Would love to hear your thoughts on Suzanne Collins saying that THG was inspired in part by the myth of Theseus and Ariadne? I’ve never fully been able to match that to the finished product but maybe I’m missing something? ❤️ x
ok so you sent me this ask a while ago and i honestly have been thinking about it all day and i CANNOT come up with a satisfying answer... also fair warning i am not the most well versed in classics and i know a lot of people know the myths and the classical sources WAY better than me so if i’m totally off the mark here someone please correct me <3
i mean there’s the obvious parallel of like. kids being sent to die, because in the minotaur myth they have to send down like “unwed girls” and “young boys” for the minotaur to eat. so i guess that’s one parallel, and i guess the idea is that, like, the system commands this to happen and no one really questions it they just do it and send the young people down.
one of the parallels i can think of is with the minotaur and the mutts? like--i’m thinking of the end of thg and the muttations that are kind of half-human half-beast, so that’s kind of minotaur-esque if you squint. and then that’s like, the final boss of the hunger games kind of like the minotaur is kind of the final boss of the labyrinth... (some really good literary analysis there, i know lol)
then i guess if we take the percy jackson interpretation of the string (love that for me but bear with me) but that it’s about more than just seeing the path forward or getting yourself out of a maze, but that there’s some deeper meaning to that which is about seeing the truth and seeing beyond the veil of confusion that shrouds us. so--my thought is that in a way, peeta is the analog to ariadne; i’m thinking of his lines like “i don’t want to be a piece in their games,” or my analysis that peeta sees from the start that the only path out of this twisted system is love.
actually, as i’m writing that i’m thinking that that could map on to the theseus and ariadne myth even better, in that love will find a way out of a system in a way that brute strength and singular hero worship never can. if we take katniss to be theseus, she is smart and strong and brave, she could kill a minotaur or a corrupt politician or anything. but she can never find a way out of her system (a labyrinth of sorts) without love.
theseus kills the minotaur and saves people from a system that commands them to send young children to their death. but he himself cannot escape his labyrinth without help from someone who loves him. likewise, katniss kills coin and destroys the arena, ending the system of the hunger games (which sends children to die), but she herself cannot truly find a way out of her system without help from someone who loves her.
that’s my best answer, but i’m not totally satisfied... hm!! let me know what you think, if you have other thoughts or more to add!!
