Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Katniss the Cattail: An Unauthorized Guide to Names and Symbols in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
    Katniss the Cattail: An Unauthorized Guide to Names and Symbols in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
    Katniss the Cattail: An Unauthorized Guide to Names and Symbols in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
    Ebook203 pages1 hour

    Katniss the Cattail: An Unauthorized Guide to Names and Symbols in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games

    By Valerie Estelle Frankel

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Who was Cinna? What do the hawthorn and primrose symbolize? Or President Snow's roses and Peeta's bread? What about Katniss's last name? Bringing details from myths, herbal guides, military histories, and the classics, English professor and award-winning pop culture author Valerie Estelle Frankel sheds light on the deeper meanings behind Panem's heroes and villains in this hottest of YA trilogies. In her series, Collins not only weaves a heroic tale of deep complexity but harnesses the power of Shakespeare and Rome to retell an ancient epic of betrayal, violence, and glory on the stage of an apocalyptic future.

    Millions of readers around the world have been swept away by the nonstop action and poignancy of The Hunger Games. But what most readers don't know is that there's a library's worth of history, plant lore, and mythology behind the world of Panem. Now, with Katniss the Cattail, those without access to Collins's bookshelf can discover the fascinating reality behind Panem.

    Katniss the Cattail allows curious readers to look up all the names of Panem and discover a wealth of entertaining, unexpected information. Blight, Cato, and Clove have names that predict their grisly ends, while the evening primrose represents eternal love, youth, and sadness. Boggs was a civil war general, Plutarch a biographer who wrote skewed critiques on Coriolanus and Caesar. There's a reason Johanna Mason knows more than she's telling and that Cressida and Messalla betray the Capitol.
    From Alma Coin to Wiress you'll learn about
    • Why roses are a flower of death
    • How eighteen of the characters are used in Shakespeare's plays
    • Katniss's nickname Catnip
    • The meaning of "The Hanging Tree"
    • Peeta's pearl and Katniss's salvation
    • Effie the saint and Finnick the Irish hero

    "If you're a fan of The Hunger Games, you need this book! Period...I devoured this book the moment I opened my mailbox. Every time I read something "new" about a character, my brain started turning." --The Flashlight Reader

    "Full of thought provoking observations, Katniss the Cattailis a quick, clean read for any fan of The Hunger Games trilogy." --Sarah's Reviews

    "If you dig The Hunger Games like crazy, this book lets you glimpse at it a bit closer" --The Book Wurrm

    "I would highly recommend this book to others interested in discovering the hidden meanings of The Hunger Games." --My Book Addiction

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherValerie Estelle Frankel
    Release dateFeb 8, 2012
    ISBN9781476150086
    Katniss the Cattail: An Unauthorized Guide to Names and Symbols in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
    Author

    Valerie Estelle Frankel

    Valerie Estelle Frankel has won a Dream Realm Award, an Indie Excellence Award, and a USA Book News National Best Book Award for her Henry Potty parodies. She's the author of 75 books on pop culture, including Doctor Who - The What, Where, and How, History, Sherlock: Every Canon Reference You May Have Missed in BBC's Series 1-3, Homages and the Highlands: An Outlander Guide, and How Game of Thrones Will End. Many of her books focus on women's roles in fiction, from her heroine's journey guides From Girl to Goddess and Buffy and the Heroine's Journey to books like Women in Game of Thrones and The Many Faces of Katniss Everdeen. Once a lecturer at San Jose State University, she's a frequent speaker at conferences. Come explore her research at www.vefrankel.com.

    Read more from Valerie Estelle Frankel

    Related to Katniss the Cattail

    Related ebooks

    Performing Arts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Book Of The Month

      May 5, 2022

      Book Of The Month
      1 min read

    • Article

      Bunnies & Books

      Jan 1, 2023

      Bunnies & Books
      3 min read

    • Article

      Tom Lake By Ann Patchett Review – Homespun Happiness

      Jul 26, 2023

      Ann Patchett’s fourth novel, the hostage drama Bel Canto, propelled her to literary fame in 2001, winning the Women’s prize for fiction. Two solid novels followed, Run and State of Wonder, but Patchett has produced the best fiction of her career in r

      3 min read

    • Article

      Hearts And Minds

      May 30, 2021

      Martha Hall Kelly’s beautifully written SUNFLOWER SISTERS (Bantam, $37) will appeal to all Little Women fans out there as the tale of three women walking very different paths during the American Civil War. First, we meet the redoubtable Georgeanna “G

      3 min read

    • Article

      Homespun Happy

      Aug 4, 2023

      Homespun Happy
      3 min read

    • Article

      Eroded Tropes and Fears and Consequences: The Millions Interviews Alyson Hagy

      Sep 28, 2018

      It’s been 18 years since Alyson Hagy and I both won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Nested within the list of grantees was a scattering of addresses. I wrote to Alyson. She answered. We’ve seen each other just twice in all these yea

      8 min read

    • Article

      Edith Wharton Will Teach You Everything You Need to Know About Naming Characters

      Sep 30, 2019

      Her 1905 classic The House of Mirth offers a masterclass in the art of character naming, from heroine Lily Bart to the seriously laughable Mrs. Peniston. The post Edith Wharton Will Teach You Everything You Need to Know About Naming Characters appear

      6 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 6, 2023

      Dorothy Tse’s debut novel, Owlish, is a fantastic if discomforting work of art. In scintillant prose (as translated by Natascha Bruce from the original Chinese), Tse conjures up the figure of Professor Q , a middle-aged man wearied by his dreary life

      3 min read

    • Article

      Winter Book Reviews

      Jun 22, 2020

      A prolific and celebrated Australian writer of her time, Thea Astley wrote fifteen novels and had two short story collections published between 1958 and the turn of the century. She won numerous literary awards, including the Miles Franklin (Australi

      4 min read

    • Article

      4 Ways to Write Hooks for Books

      Dec 11, 2023

      Book authors have to hook readers twice. Like all other writers, authors have to hook readers with the writing in their books. But they also have the additional challenge of hooking readers before they ever crack open the spine or open the digital fi

      5 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Ulitskaya, Phillips, Zentner, Savage, and More

      Jul 9, 2019

      Out this week: the journeys of a makeshift family in contemporary Appalachian Ohio, a new Russian epic, and the faux memoirs of a Bieber-ish pop star. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Ulitskaya, Phillips, Zentner, Savage, and More appeared

      8 min read

    • Article

      Women’s Prize for Fiction Names 2019 Shortlist

      Apr 29, 2019

      The  Women's Prize for Fiction announced its 2019 shortlist. The post Women’s Prize for Fiction Names 2019 Shortlist appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Katniss the Cattail

    4/5

    9 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Katniss the Cattail is a reference guide to wildly popular Hunger Games trilogy. (by Suzanne Collins) The author gives an encyclopedic style listing of the meanings of the characters names, plants, place names... All pertinent information from the book is listed in this short book. I'm not certain if Ms. Collins meant her books to be over analyzed, but many of the names fit the personalities of the characters.If you are a Hunger Games lover, this book is a fantastic reference.

    Book preview

    Katniss the Cattail - Valerie Estelle Frankel

    INTRODUCTION

    As with series like Harry Potter, names have great significance in Suzanne Collins’s books, temptingly referencing characters out of Shakespeare, myth, and American life. The entries offered here provide a deeper understanding of the characters, along with their namesakes and literary origins. There are Roman names and flower names, set as opposites in a world poised on revolution. There are military names, echoing battles in our own history and their link to the battles of Panem—history will never stop cycling. Some of the symbolism is simplistic on the surface but more deeply complex. Bread is a sacred food used to save lives and even make a marriage in District Twelve. It is also the meaning of Panem, as Collins named her world after the spoiled Romans glutted with Bread and Circuses. Katniss becomes the Girl Who Was on Fire, but she is Cinna’s creation, dressed like a doll in the early books. Only with her flame arrows of Mockingjay does she truly embrace that role.

    Districts 11 and 12 offer nature names: The cat Buttercup; Gale’s mother Hazelle Hawthorne and her children Posy and Gale; Rue, Thresh, Chaff, and Seeder from District 11; and of course, Prim and Katniss. All these link the heroes to the simplicity and bounty of the country, filled with the wholesome beauty of nature. Some of the flower names, especially Rue and Primrose, appear in Shakespeare with heavy symbolism.

    By contrast, the Capitol is full of Roman names, echoing their obsession with heedless luxury: Claudius Templesmith, Cressida, Portia, Messalla, Fulvia, Romulus, Lavinia, Purnia, Titus, Plutarch Heavensbee, Coriolanus Snow. There’s Katniss’s Prep Team: Flavius, Octavia, and Venia, headed by Cinna. And there are the Career Tributes with Roman names to honor the Capitol: Cato, Brutus, and Enobaria, while names like Glimmer and Marvel show how valued and spoiled the Careers are. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar offers nine characters who appear in the Hunger Games series (Brutus, Cinna, Portia, Purnia, Flavius, Messala, Cato the Younger, Claudius, and Caesar himself). Shakespeare’s other Roman plays have at least seven more, covering nearly all the Roman character names. The Roman biographer Plutarch, too, wrote on many of the named characters. Thus Collins casts the traitors from Shakespeare and history against Roman emperors and their allies, building a world that echoes ancient Rome and those who defied it.

    It’s also important to remember the series is told from Katniss’s point of view. Characters have prophetic or appropriate names, but they also have names based on how Katniss perceives them. To Katniss, Gale is a strong wind of revolution, willing to blow down all in his path. But Prim is a delicate flower needing protection. Peeta’s parents and Katniss’s parents, while major characters, never have their first names revealed. Their function in the story is simply to exist and be left behind as their children grow into heroes. Ultimately, Katniss’s own perceptions fuel the deeper meanings of characters’ names within the series, even as they reflect characters from our own history.

    BIG THREE

    Katniss

    tmp_e5ead7f77a76b7a63483c67c8f079f31_ixuNK9_html_m31cf134a.jpg

    Katniss is of course the cattail root, as she tells us. But it is a heavily nourishing plant, important to Katniss who sees herself as the provider for her family. Her entire life is devoted to nourishing, first as a hunter/gatherer, and then as the wealthy Victor of the games.

    Katniss describes her special plant as tall with white blossoms and leaves like arrowheads (HG 52). Of all the nourishing plants in the world, Katniss is probably the most arrowlike—a perfect match for our heroine. She adds that the roots don’t look like much, but are as nourishing as a potato (HG 52). Katniss, from District Twelve, likewise doesn’t look like much, but she’s just as good, it turns out, as any of the children from the wealthier districts.

    The plants of the forest are part of Katniss, so much so that the katniss roots give her her name. As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve, her father teases (HG 52). While this is literally true, Katniss survives by keeping herself grounded—remembering who she is and what she cares for. Indeed, if she can find herself under so many costumes and identities like the Mockingjay, she will survive. Though the Capitol trains its Tributes in brutality, encouraging them to turn on each other, Katniss follows her instinctive compassion and bonds with Rue and Peeta in the Games. This saves her in the end.

    Elizabeth Baird Hardy, author of Milton, Spenser, and the Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Sources for the C.S. Lewis Novels has an interesting observation on the katniss plant:

    It is known as duck-potato, appropriate for someone whose sister always has a duck tail…but also as swan potato, wapatoo, tule potato, and, most commonly, as arrowhead, a name reflected in its Latin moniker—Sagittaria (or belonging to an arrow; the constellation Sagittarius, of course, is an archer).

    Katniss’ name comes from the Zodiac sign of the archer (the sign for those born November 22 through December 21). Sagittarius, according to Greek myth, may have been the centaur Chiron, a kind and gentle figure known for forest lore and for training young heroes. More scholarly sources link Sagittarius with Crotus, the satyr or half-goat man who dwelt deep in the forest. He was a great musician and tracker, inventor of the hunting bow (Crotus). Centaurs and satyrs are creatures of nature and the forest, a link between man and animal, hunter and hunted. For both of these mythic figures, there’s a clear link with Katniss.

    tmp_e5ead7f77a76b7a63483c67c8f079f31_ixuNK9_html_m3f0017.jpg

    Suzanne Collins notes that "Katniss Everdeen owes her last name to Bathsheba Everdene, the lead character in Far from the Madding Crowd. The two are very different, but both struggle with knowing their hearts" (Jordan). In this classic novel by Thomas Hardy, Bathsheba Everdene is courted by a rich landowner and by a poor shepherd who proposes marriage when they’re equals but then ends up working for her. Katniss, too grows up equal to Gale, her hunting partner, but then becomes as rich as Peeta, leaving Gale and his romantic plans far behind. Bathsheba, like Katniss, struggles between two such different men, one gentle and chaste (Peeta comments that he’s never cared for a girl besides Katniss) and one more violent, temperamental, and experienced in romance. After betrayal and abandonment by the more violent man, Bathsheba finally weds the humble shepherd. The romantic pattern indeed seems to echo Katniss’s struggle between her equal in warfare, Gale, and the humble baker, Peeta.

    Everdeen is also two letters off from evergreen, fitting well with the plant names of the outer districts. Evergreen pines are eaten several times in the series, offering another wholesome plant in a world of starvation. Like the katniss plant, evergreens are sharp and pointed, in this case with rough needles and pinecones to defend themselves. They, like our heroine, thrive in areas of low nutrition—in fact, the low

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1