Critical Context.......

The Article I chose from Of Bread, Blood and The Hunger Games: Critical Essays on the Suzanne Collins Trilogy is Of Queer Necessity: Panem's Hunger Games as Gender Games by Jennifer Mitchell. The article is all about Katniss and her different gender identities and how it is her most useful form of power that she poses. Some of her most masculine traits are her hunting boots, hidden bow and arrow, and the personal relationship with the woods, Her most feminine traits are her braid and her strife to be everything to Prim. Though the fact that she switches gender roles so often in the book kind makes her appear as unstable. The article also talks about Peeta and his feminine roles as a baker, and his mother cutting him down suggesting the district might a winner this year and it wont be him.

I agree with the article. I never realized how often she jumps back and forth between genders and I never really thought of Peeta as a feminine man. In the beginning of the book Katniss has already taken on both genders, she is masculine when hunting in the woods where she feels most connected to her father and Gale and as soon as she gets home she takes on her feminine roles again. The same thing happens in the arena. Both Peeta and Katniss flip their gender switches and be how they need to be when they need to be them. For example, Peeta is an alpha when he is hanging with the careers but after he is hurt he reverts to this feminine self to "camouflage/decorate" himself as if her were a cake. Katniss takes the masculine role as soon as she enters the arena, her hair in a braid and she is ready for business. She immediately takes to hunting and finding shelter. However when Katniss finds Peeta after the rules are changed the roles really slip back and forth more for Katniss. She embraces her feminism to be his nurse and love interest but since he can't do anything she still has to act as main caregiver. So when she in the cave with Peeta she is a feminine as she can be but when she is out of the cave with her bow in hand she embraces her masculinity quickly.

Mitchell, Jennifer. "Of Queer Necessity: Panem's Hunger Games as Gender Games." Of Bread, Blood and The Hunger Games: Critical Essays on the Suzanne Collins Trilogy. Eds. Mary F. Pharr and Leisa A. Clark. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. Pg 128-137.