Katniss Everdeen Quotes

From Peeta, Katniss has learned a new way of being brave. It's brave to confront "reality." It's brave to want to "know the truth." The pain Katniss feels in her body mimics the pain she feels inside when she's trying to confront such ideas. It would be easier to disassociate from reality and not try to figure out the truth. But to do so, though, would not honor Prim.

Even twenty or so years after the Games and the war, it takes courage to get through each day. The events Katniss and Peeta witnessed – and the things they had to do in order to survive – have left permanent marks on them, mind, body, and soul. They can try to "make [their children] braver," but that's something they have to do for themselves all the time too.

It's also hard to tell if Katniss and Peeta are just friends, or if they're in love. Here, it sounds more like Katniss loves Peeta. She compares the discovery of him being alive to receiving a drug like morphine. Finding out he's somewhat "whole" is the best news she could receive in this moment, and, it sounds like, more than she ever expected.

This seems like proof that Katniss loves Peeta, even if she can't admit it to even herself. The mere knowledge that Peeta's alive is all Katniss wants to know. It makes her grin like an idiot and she doesn't even care about the details, like about why he is alive. All that matters is that he is.

What kind of relationship do Gale and Katniss have? Based on Gale's comments here, it seems like an unbalanced one. She only expresses love or care for him when he is "in pain." Otherwise, at least in his opinion, she doesn't appear to notice him. And it does seem like Katniss is more inclined to reach out and give physical comfort when Gale is obviously hurting.

No matter what, Katniss and Peeta are a team. They started out as unlikely allies and yet their relationship has evolved into a complex love/friendship arrangement based on keeping each other alive. Despite all the odds and everything working against them, they can't let go of that.

Romantic love isn't the only kind of love in this text, nor is it perhaps the most powerful. The single event that makes Katniss feel most deeply is this glimpse she has of her sister, Prim. Katniss's whole journey started with an attempt to protect her sister. She's been through Games after Games because she volunteered to take her sister's place. That might be the greatest display of love throughout the books.

Let's face it: Katniss's love for Prim supersedes her love for Gale. And the doubt she has about whether Gale contributed to Prim's death is enough to keep him away from her forever. Whatever they had before is lost, because Katniss can't separate him from her understanding of Prim's death and what/who might have caused it.

When Katniss finally chooses between Gale and Peeta, she chooses Peeta. In doing so, she chooses peace instead of revenge, nurturing instead of ruining, and "rebirth instead of destruction." Gale would feed her need for revenge and perhaps for power. Peeta helps her to be free of that, and that's part of why she loves him so much.

Even the greatest, best friends can't be there for you <em>all</em> the time. As close as Katniss and Gale are, he can't stand by her in this moment; she needs to do it by herself. At the same time, she distinguishes between him and the other people she's with in 13. Of all the people there she "do[esn't] want anyone," "not even" Gale. If she would want anyone by her side, though, it sounds like it would be him.

Friends or lovers? That's the question Katniss returns to again and again when thinking about both Peeta and Gale. Here, it seems like if circumstances had been different, Gale might have been the frontrunner for Katniss's heart. Yet, because of everything they've all gone through and Katniss's complicated relationship with Peeta, Gale doesn't even make a romantic move – although Katniss seems to think he'd like to.

Here, Katniss is questioning the very foundation of her friendship with Gale. Before, in hard times when they were allies, they were the best of friends. Now that their situation has totally changed, though, does that mean their friendship is changing as well? Katniss can't tell whether their friendship has the strength to make it through this latest development – or whether it even should.

Sometimes a friend isn't as necessary as an ally, particularly in a time of war. Here, it seems like Johanna and Katniss are almost in between the two: somewhat allied, somewhat friendly. Either way, they're closer than they were before, and Katniss can finally feel less alone.

Throughout all the terrible things that Katniss and Peeta have endured, they've worked to protect each other. They've continually put their own lives at risk to save one another. Even now that Peeta's been hijacked it's no different. They've got too great a history together and been through too much together to desert each other now.

Katniss can't define her feelings for Peeta, or rationally explain why she cannot "let him go." She just knows she can't. But the reasoning for why she can't is escaping her. We'd like to think it's because of her love for and long-standing friendship with Peeta, but here it also sounds it may be because he contributes to her plan for revenge.

Funny enough, the one thing that brings Peeta and Gale closer together is also what will always keep them apart: their shared love for Katniss. They both love her and don't know if she loves them back, or at least whom she loves the most. She's the one who holds the power – she's the center of their love triangle.

Katniss turns to Peeta for comfort one last time, just as she turned to him for comfort so many times – "a thousand" – during the Games and the victory tour. Has anything of their friendship remained? Will she ever see him again? This might be the last time they'll ever embrace – the last time she will ever see or get to hold on to her friend.

In the Games, Katniss didn't have Gale at her "back" – she didn't have him to rely on, to be a team with. Instead, she had Peeta, whose skills complemented hers, but who – let's face it – was never a fighter. Gale can protect her and work with her in ways that Peeta just can't.

Katniss has lost almost every friend she's had through this war – mostly to death. But some, like Peeta and Gale, seem to be taken from her by the combat itself. The war has stripped Katniss of her friends, allies, and confidantes. The people who've made it through now seem almost alien to her. In a moment when she needs an friendly ear more than ever, it's nowhere to be found.

This quote seems to suggest that Katniss dreads the power and responsibility that come with being the Mockingjay. She's deeply concerned about the sacrifices she'll have to ask other people to make by becoming a leader of the revolution. She stays with it not because she wants a heap of honor and glory for herself, but because she sees it as the only way to try and save her dear friend.