Mockingjay, we even see Katniss bonding with him to please and entertain the other refugees in District 13.

  Katniss is, despite her—and Haymitch’s—assessment of herself, fairly sweet. Her quick wit and wry sense of humor, as well as her genuine praise for Cinna’s work and grudging fondness for Haymitch in her interviews with Caesar Flickerman, more than endear her to the Capitol public (not to mention us as readers). Why should District 12 be different?

  Katniss ends up in the Hunger Games out of a desire to protect her younger sister even in a place where it wouldn’t be expected (“family loyalty only goes so far on reaping day”). When in the arena, she allies only twice: with the youngest contestant, whom she sings to sleep, and with Peeta, a boy who has been so grievously injured that, without her, he would have succumbed to gangrene. Katniss performs every action she undertakes in the entire series for the benefit of someone else.

  Katniss is kind. Her devotion to others, especially those who appear less fortunate than herself, is indicative of a genuinely kind nature, even if she views herself in supremely negative terms when comparing herself to Prim or to Peeta (who is actually merchant class, in addition to being blond and blue-eyed).

  And as she says herself, people have a way of worming their way inside her and taking root there. Katniss is tenderhearted. Katniss Everdeen is a marshmallow. (A marshmallow that will kill you six ways from Sunday, but . . . still.) Her consistent, fond notice of Greasy Sae’s disabled granddaughter and relief at her continued survival is a small, touching example of this motif.

  So if both Everdeen sisters behave in ways that show them to be sweet, kind, and tenderhearted, why is Prim the better-liked sister?

  Because she is blonde, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned, ostensibly seen as more similar to those from the merchant class than those from the Seam due to her physical appearance. But beyond that, likely because Prim engages in District 12 life outside of the Seam culture in a way that Katniss does not.

  Katniss and Prim’s interactions with the rest of District 12 are, from the outside, not all that different. Prim goes to school; she admires the cakes in the window of the bakery; she nurses animals back to health; she apprentices herself to her mother, a healer, and helps to care for injured and ill residents of District 12. Katniss, too, goes to school; she walks her sister home and allows her to window-shop at the bakery; she hunts for and sells or trades meat and pelts on the black market; she has a working relationship with many of the District 12 community adults, from Seam residents like Greasy Sae and Hazelle to Darius the Peacekeeper and Mr. Mellark in the merchant class. But although Katniss exemplifies the same positive personality traits as Prim in her daily interactions, she displays them within the context not only of her Seam race and Seam ethnicity but of the very particular Seam culture.

  What is a culture, and how does it differ from race or ethnicity? Dr. Nancy Jervis, a researcher and speaker from the China Institute who commentates on the integration of multicultural inclusion in school curricula, believes that culture is:

  something material you can touch . . . something immaterial, such as values and beliefs . . . [and] our customs and traditions, our festivals and celebrations[.] While anthropologists have vacillated between material and nonmaterial definitions of culture, today most would agree with a more inclusive definition of culture: the thoughts, behaviors, languages, customs, the things we produce and the methods we use to produce them.xxiii

  Basically, culture is a way of life that is learned and passed down through generations. Anthropologist John Bodley posited in 1994 that “culture . . . is made up of at least three components: what people think, what they do, and the material products they produce.”xxiv

  The Seam is a clear example of a fully formed culture within the larger culture of Panem. By Katniss’ accounts or in her purview:

  •Think: In the Seam, the value of reciprocation is highly prized. Katniss struggles hugely through the trilogy with her feeling of “owing” Peeta, even after he’s made it clear that in his culture—the merchant-class culture—the need for reciprocation is not so overt; he tells Katniss, point-blank, that she does not owe him anything anymore in exchange for the bread or protection during the Seventy-fourth Games and Quarter Quell. The people of the Seam also seem to place a high value on nature, even if they aren’t going out into the woods themselves the way that Katniss and Gale do. Mrs. Undersee medicates with chemicals synthesized and distributed by another district, but Mrs. Everdeen (now culturally Seam even if she is merchant class by birth and appearance) relies on herbs and plants to create similar anesthetic effects for her patients.

  •Do: Although “coal mining” is a hit-you-over-the-head example of “what Seam people do,” there are other, subtler examples as well: the passing down of clothes from pa
rent to child and sibling to sibling; trading and barter on the honor system (possible due to the cultural emphasis on reciprocation); the iconic three-fingered funerary salute.

  •Produce: Again: “coal” is the obvious answer, but what else does the Seam produce? Wild dog stews and, perhaps most importantly in a place called Panem (which itself means bread), tesserae-grain biscuits.

  Tesserae-grain biscuits are an integral part of the formation of Seam culture as distinctive because, as we learn in The Hunger Games and expand on in Catching Fire, every district in Panem has its own unique, isolated culture, and unique breads are a carefully crafted narrative element of those cultures. In District 3, where the specialty is electronics and technology, which depend on precision, the bread is small, white squaresCF349—reminiscent of electrical circuitry.

  The bread from District 4 is green, salty, and made from seaweed, further demonstrating the overwhelming importance of the ocean to District 4’s people. In District 12, where life is hard even for the merchants and where they have almost never gotten the benefit of a year’s supply of luxuries and rations after the Games, the signature bread is made of tesserae grain—Katniss describes it as “rough.” The tesserae-grain biscuits aren’t the only bread made in District 12. The breads she describes made in Mellark Bakery are “fragrant” and “delicate,” and Peeta describes making a multitude of different breads, cakes, and even pastries, which not only demonstrates the merchant class’ greater financial stability (they are able to purchase a variety of goods beyond those required for mere subsistence) but also illustrates a difference in value assessment: merchant-class products are simply worth more than those made in the Seam. In The Hunger Games, Peeta recalls a goat cheese and apple tart—noted by both Katniss and Peeta as “too expensive”THG309—made in his family’s bakery. The description “too expensive” would suggest that its ingredients were rare and precious, yet it is also reminiscent of Katniss and Gale’s breakfast of goat cheese and blackberries at the outset of the series, which was free—that it was the cache of the merchant bakery and not the actual economic value of the ingredients that drove the Mellark Bakery tart’s price.

  This highlights an important point in understanding the relationship between the merchant class and the Seam. Race does not exist in a vacuum, whether in our world or Panem: it affects, and is affected by, socioeconomic class. Although all residents of District 12 are poor in comparison to the Capitol and even the other districts, within the socioeconomic structure of the district itself, there are clear haves (the merchants) and have-nots (the Seam), divided along racial lines. And this disparity of resources creates discord and tension within the district.

  Of all of the characters, Gale is the most affected by this, as shown by his early interactions with Madge in The Hunger Games—despite his recognition of the institutional forces that drive the socioeconomic disparity between the merchants and the Seam. He is strongly resentful of Madge; his interactions with her are underscored with tension from the first time we see them speak (“Pretty dress”).THG12

  Some Hunger Games readers show a similar pattern of prejudice. Many fans mistakenly ascribe Madge with the negative values of the Capitol—even though she demonstrates none of their vapidity, lack of empathy, or overt racism. This is because it is at times hard for us, like Gale, to see Madge beyond the veneer of her privileged class as the District 12 mayor’s daughter. Her actions, though, in bringing Mrs. Everdeen contraband morphling for Gale after his whipping and in helping smuggle Katniss Capitol newspapers in the time before the Quarter Quell show that she is aware of the unfairness of the system and willing to break the rules, at least in small ways, to help. In addition, Madge’s usual dress in what Katniss describes as “plain clothes”THG12 illustrates her lack of interest in taking advantage of her class or holding it above others.

  Though Katniss and Madge are friends, Katniss is not immune to this sort of negative bias either. She has also internalized a prejudicial hatred of Panem’s socioeconomic upper classes and their corresponding races/ethnicities/cultures, though this is more overt in her automatic—though eventually unlearned—hatred of everyone from the Capitol and Career districts than it is in her automatic dismissal of District 12’s merchants.

  Katniss learns over the course of the three novels that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, or district, suffer under the current political system. By the beginning of The Hunger Games, she had already seen Peeta, a merchant, beaten by his mother; Haymitch, a rich victor, succumb to alcoholism; her own mother, a merchant by birth, incapacitated by depression—and yet Katniss still jealously thinks of merchants’ lives as irresponsibly easy (“it’s hard not to resent those who don’t have to sign up for tesserae”THG13).

  Katniss’ understanding of the merchants as “Other” is clear from a young age, as when she recalls the Boy with the Bread incident at the bakery:

  I noticed him, a boy with blond hair peering out . . . I’d seen him at school. He was in my year, but I didn’t know his name. He stuck with the town kids, so how would I?THG30

  Clearly, Katniss’ life in District 12 is severely segregated. Her only contact with merchants (aside from her mother) comes from semi-polite business transactions, her silent camaraderie with Madge at school, and the reaping ceremonies each year.

  This alienation between the classes, the mutual “Other-ness” of the Seam and the merchants, is a theme that continues through Katniss’ interactions with many of the series’ characters even outside of District 12; the same dynamic is writ large between district and Capitol citizens. This type of social conditioning, which institutionally reinforces negative stereotypes of racialized groups, is common in segregated societies. Grace Kao of the Department of Sociology and Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted focus groups of adolescents of three different minorities (Latino American, black American, and Asian American) and determined that “[stereotyping] images maintain racially and ethnically segregated . . . activities that reinforce segregated peer groups . . . Socialization with same-race peers promotes comparable conceptions of success within racial groups.”xxv

  Katniss’ sense of being “other” is bound up with the dominant group’s system of valuation in which she, as a member of the racialized lower class, is considered to be “less”: less worthy, less individual, and less valuable. This is, arguably, what drives a lot of Katniss’ negative view of herself—the reason Katniss sees herself as consummately unlikeable, and as unattractive in comparison to (fair-skinned, blonde-haired) Glimmer.

  This social conditioning is so internalized by Katniss that she acknowledges, but does not recognize, its effects during her interaction with Mrs. Mellark just before the scene with Peeta and the burnt bread:

  Suddenly a voice was screaming at me and I looked up to see the baker’s wife, telling me to move on and did I want her to call the Peacekeepers and how sick she was of having those brats from the Seam pawing through her trash. The words were ugly and I had no defense.THG29

  Mrs. Mellark refers to her as a Seam “brat”; Katniss acknowledges that the words are “ugly” but that she “has no defense”—meaning that, on some level, she believes it to be true that her Seam-ness makes her less than Mrs. Mellark and the other merchants.

  The same kind of prejudice that Mrs. Mellark demonstrates is also at work in the Capitol. It’s arguably a big part of what allows the Capitol residents to enjoy the Hunger Games: to them, the district tributes are so Other, and so subjugated, as to be barely human. Although some people of the Capitol, like Cinna and Octavia, ultimately reject their own prejudice, others display the full magnitude of racial hatred:

  “At least, you two have decent manners,” says Effie as we’re finishing the main course. “The pair last year ate everything with their hands like a couple of savages. It completely upset my digestion.”

  The pair last year were two kids from the Seam who’d never, not one day in their lives, had enough to eat.THG44
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  The deep-rooted racism of the Capitol brings Katniss’ popularity in the Seventy-fourth Games and the Quarter Quell into chilling question. How exactly did a Seam girl garner the favor of the racist Capitol? Cinna’s skillful styling and Caesar’s vote of camera-friendly camaraderie helped, but previous Seam tributes had the benefit of Caesar and a styling team—even if they were neither as invested nor as talented as Cinna and Portia! What did Katniss have in her favor that no other Seam tributes had?

  “Peeta has made me an object of love . . . And there I am, blushing and confused, made . . . desirable by Peeta’s confession . . . and by all accounts, unforgettable.”THG49 Peeta—fair-skinned, blond, blue-eyed, merchant-class Peeta—is placed as a buffer between the Capitolites and Katniss; he is their “understood entity,” a fair-skinned, broad-shouldered, well-spoken tribute who speaks their language and essentially assures them that it’s alright to support Katniss, to want Katniss, because he—with his “pure white” faceTHG124—does, too. He creates an empathetic construct between the Capitol and Katniss that serves as a mediator of “Otherness” that allows the Capitol to view Katniss as desirable enough to sponsor.