Morais, G. A. L. F. de. (2018); ‘The monomyth today: the journey of the mythological hero in Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins’ Rosetta 22: 40 - 64 http://www.rosetta.bham.ac.uk/issue22/Morais.pdf The monomyth today: the journey of the mythological hero in Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins Guilherme Augusto Louzada Ferreira de Morais UNESP/IBILCE – FAPESP Proc. nº 2015 / 23592-4 Abstract In this article, my objective is to analyse and revise the classical hero model, based mainly on The Hero with a Thousand Faces,1 a theoretical apparatus of great importance with regard to the characterization of mythological heroes. Concurrently, I will demonstrate, from Campbell’s theory, how Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire’s author,2 performs in her work the monomyth, and how she inserted the model of the classical hero into the narrative road of her main character, Katniss Everdeen. Keywords: Joseph Campbell; Classical hero model; mythological hero; Suzanne Collins; Katniss Everdeen. 1 Campbell 2004. 2 Collins 2009. 40 This work proposes to analyse and revise the classical hero model in the novel Catching Fire, by the American author Suzanne Collins. Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces3 will be the most important theoretical apparatus of this essay. I use, as a source of the classical myths, authors such as Homer and Ovid, but I also use The Concise Dictionary Of Classical Mythology, by Pierre Grimal, a French historian, classicist and Latinist. Campbell analyses the exploits of heroes from various narratives, not sticking merely to the classics (namely the most well-known myths, such as Perseus, Heracles, etc.), and uses hero narratives to suggest that humanity has always had the same dreams and fears. Campbell discusses the stages of life of the great heroic characters of history (real or fictitious) who were, or are until today, the target of the trust and faith of many cultures and peoples. When necessary, I will also discuss other works, as well as some narratives, hero tales, from Classical Literature. Before I start the analysis, a brief summary of The Hunger Games series is in order. The series follows the heroine Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a dystopic country called Panem – located in the former United States of America. The country is divided into twelve districts, dominated and subdued by a metropolis called the Capitol which annually performs the so-called Hunger Games, the purpose of which is to keep alive the memory of the outcome of a revolt which happened seventy-four years before. The rules of the games are as follows: two tributes, one boy and one girl from each district, are selected through a lottery called the Reaping and must fight in an arena until only one of the twenty-four selected survives. The Games are televised and broadcast throughout Panem in the form of entertainment. Catching Fire, the series’ second novel, continues the story of Katniss and Peeta after they have won the 74th edition of the Hunger Games. In the end of the first novel, the two tributes return to District 12 and move to the Victor’s Village, a place reserved solely for the winning tributes of the Games. At the start of Catching Fire, Katniss receives Coriolanus Snow in her home, the president of Panem, who shows 3 Campbell 2004. 41 her that she is at risk for violating the rules of the Games when she threatened to eat poisoned berries, even though she couldn't predict what would happen, if they would survive or not, in the hopes that this would force the Gamemakers to let both she and Peeta win. The act culminated in some revolts and was considered an affront to the Capitol by President Snow. In order to prevent their families and loved ones from being penalized, Katniss and Peeta must convince Panem that the only reason they tried to eat the poisoned berries, called Nightlock, was because they were really in love with each other. This is due to, in the first novel, The Hunger Games, the ‘star- crossed lovers dynamic’4 created by Peeta, who confessed his love to Katniss in the interviews that precede the games. The audience believed in his confession and thus Katniss and Peeta must maintain this “play” in order to protect their families. The attempts of Katniss are ineffective in the eyes of President Snow and thus provoke the convening of twenty-four of the former winners to hold the Quarter Quell, a special edition of the Games which takes place every twenty-five years. In this way, the 75th edition of the Hunger Games becomes a clear attempt to eliminate Katniss from the scene, as the girl is the only female winner of District 12 and therefore will be sent to the arena once again. So, Katniss will go through innumerable obstacles, just like in the first novel. After this brief introduction to the novel, we can understand Campbell’s monomyth theory and analyse how it occurs in myths and also in Catching Fire. Generally speaking, the mythological hero is a character who has overcome every obstacle imposed on him. After returning from his adventure, he is no longer the same because he has achieved his goals by facing what nobody else could; transfigured into an eternal man, he remains in the memory of those who know him and it is up only to him to teach posterity to the people who live in the same place as him, everything he has learned in the course of his journey. 4 Collins 2008: 165. 42 Campbell states that:5 The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero […]: separation — initiation — return: […] might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth. The monomyth is a system observed in narratives of a heroic nature. In other words, there is ‘a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return’.6 This is the model I intend to use to analyse Katniss Everdeen’s adventure in Catching Fire. I must begin the study of the hero with the fact that he finds himself in the intermediate position between gods and men, that is, the hero has, in most cases, a divine or at least a noble lineage. He:7 […] is born generally of illustrious parents: his father, or his mother, is of divine nature (Heracles, Achilles); or, at least, their parents are earthly reflections of divinity: kings, princes, beings close to the gods. Whilst the classical hero is a descendant of a mortal and a god, thus making him a demigod, or at least the son of illustrious parents, Katniss Everdeen is not a demigod she is an ordinary person. Her father was a poor worker in the coal mines of District 12 and her mother was a merchant’s daughter. The Classical Hero possesses this divine ascendancy, but he inhabits a common, an ordinary world. In this way, the hero has to accept and understand his role in the world, and finally to start his journey. After all, according to Campbell, the hero, in the complete course of his journey, comes from:8 5 Campbell 2004: 28. 6 Campbell 2004: 33. 7 Sellier 1998: 468 (translated by the author). 8 Campbell 2004: 28. 43 […] the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. We can look at the example of Perseus, son of Zeus, the ruler of gods and men. In the Metamorphoses, by Ovid, for example, we observe that the hero and his mother, Danaë, are thrown into a chest by her father, Acrisius – because of a prophecy he receives from Delphi that his daughter’s son would kill him. At the moment they are rescued by Dictys, they begin to inhabit the common world of the fisherman, who raises Perseus as if he were his own son. The hero and Danaë live with Dictys and his wife for many years because ‘Dictys welcomed them and raised the young Perseus, who became a handsome and courageous young man’.9 With this example, I can clearly observe two characteristics of the heroic being: (i) Perseus is a demigod and (ii) he inhabits a common world (Dictys’ world). Despite being a descendant of a god, Perseus is raised by a fisherman and had followed the path of his adoptive father, accompanying him and learning the craft of fishing. A totally ordinary world for a person who would still be a hero. Katniss Everdeen, protagonist of Catching Fire, also lives in a natural world: Her home is a house in the twelfth district of Panem, one of the most distant from the Capitol, whose trade is to supply coal to the capital of the country. Katniss, like any other teenager, attends school and does reading, math, and coal assignments. However, with the death of her father, the character had been forced to take on her father’s role, to hunt illegally in the surroundings of the district and to sell the meat of the animals and also fruit and fish in the Hob. Like Perseus, Katniss lives in an ordinary world (at least to her, in spite of all the dangers she faces to hunt) and both are not members of a ruling class. 9 Grimal 1986: 342. 44 Knowing that the hero inhabits a natural world, I must understand that in order to withdraw from this world, he will receive the call to adventure.