“SO HERE I AM IN HIS DEBT AGAIN”
Katniss, Gifts, and Invisible Strings
He hasn’t made much of an effort to connect with Peeta really. Perhaps he thinks a bowl of broth would just be a bowl of broth to Peeta, whereas I’ll see the strings attached.
—Katniss Everdeen, in The Hunger Games1
Katniss Everdeen doesn’t believe in a gift freely given. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a loaf of bread or just plain loyalty. Katniss can never gain release from her own self-imposed sense of indebtedness until she can reciprocate her benefactor in some way. It’s striking how many times she uses the word owe and how burdened she feels if she can’t discharge her “debts.” Even when others ask nothing in return, Katniss can never accept a gift without assuming that there are strings attached. Why does she see strings attached to every gift, even when no one else does?
To understand why Katniss believes that invisible strings are attached to gifts, we will look to philosopher and anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), who offered one of the most insightful analyses of gift giving in the twentieth century. Mauss turned his attention away from modern society in order to study archaic communities, examining the role of gift giving in societies ranging from indigenous cultures of Africa to the world of medieval Europe. According to Mauss, “gifting” was a “state of mind” in those communities, such that “everything—food, women, children, property, talismans, land, labour services, priestly functions, and ranks—is there for passing on and for balancing accounts.”2 In his studies, Mauss discovered a cycle of gift giving that involved ceremony as much as economics.
Imagine a celebration in Europe during the Middle Ages. As the merriment wanes, the king takes out gifts and presents them to various guests at a large table. A visiting dignitary might receive a gold cup covered in jewels. The dignitary now understands that he must produce a gift in turn, perhaps a precious sword or a beautiful necklace for the queen. If he doesn’t reciprocate, both parties understand that the hosting king has gained the upper hand in the relationship. The dignitary “owes” the king for the gift and must repay it in some fashion before they are on equal footing again.
Not everyone in the hall would need to repay the king’s gifts in kind, however, as those who fight or work for the king can’t be expected to produce gifts of equal extravagance. When the king presents his subjects with gifts, their reciprocity comes in the form of service. By accepting a sword from the king, his subject agrees to use that sword to defend the king and his territory. Mauss argued that everyone involved in this “gifting” economy understood this need for reciprocity and the various forms it could take. The exchange of gifts cements the social bonds, the invisible strings that tie individuals to one another and hold a community together. The sword is more than just a weapon. It represents the bond between the subject and his king, just as the dignitary’s cup represents the bond between two nations. Even today dignitaries and host countries exchange gifts to signify the bonds of affection between their two nations, such as when President Barack Obama presented an iPod to Queen Elizabeth II of Britain.
Mauss described a time when there were many rules governing the practice of gift giving, which often occurred in a ceremonial setting and adhered to rigidly formalized patterns. Modern societies, however, rely on currency to circulate commodities, making the role of gifts less prominent. Today we may have less formality surrounding the giving of gifts, but because of this we also have more opportunities for awkwardness. When do I give? How much should I spend? What does it mean when I receive an unanticipated gift? Perhaps around the winter holidays a gift arrives from an unexpected person. One might feel awkward for not having given a gift in return. Or perhaps gifts are exchanged, but one doesn’t equal the other in monetary or sentimental value. One person might feel slighted. Although the term gift seems to imply something freely given, subtle strings and expectations always seem to be attached.
Life in Panem may not perfectly resemble the archaic cultures studied by Mauss, but Katniss seems to have internalized their understanding of gifts to such a degree that she sees strings attached to gifts even when they appear to be freely given. When she recalls Peeta’s gift of bread in her hour of need, she first acknowledges the significance of the gift, calling it “the bread that gave me hope” and notes that Peeta could have been (and probably was) punished for giving her the bread. She reflects, “I feel like I owe him something, and I hate owing people. Maybe if I had thanked him at some point, I’d be feeling less conflicted now.”3
Mauss would say that Katniss feels indebted precisely because she’s internalized the notion that “a gift is received with a burden attached.”4 This particular burden weighs her down as she enters the Games, limiting her freedom of action because of the bond created between her and Peeta, which remains in place long after the bread has been eaten.
When the gifting cycle was something recognized by a community as a whole, there were social repercussions for not reciprocating in the proper way. Those who didn’t reciprocate appropriately, through either equal gifts or services, could lose face in the community or could lose some of their benefits as members of the community. But what about a private gift, like Peeta’s gift of bread, that isn’t witnessed by the community? Does it still create an obligation?
Even a private gift creates a bond between persons, according to contemporary scholar Lewis Hyde, who extends the work of Mauss into modern society. For Hyde, gift giving doesn’t have meaning only in the regimented system of the archaic ceremonial hall but instead can occur privately and still have deep meaning for the parties involved.5 From Hyde’s perspective, Peeta’s quiet gift of bread can carry weight even if society doesn’t witness the act.
Peeta protests, “I think we can let that go,” when Katniss mentions the gift of bread to him after she has nursed him back to health in the arena. But she still believes that his gift hasn’t yet been repaid. “I never seem to get over owing you for that,” she tells him.6 Although being unable to reciprocate doesn’t damage her community standing in any way, she faces internal repercussions in the form of wounded pride from her inability to discharge what she regards as her debt. Katniss prides herself on being self-sufficient and being able to provide for her family, but what she had to trade for bread when she first received Peeta’s charity was rejected. Having to accept the bread as a gift instead, thereby admitting that what she had to offer was not enough, wounds Katniss and her sense of self-sufficiency.
Peeta’s gift was motivated by his love for Katniss. One reason Katniss feels indebted is that at first she doesn’t love him in return and so can’t reciprocate his feelings in a sincere way. She struggles with her feeling of owing him, and then she struggles with conflicting feelings of growing affection for him. She also realizes that Peeta would prefer for Katniss to reciprocate his feelings in a genuine way, and knowing that she can’t adds to her feelings of guilt. For Katniss, love, along with the need for reciprocity, creates an attachment that could prove dangerous later on if her life is at stake. Peeta’s continued acts of generosity make Katniss’s burden of indebtedness feel heavier and heavier, weighing her down.
Debts inside the Arena That Can Never Be Repaid
Early in the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss sees a distinct connection between the gifts from sponsors and actions inside the arena. When District 11 rewards her with bread for her tender treatment of Rue, Katniss wonders why the district authorized Haymitch Abernathy to send her this gift: “As a thank-you? Or because, like me, they don’t like to let debts go unpaid?” She then thanks them aloud so that they’ll know “the full value of their gift has been recognized.”7
Because Katniss evaluates the world through a lens of debts and reciprocity, she assumes that the people of District 11 share her outlook. Although she didn’t treat Rue kindly in the hope of a reward, she seems to believe that District 11 would still feel indebted to her for that act in the same way she feels indebted to Peeta for his many acts of generosity. As Mauss and Hyde point out, gifts create obligations, even if that was not the original intention.
Katniss may not be wrong about the outlook of District 11, because she finds another tribute from that district who sees the world in the same way: Thresh. On hearing of Katniss’s gentle treatment of Rue and how Katniss sang the slain child to her final sleep, Thresh spares her life, saying, in a tone that Katniss finds almost accusatory, “You and me, we’re even then. No more owed. You understand?” Katniss nods and reflects, “I do understand. About owing. About hating it.”8 She recognizes in Thresh the same resentment she feels when she must hamper her actions or speech because she thinks she owes somebody. Debt compromises your independence, something neither Katniss nor Thresh tolerates well.
Peeta doesn’t understand the encounter when Katniss relates it to him later, but she’s not surprised. “I don’t expect you to understand it,” she tells him. “You’ve always had enough. But if you’d lived in the Seam, I wouldn’t have to explain.”9 Residents of the Seam rely mainly on bartering to meet their needs, since they have little actual currency with which to participate in the larger economy. In such an environment, which has some resemblance to the archaic societies studied by Mauss, people are acutely conscious of what they’ve received from others and what they’re expected to give in return. Combine that with Katniss’s overriding desire to be self-sufficient, which makes her wary of anything that smacks of charity, and we can see why Katniss hates receiving a gift that she can’t repay. Peeta, never having felt the weight of owing another person, can’t understand that burden.
A seasoned veteran of the arena in Catching Fire, Katniss tries to avoid incurring any debts, but she can’t. Allied with Finnick Odair, she contemplates shooting him in the back as they walk together, since she believes he’ll have to die eventually if she is to survive. “It’s despicable, of course, but will it be any more despicable if I wait? Know him better? Owe him more?”10 She doesn’t kill him, but her concern about coming to “owe him more” proves to be prescient when Finnick later chooses to save Peeta over Mags. Katniss laments that now she “can never settle the balance owed between us.”11 She can only let him grieve over the death of his dear friend.
For Katniss to never be able to repay Finnick means that his sacrifice forges a bond between them in which she will be expected to provide him aid and protection indefinitely in the future—and that’s something Katniss doesn’t like, since she resents anything that hampers her independence. Yet her stints as a tribute and then as the figurehead for the Mockingjay revolution can’t help but make her more and more connected to others around her. The independence she enjoyed supporting her family through hunting and gathering in the woods becomes a thing of the past. As she and her family become more bound to the larger community, she feels more and more constrained by debts.
When Katniss returns from the 74th Hunger Games, she discovers that the people in the Hob, some of the poorest folks in the district, saved up to help sponsor her. Katniss no longer needs to go to the Hob for supplies, but she continues to do so because “although they never mention it, I owe the people who frequent the Hob.”12 She spreads her coins around in an act of reciprocity. Katniss can now afford to spend money, and she wants to reciprocate the people’s support in the only way they would accept it: through buying as many items as she can from the merchants who sponsored her. Katniss believes that the people of the Hob have the same pride and independent streak that she has, and she uses her ability to pay for things as a way to demonstrate her gratitude.
Katniss handles this situation beautifully. She finds a way to reciprocate while leaving the pride of the people of the Hob intact and strengthening the bonds between her and them. She never mentions that she’s giving them so much business because she believes that she owes them. To do so would be crass, almost like a rejection of their gift.
Imagine receiving a birthday gift and then repaying the giver with the exact cash value of the gift in order to discharge the obligation that gift had placed you under. What an insult! The gift would be reduced to a mere commercial transaction. Whereas the exchange of gifts tends to create and strengthen bonds, discharging debts through cash payments often has the opposite effect, keeping people at a distance from each other.
The people of the Hob know Katniss, and their gift reflects the already present bond between them, which, unlike the bond created by Peeta’s gift of bread, was initially made on her own terms. Katniss manages her debt to them in a way that strengthens those bonds rather than bemoaning that they exist in the first place.
Katniss and Peeta both feel indebted to District 11, for the two tributes from that district, Rue and Thresh, helped to keep Katniss alive and therefore indirectly helped to save Peeta. Peeta gives an eloquent speech in which he promises the families of those two tributes “one month of our winnings every year for the duration of our lives,” ensuring that those families will never go hungry as long as Katniss and Peeta live. “The gift . . . it is perfect,” Katniss says in admiration. But a look from Rue’s sister makes it clear to her that even this is not enough. “I owe too much.”13
More than owing the people of District 11 a portion of her winnings, Katniss owes them her gratitude. “Thank you for your children,” she says. “And thank you all for the bread.”14 Whereas the gift of a portion of winnings might be taken as a way to pay off the debt, her words of gratitude acknowledge that a lasting bond between the districts had been created during the Games—in defiance of the Capitol, which designed the Games in part to foster animosity among the districts. Forged in the arena and reinforced through gifts and words of gratitude, this bond awakens feelings of solidarity that will later fuel the rebellion.
Katniss and Peeta’s relationship with the people of District 11, as well as her relationship to her sponsors in the Hob—show us that not all bonds should be seen as burdensome. Mauss believed that gifts created the kinds of bonds required to hold a society together. Katniss and Peeta’s gift of a portion of their winnings to District 11, along with Katniss’s heartfelt speech of gratitude, created a bond that helped to subvert an unjust social order based on keeping people isolated and antagonistic toward one another.
In Mockingjay, Katniss doesn’t speak about indebtedness in the same way she did in the earlier books, possibly because the rebellion has placed her in a position to earn her keep. She continues to see the world in terms of people giving gifts and performing actions that create bonds that demand reciprocity, but what has changed is her ability to reciprocate.
Even in a military setting, a cycle of gifting can be observed. Mauss argues that loyalty can be a gift, and placing oneself in a position to garner loyalty creates the obligation to be worthy of that loyalty. Pledges or oaths make the expectation of loyalty concrete, and uniforms and weapons can serve as tokens of that pledge.15 This means that donning an officer’s uniform requires that officer to act in ways that inspire loyalty in his or her subordinates. For the subordinates, the uniform indicates an acknowledgment of the loyalty promised. This highlights the fact that reciprocity can come in intangible forms and can create bonds among all involved.
Katniss places herself in a subordinate position when she joins the rebellion. Boggs, by accepting her under his command, owes her a certain amount of loyalty and just treatment. In return, Katniss should be able to expect a corresponding degree of loyalty from Boggs, which he demonstrates when he saves her life despite Coin wanting Katniss martyred for the cause.
By wearing a uniform, Katniss declares her loyalty to the rebellion and creates a bond between herself and others who wear the same uniform. When her comrades in arms sacrifice their lives in the cause of the rebellion, Katniss begins to feel the burden of the bonds she has forged. Hiding in Tigris’s shop, Katniss wavers momentarily in her dedication but then realizes, “I owe the others a debt that can only be repaid in one way.”16 Her debt can be repaid only by completing her mission and killing President Snow, the man who has caused so much pain in her life and in the lives of so many others in Panem.
How do things stand at this point with her sense of indebtedness to the boy with the bread? Not ready to acknowledge her love for Peeta—if indeed she does love him—and make that the basis of their bond, Katniss can at least give him the gift of loyalty. She negotiates for Peeta as part of her terms for being the Mockingjay, and she doesn’t feel comfortable abandoning the pretense of their love affair, even in private.
Her feelings for Peeta become more complicated, however, when he arrives in District 13 the victim of a hijacking, brainwashed and believing the worst about Katniss and the other rebels. Although she never openly admits it, Katniss is clearly troubled that Peeta no longer values the bond between them that he forged with his repeated acts of selflessness and generosity.17 Instead, he becomes violent when he sees her. Even this isn’t enough to drive Katniss away, though. Regardless of what Peeta remembers, she owes him more than that. Despite his attempts to kill her, she continues trying to connect with him and protect him, telling him that “that’s what you and I do. Protect each other.”18
It’s noteworthy that Katniss no longer says that she “owes” Peeta. Owing has been replaced with mutuality, paying debts with protecting each other. Here we see another demonstration of the power of the gift to forge bonds. In the end, it’s that bond that’s really important and valuable. The gift may have value in it own right, like the gift of bread that fed Katniss’s family.
But sometimes the gift may just be a token of the bond between two people, such as when Katniss gently brushes the hair from Peeta’s forehead as he lies recovering in District 13, even though that’s something he could easily do for himself. Mauss notes that in some societies, the token gift might have no value at all, being something like a twig or a rock. What is important is the moment when the bond is forged; the gift simply marks the significance of that moment.
Because Katniss and Peeta repeat the cycle of reciprocity throughout their time together, the bond between them gets stronger and stronger, which both Mauss and Hyde would argue is the desired outcome of gift giving. Katniss may not realize it, but Peeta’s repeated acts of generosity have slowly transformed her so that she no longer needs to be completely independent and self-sufficient. That’s why she doesn’t give up on him when he rejects her kindness. Instead, she works to restore the bonds she originally resisted. She ceases to resent the way that the bonds created by gifts restrain her freedom of action, and she comes to value instead what they offer her in return: a connection to other people.
The bond between Peeta and Katniss helps her to heal when the revolution ends and she returns to her home in District 12. As she grieves for those she lost, Peeta returns in small, manageable ways. Instead of overwhelming Katniss with his presence or overloading her with gifts, he begins with a remembrance for her sister, Prim—and then something new happens. For the first time, Katniss doesn’t complain that an act of kindness from Peeta is burdening her with a new debt. Perhaps Katniss no longer sees generosity as a threat to her self-sufficiency, because she realizes that she isn’t completely self-sufficient and never will be. She has learned to accept kindness by appreciating the connection it forges instead of the debt it imposes.
With Peeta’s help, Katniss acknowledges her debt to fallen comrades and loved ones through the creation of a book. By keeping alive the memory of those, like Cinna, who sacrificed their lives for hers, and others, like her father, who helped to shape her into the woman she has become, Katniss expresses her gratitude to those who have passed on and for the sacrifices they made. Ultimately, she realizes that the best way to do this is by trying to live well so that their deaths matter and the gifts she received from them are put to good use.
NOTES
1. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (New York: Scholastic Press, 2008), 305.
2. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 14.
3. Collins, The Hunger Games, 2.
4. Mauss, The Gift, 41.
5. Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York: Vintage Books, 1983).
6. Collins, The Hunger Games, 293.
7. Ibid., 168.
8. Ibid., 203.
9. Ibid., 206.
10. Ibid., 192.
11. Ibid., 218.
12. Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire (New York: Scholastic Press, 2009), 11.
13. Ibid., 46, 59.
14. Ibid., 61.
15. Mauss, The Gift, 61.
16. Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay (New York: Scholastic Press, 2009), 235.
17. For more on Peeta’s hijacking, see chapter 13, “Who is Peeta Mellark?: The Problem of Identity in Panem.”
18. Ibid., 219.