Abstract

Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games has as its central metaphor the monomythic journey of the hero. This research focuses on the novelist’s attempt to redefine the monomyth in terms of gender, and on the ways in which Collins’s retold version represents human experience in the contemporary world. This study presents Collins’s protagonist, Katniss, who embarks on the traditional heroic quest and confronts multiple challenges and frustrations on her journey to success. During her heroic enterprise, Katniss turns inward, discovers and embraces her feminine nature and seeks a satisfactory life paradigm as a result of which she attains the inner integration and reconciliation of both masculine and feminine aspects of her personality; she also understands and accomplishes her purpose in life. By recognizing the mythical and archetypal situations, which are subverted or inverted in the novel, Collins revises the significance of private and public achievements in the contemporary community.

Authors and Affiliations