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Stefen Welch

Professor Laurel Hankins

English 345: Literary Theory

5/6/16

Peeta: More than Bread

Katniss Everdeen may be the main character in Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games, but

by far the most interesting character is Peeta Mellark. For as important as he is, Peeta does not

make up more than a small portion of the book and much of that is through Katniss’s filtered

perspective. The Hunger Games is one of many texts that put forth the theory that men

manipulate women into subordinate power positions so they cannot escape traditional gender

roles. Using Psychoanalytic theory, readers can see that Peeta is bent on returning Katniss to

natural gender roles due to his unfulfilled Oedipus complex.

As the novel opens, readers learn that the Everdeen family has suffered from the death of

their patriarch. The loss of a parent is a traumatizing event in any young man or woman’s life.

For Katniss, however, she is not given the chance to be a child and mourn her father; instead, her

mother shuts down completely, leaving Katniss to raise her younger sister Prim. Because of this,

Katniss is forced to leave the realm of traditional feminine characteristics, and take on the role of

the family patriarch that her father has left with his death. As Alison L. Bewley explains in her

essay, “Literary Traditions on Fire: Mimetic Desire and the Role of the Orphaned Heroine in

Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy,” Katniss has ventured, “into the role vacated by their

lost parent and exhibiting stereotypically masculine traits. On the surface, it appears that

Katniss’s ‘hybridity or androgyny’ and her ‘prowess in traditional male realms’ such as hunting

and survival skills associated with her father have launched her out of the victim role and into the

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role of her own savior” (Bewley 373). By taking her life into her own hands and taking on

masculine character traits, Katniss is able to decide what comes in and out of her life and how it

will play out. Even from her childhood trauma, Katniss seems to emerge stronger and more in

control than she has before.

Compared to Katniss, Peeta has a very different childhood which negatively affects his

psyche. Peeta is the son of a baker, a position closely aligned with the middle class of this

dystopian future. Unlike Katniss, he has both his parents and several siblings. His parents are

present, but Peeta, being the youngest, has not earned any favored status because of it. His

mother reprimands him about everything he does, even when he tries to prove his worth. A

perfect example is the scene in which Katniss scavenges through trash, looking for food to feed

her family. Mrs. Mellark hears the clutter and threatens Katniss. Peeta witnesses this and appears

to reason with his mother as they return inside. Instead of praise, Katniss observes: “There was a

clutter in the bakery and I heard the woman screaming again and the sound of a blow” (Collins

30). Next, Katniss witnesses Peeta emerge with burnt bread while his mother continuously yells,

“feed it to the pig, you stupid creature” (Collins 30). Even amidst his mother’s rejection, Peeta

tries to appease her by carrying out her wishes. His mother’s distance and verbal abuse signals a

trauma which has haunted Peeta from a young age. The primal bond between mother and son has

never formed between them. The lack of this primal bond sparks Peeta’s psychological urge to

climb back into his mother’s womb.

Peeta’s repressed crusade for his mother’s love seems to transform when he sees Katniss

hunkered down in the rain: He, “took one look back to the bakery as if checking that the coast

was clear, then, his attention back on the pig he threw a loaf of bread in [Katniss’s] direction”

(Collins 31). His mother may not appreciate him, but in this moment, Peeta believes that Katniss

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will. As his actions reveal, Peeta is motivated by the notion that he can fix Katniss’s problems,

and Katniss can fix his problems. In her time of desperation, Katniss seemingly fails to fulfill the

role of a patriarch. To Peeta, she needs a male figure in her life, and he is willing to fulfill this

role because he desires to be adored for being a man. By throwing the bread to Katniss, Peeta

holds his mother accountable for all the pain he endures while also protecting his dreams of

being a breadwinner onto Katniss. Therefore, he creates an emotional stand in for his mother

through Katniss, someone who will appreciate him and allow him to feel like a man in the

vicinity of his actual mother. However, needing help and needing a hero or a breadwinner,

rather, are two different things. Help is something everyone needs from time to time, and in this

moment Katniss simply appears to need help. The role of the hero or breadwinner in this instance

is a role Peeta has envisioned within his head, one that he projects onto Katniss even though her

moment of weakness is temporary.

Not only is Katniss her own savior, but Prim’s as well. During the Reaping it is Prim who

is selected as the female tribute. She would have been participating with Peeta in the Hunger

Games if it was not for her big sister. Katniss’s bravery resonates so well with members of the

community that they all raise three fingers in the air as a sign of respect. When Peeta’s name is

pulled, there is no one to volunteer, no unifying display of respect in his honor. Although it is

never explained through Peeta’s perspective, a reader may imagine how Peeta must feel during

this scene. His own family, his community does not move a muscle to help him, let alone show

some kind of support. Freud approaches this subject in his essay “Beyond the Pleasure

Principle,” stating events like this occur when:

That efflorescence comes to an end in the most distressing circumstances and to the

accompaniment of the most painful feelings. Loss of love and failure leave behind them a

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permanent injury to self-regard in the form of a narcissistic scar, which in my opinion…

contributes more than anything to the “sense of inferiority” which is so common in

neurotics. (Freud 435)

This sense of inferiority that Freud talks about persists in Peeta at the Reaping. Peeta still has not

healed from the emotional abuse sustained from his mother. Now, the girl he has chosen as his

mother’s stand in overshadows him. Aside from his name being announced, he is barely noticed.

This reinforces the continuing ideology which Suzanne Collins puts forth that Peeta is seen as

insignificant at everything he does in life. The painful and embarrassing realization of his

inferiority coupled with the feelings he has for his mother come together as a recipe for creating

a monster, of unstable and neurotic proportions. Peeta is pushed into an awkward position where

he cannot vocalize the emotional pain he endures. He is stuck letting that swell up inside him.

Given his past interaction with his mother and his repressed Oedipus complex, Peeta’s mind is in

a state of conflict which definitely does not do him any favors. Psychologically, this event is

ripping him to shreds, taunting him and revealing how horribly inferior he is and how now

everyone in his community is aware of it. Freud further theorizes that this identification with

inferiority is reinforced in childhood experiences, which connects to Peeta’s relationship with his

mother:

The child’s sexual researches, on which limits are imposed by his physical development,

lead to no satisfactory conclusion; hence such after complaints as ‘I can’t accomplish

anything; I can’t succeed in anything.’ The tie of affection, which bands the child as a rule

to the parent of the opposite sex, succumbs to disappointment, to a vain expectation of

satisfaction or to jealousy. (Freud 435)

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Jealousy plays a key component when it comes to how Peeta feels about Katniss. In this one

instance at the Reaping, she receives everything he has aimed to achieve. All he is left with is

disappointment. To Peeta, if being picked to represent his district in a game of death does not

earn him admiration, he is left asking himself, “What will?” Peeta is constantly questioning

whether he is enough, as a son and as a man. He needs some grand gesture to even be a blip on

everyone’s radar. This eternal state of neglect which stems from his mother grows bigger and

bigger the further down the rabbit hole he goes. At first, Peeta sees Katniss as a tool to get the

appreciation that his mother never gave him. However, Katniss has complicated the new position

she holds in his life. Katniss is consciously being held the object of his affection. Unconsciously

though, Katniss only reiterates the trauma of his mother’s abuse, which makes him feel inferior.

She has become a target, something that stands in his way from ever feeling like a man.

Although she is just protecting her sister, Katniss eclipses him in every possible way. Peeta never

outwardly confronts his feelings about Katniss because saying something to stand up for himself

may only injure him in the end. So instead of boarding the ‘hate train,’ Peeta unconsciously

represses all of his fears again, burying it deep down, pretending that everything about Katniss’s

character is how he wants it. He hides every ounce of resentment, anger, and fear, putting on the

façade of a friend.

From the moment Katniss and Peeta depart District twelve to the Capitol, Peeta weaves

his way into Katniss’s head, trying to manipulate her into the vision he really has for her. As they

become more and more acquainted with each other, Peeta takes these bonding moments to strike

in a subtle way. For instance, when Haymitch asks them both what set of skills they possess,

Peeta makes sure to overemphasize how good Katniss is with a bow and undersells himself.

When Katniss brings up how strong Peeta is, he shoots it down immediately, instead shifting the

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conversation to, “You know what my mother said to me when she came to say good-bye, as if to

cheer me up, she says District Twelve will finally have a winner. Then I realized, she didn’t

mean me, she meant you!”(Collins 90). Here, Peeta uses every possible angle, playing with

emotion, self deprecation, and personal anxiety, to make Katniss feel horrible for his mother’s

choice of words because she is now her stand in. The more he can make her question herself, the

more vulnerable she becomes, and the closer he is at returning her to “normal gender roles”

where he may be considered the alpha and her, the beta. In Sigmund Freud’s “Beyond the

Pleasure Principle,” he deduces that, “[the patient] is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a

contemporary experience instead of, as the physician would prefer to see, remembering it as

something belonging to the past” (Freud 434 ). Instead of leaving that horrid comment behind

him, Peeta unearths it up from the depths of his psyche and places it on Katniss. Because Katniss

is the stand in for Peeta’s mother, this comment solidifies his choice in a surrogate. He conjures

the thought of his mother as if to receive the approval of his mother for Katniss to be her stand

in. Freud elaborates more suggesting that, “These reproductions, which emerge with such

unwished for exactitude, always have as their subjects some portion of infantile sexual life of the

Oedipus complex, that is and its derivatives; and they are invariably acted out in the sphere of the

transference, of the patient to the physician” (Freud 434). Freud’s conclusion may point the

reader to suggest that Peeta has transferred his Oedipus complex from his mother onto Katniss.

Therefore, Peeta only needs to appease one woman to achieve everything he has internally

struggled with. His mother has his father and his brothers whom she favors, while Katniss has no

male figure in her world of such significance, which leaves her for Peeta’s taking.

The idea of Katniss as a competitor resurfaces during the individual training seminar of

the Hunger Games. Each tribute is pulled aside to show the game makers one-on-one the kind of

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damage they can do. Based on the skills they display, each person is ranked on a scale of one to

twelve, one being the weakest and twelve being the most lethal. The higher the number, the more

likely a tribute will survive and get sponsors. As the results are calculated, Katniss, Peeta and

their teams watch for the broadcast. Katniss notices that, “District twelve comes up last, as usual.

Peeta pulls an eight so at least a couple of the Game makers must have been watching him. I dig

my fingernails into my palms as my face comes up, expecting the worst. Then they’re flashing

the number eleven on the screen” (Collins 108). Based on District twelve’s placement in the

ranking broadcast, it’s rare that they have contenders who score extremely high. Peeta assumes

that since Katniss and he had been training together that they would be equals in this department.

But Katniss erupts as the frontrunner for the whole games with an eleven as her score. Despite

his negative attitude towards his ranking, Peeta manages to score pretty high, letting everyone

know there is more to him than meets the eye. He is not just a mental opponent to Katniss, one

who tries to manipulate her thoughts, but he is a physical threat as well. Still, Katniss outscores

him, once again overshadowing him just like she does at the Reaping. This sense of horrid

repetition or as Freud would call it, the “uncanny,” “must be explained that we are able to

postulate the principle of a repetition compulsion in the unconscious mind, based upon

instinctual activity and probably inherent in the very nature of the instincts – a principle powerful

enough to overrule the pleasure principle” (Freud 427 ). The fairytale Peeta concocts in his head

as Katniss’s breadwinner is tampered with once more. No matter how hard he tries, his attempts

are never great enough to be on Katniss’s level, which reminds Peeta of his mother and how she

would bash him no matter how hard he tried to get in her good graces. Because of this, it is

getting harder and harder for him to see the difference between the two of them. At every point,

the repressed memories of his mother’s cruelty are oozing into his affections for Katniss.

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Therefore, Freud further elaborates that this, “[lends] to certain aspects of the mind their demonic

character and still very clearly expressed in the tendencies of small children; a principle, too,

which is responsible for a part of the course taken by the analyses of neurotic patients. Taken in

all, the foregoing prepares us for the discovery that whatever reminds us of this inner repetition-

compulsion is perceived as uncanny” (Freud 427). Unable to cope with the idea of being

upstaged yet again, Peeta separates himself from Katniss, opting to train with Haymitch one-on-

one instead of with her. To Peeta, hopefully this will allow him time to come up with a grand

gesture, a way to make his name stand on its own or, at the least, become synonymous with

Katniss. For now, however, he keeps the act going. Katniss becomes too distracted with her

feeling of betrayal to comprehend the piece of the puzzle she is to him.

Before the Hunger Games every year, tributes are given one last chance to earn sponsors

and to either enforce their rank or prove it wrong during a talk show. Peeta chooses this as his

platform to launch his grand gesture. All he needs is the right question, and Caesar Flickerman

no sooner tackles the subject right on cue. During his grand gesture, Katniss can only watch

helplessly in the crowd as Peeta unveils his love for her in front of a mass audience:

‘Well, there is this one girl. I’ve had a crush on her ever since I can remember. But I’m

pretty sure she didn’t know I was alive until the Reaping...winning… won’t help in my

case,’ says Peeta. ‘Why ever not?’ says Caesar, mystified. Peeta blushes beet red and

stammers out. ‘Because…because…she came here with me.’ (Collins 130).

Peeta in this way has found an outlet to express his emotions about his mother. Similar to how

children act up in public, since parents are less likely to reprimand them, Peeta used the

interview as a podium for his grand gesture and solidifies how he truly feels about Katniss. By

sharing this with all of Panem he hopes that this will silence the pandemonium in his head that

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the psychological meshing of his mother and Katniss will come to an end. Yet one person’s idea

of a grand gesture is another’s misfortune. There is no stopping the magnitude of this

announcement. In the history of the Games, no tribute has made such confessions of love for

another tribute. If Katniss were to question Peeta’s confession of love, she would risk losing all

the fans and sponsors she so recently acquired. Peeta has positioned Katniss in a conundrum in

which he has all to gain. No matter which path Katniss choices, she will have to play into his

psychological desires to put her into a subordinate position or to fulfill his Oedipus complex with

his mother. As a result of his grand gesture, Peeta has created the biggest phenomenon the

Games have ever seen. Nobody, not even Katniss nor his mother can take that from him.

Just as the tributes are returned to their quarters, Peeta is immediately confronted by

Katniss. Without hesitation she hurls him into a vase. This sense of violence is reminiscent of

how his mother treated him. Katniss begins to explain her frustration. Haymitch intervenes,

telling her what Peeta had said during the interview the best thing that could have ever happened

to her image during the Games. Haymitch reinforces the notion that in order for women to

succeed, they need a man’s help. Peeta does so by making Katniss an object of affection. This is

a role Katniss has not played since the death of her father. She has been returned in this instance

to a typical gender role, reminding the reader, the audience, and herself that she is a beautiful

woman first, and a tribute second. This resonates with Katniss so much so that she cannot sleep.

In this moment, she is temporarily made helpless, like a little girl, again looking for her father to

make it all better. As she ventures up to the roof, she encounters Peeta. She does her best to make

amends; as the conversation continues, Katniss is angered by Peeta’s negativity: “‘Look, if you

want to spend the last hours of your life planning some noble death in the arena, that’s your

choice. I want to spend mine in District Twelve.’ ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if you do’” says Peeta.

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‘Give my mother my best when you make it back, will you?’” (Collins 142). Peeta’s mind

begins meshing the idea of his mother and Katniss the moment he finds his thoughts undermined

and unappreciated by Katniss, igniting Peeta’s unconscious self to act out. Just as Peeta and

Katniss are about to be plunged into a game of death, Peeta hits her again with a comment about

his mother, reinforcing his repressed confused feelings towards both Katniss and his mother. It

might be said that the bread Peeta had thrown to Katniss was the little piece of hope she needed

to persevere. He finds these key moments to remind her of that.

Due to the conversation on the roof top, Peeta avoids any contact with Katniss. The first

moment of acknowledgement occurs in the Games as they glare at one another from their

perspective podiums. While the countdown initiates, Peeta distracts Katniss from her goal of

obtaining a bow, knowing it is a weapon she has mastered. Peeta’s actions indicate that he is

purposely throwing her off her game. Here, the ‘star-crossed lover’ story that Peeta has tried to

create is seen to be only an illusion. Lovers are supposed to encourage and aid one another, but

in a matter of seconds, anarchy begins, and readers find these star-crossed lovers at opposite ends

of the field. Katniss sets herself up as a rogue wanderer, while Peeta finds himself a band of

companions in a group of career tributes. To the reader, this clearly looks like he has betrayed

Katniss, aiding those who seek her head on a stick. He seems far smarter than the reader may

have realized, establishing himself as her friend outside of the Games, but becoming an enemy

inside. Because of this, Katniss’ perception of Peeta is forever confused as to where he stands. In

reality, Peeta is in the best position. The careers will keep him alive until they get to Katniss and

he knows that she will not kill him out of guilt. This does not mean he would not alternate as

friend and foe given the best possible advantage. For example, after Katniss drops a hive of

tracker jackers on the careers, Peeta helps her escape: Katniss explains:

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I wait for the blow. Instead his arm drops to his side. ‘What are you still doing here?’ he

hisses at me. I stare uncomprehendingly as a trickle of water drips off a sting under his ear.

His whole body starts sparkling as if he’s been dipped in dew. ‘Are you mad?’ He’s

prodding me with the shaft of the spear now. ‘Get up! Get up!’ I rise, but he’s still pushing

me. What? What is going on? He shoves me away from him hard. ‘Run!’ he screams.

(Collins 193)

Katniss begins to question everything she assumes about Peeta. Peeta, in turn uses this to his

benefit, tricking her into subservience in order to survive. As the game continues, the game

makers alter the rules and allow tributes of the same district to team up and win. Despite all of

her previous confusions about Peeta, Katniss makes it her mission to find him. All the risks he

takes during the Games to help her, especially the one mentioned above, has paid off. Instead of

leaving him for dead, Katniss takes Peeta to a cave to heal from wounds he earned from leading

the careers away from Katniss. Katniss immediately assumes a motherly position, taking on the

feminine role as a caretaker and healer, putting aside her role as a hunter and warrior for the time

being. However, healing is not the only interaction that occurs between Katniss and Peeta in the

cave. Using his wit and charm, Peeta breaks Katniss and her masculine sense of self, and tricks

her into kissing him. No matter how she tries to justify it, as a charade or as a moment of

weakness, Katniss ultimately succumbs to Peeta’s charm and becomes the vision he has for her.

Katherine Broad attests to Peeta’s enchantment as the drama between them continues, “Katniss

starts believing the story of her love for Peeta. She reminds herself to act wild about Peeta when

she knows the cameras are on her but also finds herself longing for private moments with him-

for real kisses, not televised ones.” (Broad 119-120). To support her claim, Broad cites the

moment in the cave when Katniss thinks, “For a moment I’m almost foolishly happy and then

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confusion sweeps over me. Because we’re supposed to be making up this stuff, playing at being

in love, not actually being in love. But Peeta’s story has a ring of truth in it… could it all be

true?” (Hunger 301). Broad would probably agree that Peeta has caused a stalemate in Katniss’s

psyche allowing his presence to conquer her heart and persuade her mind to follow suit. For how

can Katniss follow her heart if her mind is giving her conflicting thoughts? In these moments,

Katniss’s mind, and its unconscious desire for this feminine self image to be a reality act as her

strongest ally and her worst opponent, much like Peeta does.

As the games conclude, the only two left alive are District twelve’s star-crossed lovers.

What seems to be an instant victory changes when the game makers revoke their previous

statement. Peeta drops his weapon instantly, while Katniss keeps her bow locked on him.

Although Peeta has not been able to best her in life, he plans on succeeding in death. Offering

himself as a sacrifice is an act even his mother could not disrespect. Katniss is now in the

ultimate predicament: allow Peeta to die a hero while she becomes a monster or bring Peeta

home with her and continue the charade, to which he holds the puppet strings. Out of fear for

how she will be perceived if she does kill Peeta, Katniss waivers, opting to die alongside Peeta

by consuming poisonous berries. Just like that, Katniss takes the noble death Peeta imagines for

himself and uses it for her own gain. This grand gesture that would finally secure his place in his

mother’s heart, one that would restore her respect for him and force her to feel the bonds of

motherly affection, has been snatched away by Katniss. Thus, even though both tributes win the

Games as a result of Katniss’s plan, Katniss ultimately comes up on top.

Katniss may think she has found a way to save them both, but all she has done is add fuel to

the fire. Peeta is left with these repressed feelings that he is all too familiar with. His only move,

in a last-ditch effort, is to attack her again where she will hurt the most: the heart. Katniss may

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tell herself this whole ordeal between them was a ploy for survival, but he has locked onto her

thoughts like a parasite. Even when she tells him, “It was all for the Games,” he knows exactly

how to respond: “‘Then how much? No forget that. The real question is what’s going to be left

when we get home?’... ‘I don’t know. The closer we get to District Twelve, the more confused I

get,’ [Katniss] says…’Well let me know when you work it out,’ [Peeta] says” (Collins 372-373).

Although he does not necessarily end up with or best Katniss, Peeta fulfills at least part of his

initial psychological desires. He may not be her breadwinner, but he has begun to haunt her

feelings and causes her to question her own convictions. Peeta knows it is not over, and that is

why his final comment is left open-ended. His psychological desires are far reaching; he is in this

for the long haul, planting further seeds of destruction in her mind, waiting for another moment

to strike. No matter what Katniss does or says, Peeta plans to find a way to wrap her back up in

this psychological web he’s constructed, to completely fulfill his desire to have her submit into

her traditional gender role and satisfy his Oedipus complex.

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Work Cited

Bewley, Alison L. “Literary Traditions on Fire: Mimetic Desire and the Role of the Orphaned

Heroine in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy.” Children’s Literature Association

Quarterly 40.4 (2015): 371-385. Project MUSE. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.

Broad, Katherine R. “The Dandelion in the Spring’: Utopia as Romance in Suzanne Collin’s The

Hunger Games Trilogy.” Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New

Teenagers. Ed. Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad, and Carrie Hintz. New York: Routledge,

2013. 117-130. Print.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2008. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie

Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 431-437. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael

Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 418-430. Print.

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Annotated Bibliography

Bewley, Alison L. “Literary Traditions on Fire: Mimetic Desire and the Role of the Orphaned

Heroine in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy.” Children’s Literature Association

Quarterly 40.4 (2015): 371-385. Project MUSE. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.

In Alison Bewley’s article she dissects the typical literary tropes associated with

male and female characters. Bewley brings up Suzanne Collins’s dystopian trilogy The

Hunger Games as an example how those tropes have been drastically changed, not simply

glazed over. Her argument centers on the novel’s main character Katniss Everdeen. How

she steps out of the traditional damsel in distress trope and into the role of parent, and

protector for her sister Prim and herself.

Bewley as well ventures into the relationship between Katniss and Peeta. She

suggests that Peeta makes Katniss more than just another tribute, his confession of love had

turned her into an object of desires. This fits in nicely with my argument of Peeta guising

himself as a friend. When in reality he is a monster set on returning Katniss back to the

very gender roles she has evolved out of.

Broad, Katherine R. “The Dandelion in the Spring’: Utopia as Romance in Suzanne Collin’s The

Hunger Games Trilogy.” Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New

Teenagers. Ed. Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad, and Carrie Hintz. New York: Routledge,

2013. 117-130. Print.

Broad takes a deeper look at Katniss and her romance with Peeta. She writes that

although Katniss at first is disinterested in Peeta’s confession of love and the idea of

playing along with the lie of being star crossed lovers that she may be more into it than she

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lets on. Broad suggests that over the course of the games Katniss begins to believe the lies

she tells the audience more than her previous statements rejecting Peeta and his confession.

Her argument puts a spin on Katniss’s psyche as she channels through the horror of

the games and who really is an enemy or a friend. She has been on her own for so long not

relying on anyone for anything. Not since her father has she truly felt something of this

magnitude and it makes her scared, whether it’s real or not. Which ties back to my paper’s

focus of how Peeta weaves his way into her head, so she lets her guard down becoming

vulnerable and malleable to him.

Freud, Sigmund. "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie

Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 431-437. Print.

Freud puts forth the idea that the patient can’t remember everything that he has

repressed within him or herself. Therefore the patient is destined to outburst with these

repressed bits instead of keeping them in perspective for the future. They become events of

the present rather than the past. He further suggests these outbursts directly corresponded to

an infantile sexual life dealing with the Oedipus complex. The patient’s failure to move on

from the Oedipus complex results in a permanent emotional scar leaving them under the

impression they can’t accomplish anything.

Freud’s work is critical to my argument. He specifically supports my thesis that

Peeta is putting on a façade in order to get the respect and love he so deviously desires

from his mother. Ever since he gave Katniss that loaf of bread he has created a stand in for

his mother in her. Then when he fails to get her he results to bringing those repressed

feelings up targeting her as an enemy. This also expands on the ideas Katherine Broad put

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forth. Peeta is confusing Katniss indefinitely as to what role he is trying to play in her life.

Allowing him to be in her thoughts no matter what angle he chooses.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael

Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 418-430. Print.

Freud’s theory of the Uncanny is the feeling someone gets when something reminds

us of our own inner repetition-compulsion. This can be anything, a person, place or event.

The individual experiencing it turns to the most basic principle one capable of

overpowering the pleasure principle. It instills in its host a sense of helplessness that in turn

puts us unto a flight or flight mentality. Making whoever is going through this trauma into

a more daemonic character than they normally would be.

This theory is helpful to my essay because Peeta is a character who experiences an

uncanny feeling multiple times. Specifically focusing on the reaping and skill rankings.

Both moments Katniss overshadowed Peeta just as his brothers do at home. Leaving him

feeling worthless no matter how hard he tries or how good he does it’s not enough for his

mother. So he results to taking matters into his own hands to avoid another incident like

those.