this is mostly me dropping into your inbox to complain but something that makes me really mad is the way haymitch kind of keeps talking down to katniss. this was mostly inspired by your own post on why you can't reread the og book but it had me thinking...katniss is 17ish in catching fire and mockingjay and haymitch is all like "you and i both failed [in keeping peeta safe]" my guy she hasn't even had prom yet she's like a junior in high school?? what on earth can she do. like dude you're in your 40s. although i might be missing something eek
this honestly is part of why I don’t think Haymitch fills the space of a father figure for Katniss…he simultaneously assigns outsized responsibility to her (and/or doesn’t push back on her assigning outsized responsibility to herself) and patronizes her when she doesn’t meet those expectations. we see this when they talk about Peeta. I don’t think that he’s wrong in speaking to her seriously and leveling with her as if she’s an adult, but his actions to me are not of someone who’s treating her as if he’s in a parental role to her, even a semblance of or de facto one. he’s treating her as a peer and like you said, this dude is in his 40s. Katniss is not his peer. the responsibility he assigns to her by saying that they both failed in keeping Peeta safe, while an objectively true statement, is also not an accurate portrayal of their social roles and obligations. Katniss is still a child and Haymitch is the adult. his job if he decides to accept it is, in fact, to try and keep both kids safe. that’s not Katniss’s responsibility alone.
and since Katniss has been failed by all of the adults around her and had adult responsibility assigned to her from a very young age, she sees nothing wrong with Haymitch’s presentation of things and treatment of her, but watching as an outsider and an adult I definitely can see how it’s cringe worthy. I think that Haymitch is extremely important to Katniss, their relationship is deeply meaningful to both of them and he does fill the space of a semi consistent adult figure in Katniss’s life that she can rely on and confide in, but I also think thg is a story (like many YA stories) about how kids are consistently failed by adults in a variety of ways and that example you shared above to me is a great illustration of how Haymitch, in his way, also fails her.
