breadtrauma (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
breadtrauma) wrote2013-05-18 10:59 pm
breadtrauma) wrote2013-05-18 10:59 pm
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Let's see if I can talk about Peeta without making it all about Katniss.
In a series about inequality, violence, power, and every kind of hunger, Peeta Mellark is the boy with the bread. His is the voice of kindness, stability, and, if not hope exactly, the strength that makes moving forward possible even for those beyond repair. He gives food to the starving girl he looks for every day, but has never talked to. He supports the families of those children killed in the Arena to let him survive. He plants primroses after the war. He paints. He bakes. He provides.
His upbringing--assured of food, even if it's stale, even if his abusive mother reigns over the house--may have led him to prioritize emotional stability over, or at least along with, physical needs. He goes into the Games more concerned with how the brutality will change him than with the possibility of his death--probably because he's, realistically, written himself off. What have always mattered to him are the more nebulous somethings of honor, integrity, and the impulse to help people, especially his loved ones, even--especially--at his own expense. He does care about himself, but knowing he could never live without his loved ones, it's easy to give himself to them. Giving comes as easily to him as breathing.
Peeta is not a healer, nor is he, despite his relative innocuity compared to the rest of The Hunger Games' cast, innocent. After his torture and brainwashing in Mockingjay, it's clear that Peeta is just as capable as anyone else of cruelty when stripped of his general goodwill towards others--he lashes out verbally and physically at Katniss, Haymitch, Finnick, and the others in ways he knows will strike home. But what Peeta is, at his best, is a rock. Steadfast. Constant. He provides an anchor for those around him with his empathy and a gentle word.
That verbal gift also makes him one hell of a spin doctor. Peeta's a skilled speaker, both publicly and one-on-one, and Katniss ranks his ability to sway others' minds and hearts to be his most important strength. He offers a self-deprecating, faintly ironic, but good-natured sense of humor that endears him to people. Add to that likability the ease with which he can suss out what people want to hear, and he's difficult to stop in front of a crowd. Or a single person. He's not above manipulating Katniss's feelings and the situation at hand to get what he wants. He can play up the positives of a bad situation or outright lie to millions of people, even if flying by the seat of his pants.
And that imaginative, improvisational streak shows outside his rhetoric as well. He's clever, if lacking other Tributes' survival expertise, and knows what cards he can play not just to stay on the right people's good side, but to handle desperate situations on his own. He's resourceful enough to turn his knack for decoration into camouflage, diagramming, using painting as a flashy talent, a helpful aid for his friends' projects, and a personal/political statement. He could be said, despite his solid nature, to have something of an artistic temperament as well. What darkness he keeps out of his gentle demeanor emerges in his paintings, and, at times, in his words.
Because Peeta's been tortured and twisted and cracked open just the same as the rest of the Hunger Games Victors. He's lost everything. But, with time, patience, and the girl he once loved unconditionally and loves again, if painfully, at his side, he's been rebuilding. He's coming once again to the kind, witty, easy-going, steadfast, self-deprecating boy who burned two loaves of bread to keep a girl from starving.
In a series about inequality, violence, power, and every kind of hunger, Peeta Mellark is the boy with the bread. His is the voice of kindness, stability, and, if not hope exactly, the strength that makes moving forward possible even for those beyond repair. He gives food to the starving girl he looks for every day, but has never talked to. He supports the families of those children killed in the Arena to let him survive. He plants primroses after the war. He paints. He bakes. He provides.
His upbringing--assured of food, even if it's stale, even if his abusive mother reigns over the house--may have led him to prioritize emotional stability over, or at least along with, physical needs. He goes into the Games more concerned with how the brutality will change him than with the possibility of his death--probably because he's, realistically, written himself off. What have always mattered to him are the more nebulous somethings of honor, integrity, and the impulse to help people, especially his loved ones, even--especially--at his own expense. He does care about himself, but knowing he could never live without his loved ones, it's easy to give himself to them. Giving comes as easily to him as breathing.
Peeta is not a healer, nor is he, despite his relative innocuity compared to the rest of The Hunger Games' cast, innocent. After his torture and brainwashing in Mockingjay, it's clear that Peeta is just as capable as anyone else of cruelty when stripped of his general goodwill towards others--he lashes out verbally and physically at Katniss, Haymitch, Finnick, and the others in ways he knows will strike home. But what Peeta is, at his best, is a rock. Steadfast. Constant. He provides an anchor for those around him with his empathy and a gentle word.
That verbal gift also makes him one hell of a spin doctor. Peeta's a skilled speaker, both publicly and one-on-one, and Katniss ranks his ability to sway others' minds and hearts to be his most important strength. He offers a self-deprecating, faintly ironic, but good-natured sense of humor that endears him to people. Add to that likability the ease with which he can suss out what people want to hear, and he's difficult to stop in front of a crowd. Or a single person. He's not above manipulating Katniss's feelings and the situation at hand to get what he wants. He can play up the positives of a bad situation or outright lie to millions of people, even if flying by the seat of his pants.
And that imaginative, improvisational streak shows outside his rhetoric as well. He's clever, if lacking other Tributes' survival expertise, and knows what cards he can play not just to stay on the right people's good side, but to handle desperate situations on his own. He's resourceful enough to turn his knack for decoration into camouflage, diagramming, using painting as a flashy talent, a helpful aid for his friends' projects, and a personal/political statement. He could be said, despite his solid nature, to have something of an artistic temperament as well. What darkness he keeps out of his gentle demeanor emerges in his paintings, and, at times, in his words.
Because Peeta's been tortured and twisted and cracked open just the same as the rest of the Hunger Games Victors. He's lost everything. But, with time, patience, and the girl he once loved unconditionally and loves again, if painfully, at his side, he's been rebuilding. He's coming once again to the kind, witty, easy-going, steadfast, self-deprecating boy who burned two loaves of bread to keep a girl from starving.