#the bread scene

[rosegardeninwinter]

let’s talk about the bread scene again, shall we?

first, we may note that Katniss does not start going to the Hob until after she figures out how to provide for her family; I have previously wondered why Haymitch didn’t notice how much in a bad way the Everdeens were if Katniss was coming to The Hob: here’s your explanation

second, the icy weather will be personified in a few paragraphs as running its fingers down little Katniss’s back, a very invasive image; mark it, because it’s going to be juxtaposed against another “intimate” image

third, Katniss drops the baby clothes and is unable to pick them up for fear she won’t be able to go on; I see this as a two-fold metaphor; she can never pick up her childhood again, and she must leave any notions of a future with children of her own behind if she is to survive, physically and emotionally; she must leave past and future in the mud of now

there may be a tragic third image here, one that points us ahead to the final book: an image of Katniss ultimately losing her baby, Prim

here, we get our first really meaningful mention of fire (outside of the mention in the “here’s how Panem became a dystopia” exposition dump from the mayor) in the series, and there’s a strong correlation between fire and hope, and, therefore, lack of fire and lack of hope; fire means many things in this world, but it’s significant to me that this is the first major association we get

the next image that stands out to me is the image of the garden beds not yet planted for spring; again, I think ahead to the third book, where Greasy Sae heralds Peeta’s return by mentioning that spring is in the air; it’s not yet spring, but it’s coming

then, of course, we get this flood of sensory imagery about the golden glow of the bakery; here again is another image of fire, and this time, in addition to hope, it represents warmth and sustenance, food

I do not think the use of “golden” is accidental here, as we have gold and yellow imagery used often for Peeta

Katniss is made almost dizzy by the rush of scent and light, but then that icy personification of reality (of despair? of death?) runs its fingers down her back and she begins desperately digging in the trash

it’s pretty telling that the bins are described as “heartlessly” bare and then we immediately meet the heartless witch herself

Mrs. Mellark is quick to dehumanize both Katniss and Peeta, treating Katniss like an animal “pawing” in her trash, beating Peeta (seemingly with an object, not her hand) and calling him a stupid creature; what is particularly cruel is that she knows Katniss is out there, or was a moment ago, starving, and yet she tells her son to feed not the little girl, but the pig

but Peeta, kind Peeta, brings the bread to Katniss; and remember, we are told of his small (not so small) sacrifice as Katniss is standing on the reaping stage, having sacrificed herself for her sister; we know these two characters are sacrificial and compassionate from the jump

of course, with the information we are given in the second book, we can see this moment as a symbolic sort of toasting; a wedding, not by party or paper, but by pity and provision

and here’s that beautiful, intimate image that stands in opposition to the icy fingers of death; the heat of the bread, of life; it burns itself into Katniss’s skin, as a brand of hope and of connection to the boy with the bread, and she welcomes it, clutches it closer; Gale may have fire, yes, but Katniss held Peeta’s fire to her heart first

(as an aside, of course Peeta makes an incubator for Haymitch’s gosling eggs: he is the one who brings warmth and life)

speaking of Gale: I will forever give him credit for helping Katniss feed her family … but, again, Peeta did it first

notice that Katniss falls into a dreamless sleep; he isn’t even sharing her bed yet, and Peeta is already helping her have “no nightmares”

and now, at last, spring is here; spring comes to Katniss with Peeta; he is springtime, with all its color and brightness

Katniss notices the dandelion that reminds her of her father (by the way, unless I’m much mistaken, burdock is in the same family as dandelion, and what’s even crazier is that the flower family they both belong to is the Asteraceae family—yes, this is where Asterid comes from—which is the daisy family) (“here it’s safe, here it’s warm / here the daisies guard you” indeed) reminds her she is not doomed; we learn later that Burdock told Katniss as long as she could find herself (her name plant), she wouldn’t starve; Katniss does manage to find herself, in more ways that one, but she has to find the dandelion (Peeta) first

lastly, Katniss says she feels she owes Peeta, and she does, though he’ll deny it: she owes him her life, and what’s beautiful about comparing this moment with the end of the series is that she makes good on this sense of owing him; she owes it to him to stay alive, to live, just as he comes to owe it to her to live too; and they do

[kyghostly]

"To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was not doomed." - The Hunger Games, Chapter 2, Suzanne Collins

[ID: A 8 page digital comic of the bread scene between katniss and peeta, interlaced with the text from the hunger games novel. End ID.]

[realmermaid333]

I'll never understand why they didn't just cast two children to play Katniss and Peeta during the bread scene in the first movie. The kids would only be in one scene so it's not like it was a child labor law concern. But it's just so weird to see two people who look at youngest 17 playing what's supposed to be their 12 year old selves LOL

[darkerflowersplease]

[porchwood]

ToastedTHG: Giving-Katniss-Bread Fanfiction

This is a bit of a cheat, sorry! Collins’ version is so perfect that I was stumped to recall reading any fic version before - and then I suddenly recalled that I’d written one, sort of, some time ago. Here’s the opening of Katniss’s dream from the end of Ch 9 of When the Moon Fell in Love with the Sun, where she relives pivotal interactions with Peeta, with herself in bird form...

I dream of a bird – or rather, that I am a bird. A small, drab, brown-black thing, not unlike the blackbirds I made a pie of on my last night at home. It’s sundown in the very dead of winter, and I’m huddled in a crook of a battered apple tree, nosing hopefully with my beak through some nuts and seeds left behind by a squirrel. I find nothing but empty hulls and give a weak chirp in despair. There’s no food to be had, here or elsewhere in the woods. I’ll be dead of cold or hunger before the sun rises.

I hear a whistle from below – birdlike, yet not a bird – and cock my head at the bizarre creature suddenly standing beneath my tree. The body of a white bear – a young bear – and a human head? No, it’s a boy; a boy dressed in a white bearskin. A strong, stocky boy with pale yellow curls and cheeks turned pink by the cold. His gloved hand proffers a rounded brown object twice my size. He smiles up at me through the branches. His eyes are blue as a winter morning.

“I’ve brought you food,” he says, and his voice tugs at me strangely. “Please come down.”

My small, keen eyes flicker suspiciously between his smiling mouth and the thing in his hand that might be food. The boy is enormous compared to me, and I’m very weak. If I leave my perch and fly down to him, he could break my neck with two fingers. If I trust him, I could die.

If I don’t trust him, I will.

“I’d never hurt you,” he beseeches softly. “Not ever.”

A quick death is better than a slow one, I reason. I shrug my feeble wings and hop from the perch, but I’m too weak to flutter and fall like a blind, featherless hatchling – only to be caught securely in mid-air, cupped in the boy’s gloved palm. I wait for his fingers to close around me, to crush my hollow body or twist my neck, but he only smiles the wider – he seems almost ridiculous with delight. “Hello there,” he says, as the townsfolk do to their old friends. “Would you like some bread?”

He crumbles a bit of the brown thing and sprinkles it in front of me, along the heel of his hand. It’s faintly charred, like the branches the coal miner burns for heat in the little house by the lake, but it smells good. Like autumn’s bounty and the pleasant decay of bright leaves beneath its last burst of sun. I peck curiously at the crumbs. There are bits of nuts – rich, nourishing nut-meats – and small brown fruits, shriveled but very sweet, and in-between are tiny flecks of something new but warm and hearty – is that bread? The thing the boy mentioned? He smells of it, I realize. Of the food in his hand, and of bear.

The boy makes no move to stop me from eating more and, ravenous now, I snap up bite after bite, beating the pieces that are too big against his palm to make them smaller. He laughs, a gentle rumbling sound, and rubs the too-large pieces between his fingers, breaking them down for me. I feast on burned bread with nuts and raisins from the blond boy’s hand. It fills me with warmth and wholeness and life.

[porchwood]

ToastedTHG: Giving-Katniss-Bread Fanfiction (Part 2)

Yes, I am a self-promoting loser. :P But over the years I’ve enjoyed rewriting the bread scene in various contexts, so here’s 7-yr-old Appalachian Hansel & Gretel!Everlark (from Breadcrumbs) for you...

It had been a little after Mama and the baby died, and Papa was in a bad way: spending their trades on liquor; not to carouse, simply to numb the grief. He sat in The Hob for an hour or more while Katniss stood outside with her empty basket, waiting to see how much money remained to buy bread and flint and soap.

Sometimes there was nothing left, and they returned to the cabin gray-faced and empty-handed. There was plenty to live on in the woods, of course, but some days proved leaner than others.

That day Papa had been especially long in the tavern, and Katniss’s small stomach was growling like a sleepy bear cub as she lingered outside the bakery. If the baker was there, she could have had a rabbit bun, maybe even two of them, but he was away for the afternoon, and his wife was none too generous. Katniss watched wistfully through the window as the baker’s youngest son pulled a pan of perfect little rabbit buns, golden and steaming, from the oven, but his mama cuffed him smartly when he tried to put them in the basket his papa carried around for handing them out. The baker’s wife preferred to give the little buns to the children of paying customers, not hungry urchins in the street.

Katniss wasn’t quite starving, but Papa’s trades – and hunts – had been poor of late and she was very hungry, so she went round the back of the bakery to the wide raised platform the family used as a bird feeder. There was almost always something there – broken cookies, stale bread, burnt crusts – but that day there were only crumbs.

Buttery shortbread crumbs, though, and much better than nothing. Katniss was picking them up and stuffing them in her mouth, a pinch at a time, when the back door crashed open and the baker’s youngest  son came hurrying out with a pillowcase, half-filled with something-or-other, in his hands. He went straight to Katniss at the bird feeder, thrust the neck of the pillowcase into her hands, and ran back inside. Katniss heard a fleshy thump and a cry of pain from within, almost before the door had closed behind him, and she ran away as fast as she could.

She didn’t dare to look inside the pillowcase till she was hidden in the alley alongside The Hob, and when she finally did her mouth fell open like a fish’s. It was an entire batch of little rabbit buns, so fresh and hot that the pillowcase steamed when she opened it; a cloud of moist heat, smelling dizzyingly of honey-bread. Her stomach gave a ferocious growl, a bear cub’s no longer.

Some of the little buns had stuck together; they were that warm and soft, but Katniss didn’t mind two pins. She crammed three of them into her mouth in rapid succession, nearly burning her tongue on the doughy insides, then ran headlong into the tavern to find Papa, her pillowcase-sack held triumphantly aloft.

The grizzled old barmaid, Sae, had chuckled at the sight. “Reckon your girl’s bagged a coon, Jack,” she teased, taking away his empty mug.

Papa turned to Katniss at once, the liquor forgotten in his concern, for she’d never set foot inside The Hob before, but his concern quickly turned to astonishment when she showed him the contents of the pillowcase. “These are Mellark’s buns,” he said in wonder. “Did the baker give you all of these?”

“No, his boy did,” Katniss answered, still confused by that part of the story. “I was eatin’ crumbs from their bird feeder out back and he ran out and gave ‘em to me.”

Papa’s face fell at that. “You were eating crumbs from their bird feeder?” he echoed sadly.

He never drank in The Hob again.

They rode straight home after that, singing silly old songs and eating rabbit buns all the way, and when they got there Papa went out and shot a proper rabbit for stew, with plenty of fat roots and spicy wild greens. He made Katniss drink as much goat’s milk as she could, warmed with a little of their comb honey stirred in, and put her to bed early in the little trundle-drawer.

And all the while she clung to the pillowcase, even after it was empty. It smelled of soap flakes and fresh honey-bread. That smell was life, and the start of a new one for her and Papa.

Once Papa’s drowsy lullabies turned to snores, Katniss sat up, tugged off her own pillowcase, and replaced it with the one from the baker’s son, crumpled from several hours grasped in her little hands. She fell asleep that night, and many nights after, breathing in honey-bread and life, curled round the fragrant pillow as she slept.

The pillowcase lost its sweet bread smell after just one wash with their rough lye soap, but Katniss slept on it every night just the same.

[itshipstacurls]

kay, guys, i need your help.

well i saw people giffing the bread scene and i cant find it.

like omg i need to watch it like now and asdljkndjklsadjk i dont know where so klsndklasd i need you to send me the link.

please.

do it.

please.

i need it.