The Girl Who Was on Fire (19 page)

Finnick Odair knows this. As he reveals to Katniss, he, the most beautiful of the living tributes, has been prostituted by President Snow for years. He didn’t choose promiscuity and casual sexual encounters for his own pleasure; he has been sold to the highest bidder. The price for refusing would be the death of the defenseless Annie, the one person Finnick loves. By definition, Finnick has been raped, forced into sexual intercourse against his will. Rape is a traumatic violation and a common cause of PTSD. Dissociation of the mind from the body is a defensive response to it. It allows Finnick to remain functional, rational, apparently in control. But when Annie is in peril during the rebellion, this bargain between mind and body collapses and Finnick disintegrates into the depression, distraction, and difficulty concentrating associated with PTSD.

Another sign of the broken link between mind and body is the loss of meaningful speech seen among the tributes. Unlike the speechlessness of the Avoxes, whose tongues have been cut out as punishment, the strange speech patterns of the Quarter Quell tributes originate in the brain.

Both Annie and Wiress drop out of conversation in midsentence. Annie drifts off and “laughs at odd places in the conversation.” When Annie “does that thing where she covers her ears and exits reality,” it is part of her own pattern of avoidance and disassociation (
Mockingjay
). Annie lapses in and out of connection when a loud sound or other trigger makes the present as painful as the past. Wiress also has speech problems. Her behavior is different than Annie’s, though. She is easily “distracted by something in her head” or a bit of dry straw (
Catching Fire
). Beetee acts as her translator. He knows her well enough to finish her unfinished ideas. It probably took years for the two of them to share that sort of connection, but it only takes a few minutes in the bloodbath at the Cornucopia to steal away all of her language but two syllables: “Tick, tock.” It is a heroic effort at communication, one that saves the lives of her allies once they understand her message. It is also clear evidence that her extraordinary, creative, intuitive brain is still struggling to work—“nuts” or no. And then there is Old Mags, whose garbled speech may be the result of a stroke as Katniss speculates, but who might be suffering from aphasia, the inability to recall words. It’s a frustrating aspect of the “swiss-cheese brain” that plagues people with PTSD—they know exactly what they want to say, but the words seem to have been erased. Katniss, for her part, falls completely silent after the death of Prim. She is a mental Avox.

It isn’t the first time that the connection between mind and body has been broken inside Katniss. When she wakes after Rue’s death, basic tasks now require conscious effort and attention. She
isn’t exactly herself anymore; instead she is telling some girl named Katniss what to do: “I give myself a series of simple commands to follow, like ‘Now you have to sit up, Katniss. Now you have to drink water, Katniss.’ I act on the orders with slow, robotic motions” (
The Hunger Games
). Later, when she must watch the highlights of the Games, seeing herself causes Katniss to disassociate again. “Something inside me shuts down and I’m too numb to feel anything. It’s like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games” (
The Hunger Games
).

—from
Mockingjay

 

Natural disasters like tsunamis, hurricanes, or earthquakes are unexpected catastrophes. It is impossible, really, to be psychologically prepared for events that suddenly upend the world and leave a tangle of death and wreckage behind. Homes are reduced to rubble, and even the landscape may be unrecognizable. Those who live thorough the immediate devastation are stranded in a hostile environment where nothing feels safe or secure anymore. It’s all too much to process. As a result, many disaster survivors experience anxiety, nightmares, and other symptoms of PTSD.

The arena for the Hunger Games is a carefully designed
unnatural
disaster. Orchestrated wildfires, avalanches, and floods all add to the stress and carnage of the Games. In the arena, the mist that creeps through the jungle at night is nerve gas, and the perfume that rises from the flowers is poisonous. Even gravity is suspended, so a rock thrown over a cliff flies back up,
untethered by natural laws. Nothing in the environment is dependable. The earth underfoot can suddenly spin so fast the centrifugal force flings bodies through the air.

The arena is populated with nightmare versions of real animals: fluffy little squirrels are carnivorous pack animals, monkeys have claws like switchblades, and the birds’ songs echo the screams of tortured children. Clearly being dangerous isn’t enough to merit inclusion in the Games. If it were, the arena would be crawling with pit vipers and rattlesnakes. Psychological horror is as important as poison. A pack of wild dogs can kill you, but a muttation that stares at you with the beautiful emerald eyes of a dead girl? Worse. Much worse.

There is no safe place. Fear is constant, and, in response, the brain shifts to a hyper-aroused state and gets stuck there. As Peeta says, “The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and the tributes who want your blood become your final reality” (
Mockingjay
). When that happens, it is very difficult to trust the world ever again. The whole world
is
the arena. Even if gravity is reliable and “the Games” are over, the brain has been taught that safety and security are illusions.

—from
Mockingjay

 

That brain-building baby, long before it learns to talk, also has things to teach us about how deeply embedded we are in
a social world. I find one experiment especially revealing.
²⁰
Babies between the ages of six and ten months watch a puppet show where distinct geometric shapes play the roles of “climber,” “helper,” and “hinderer.” When the little red circle tries to climb a steep hill, it can’t do it. Then a blue square arrives and “helps” by pushing the circle to the top. In the next scene, a yellow triangle appears and, instead of helping, blocks the way and shoves the circle to the bottom of the hill. At the end of the show, when the babies have access to the puppets, they reach out to touch the pro-social blue square and shun the yellow triangle.

This experiment reveals how quickly a brain recognizes a difference between “good” and “bad” behaviors and how deeply we desire to be allies with “helpers.”

Consider what that means in the arena. Alliances form, but they must dissolve because, as Maysilee Donner tells Haymitch, “I don’t want it to come down to you and me.” The Games are designed that way, designed to push the tributes to cross the line from ally to murderer.

How did that line come to exist? Why are most humans so reluctant to kill another human being? What is the real difference between killing a deer or squirrel and “murder” from the brain’s perspective?

Some of it may be instinctive; most mammals exhibit a resistance to killing members of their own species. (There are exceptions to the rule—usually triggered by hunger or the desire to reproduce.) The reluctance to kill other humans might also be a result of socialization, part of the whole package of learning to
depend on others as an infant. Whatever the origins, the evidence that killing takes a psychological toll is clear. The most obvious data comes from a study done of soldiers who had all lived through war. Even though all members of the group shared similar experiences of threat to life and witnessing deaths of others, those who knew that they had killed another human being during battle were far more likely to develop symptoms of PTSD. The brain finds killing another human being traumatic.
²¹

In fact, overcoming the resistance to kill other humans is one of the primary functions of military training. Simulations and other preparation that help a soldier react quickly and pull the trigger rather than hesitate are an advantage on the battlefield. Similarly, the Career tributes step into the arena with an edge over the others. Their greater physical training plays a minor role compared to the power of the psychological training that makes them willing to be the aggressors.

Sometimes training works too well. Titus, a tribute from District 2, got over the taboo against murder and became good at killing. Then he turned cannibal. That was too much for the Capitol—and the home audience—to accept. Titus was wiped out of the game with a well-timed avalanche. The line that can’t be crossed is very subtle. It is, apparently, socially acceptable for Enobaria to tear out another tribute’s throat with her teeth—teeth she later has sharpened and inlaid with gold—but actually eating the flesh of the dead is forbidden.

Katniss, the hunter, has had more experience with death than most. She knows how to kill. She also knows that there is a difference between hunting and murder. Despite having a weapon
and expertise, she avoids directly taking a life as long as she can. Only after Rue is attacked does Katniss shoot the boy from District 1. Later Katniss’ brain replays the events and she considers what it means. He was her first kill, the first person she knew would die because that is what she intended. The act of launching the arrow is not much different than the many times she has done it while hunting, but she knows a truth about murder, about killing another human being. She knows what Peeta says later, “It costs everything you are” (
Mockingjay
). Katniss draws the bowstring back. The arrow finds its mark. The boy from District 1 is dead, and even though Katniss doesn’t know
why
she should care about that boy, when her brain replays the events of the day she sees not only Rue’s death over and over again, she also sees her arrow piercing the boy’s neck. She thinks about his family, weeping for him. She wonders if he had a girlfriend who loved him and hoped he would return. No matter what the circumstances, killing that boy is difficult for Katniss’ brain to accept. Whether her reaction is rooted in instinct or culture, the result is significant trauma.

—from
Mockingjay

 

At the end of
Mockingjay
, Katniss has been moved far from the center of attention, flown away and settled in a virtually vacant District 12. The post-rebellion world, where both Snow and his potential successor Coin have been scrubbed from the picture, doesn’t need Katniss. She is an uncomfortable memory.
She was essential during the rebellion, but she isn’t any longer. The world just wants to forget, and as long as Katniss is there, they can’t. So she is hidden away where she won’t trigger painful memories for those who are trying to build a new world. She doesn’t fit into the new narrative, the new stories they will make for themselves. Those stories might include heroic figures like the girl on fire or the Mockingjay, but a broken young woman who finds life almost unbearable? No. The real Katniss won’t be part of that story. Her story is different. It is a story of slow healing and small comforts.

Even in this imaginary future, it is easier to break than it is to mend. The Capitol has the technical ability to poison a mind with traumatic, false memories. That is how they hijacked Peeta and turned him into a weapon to use against Katniss. The opposite treatment, the ability to remove a painful memory with chemical or technical means, doesn’t seem to be part of the medical knowledge in the Hunger Games world. Peeta has to sort through his memories, both false and true and decide what to believe.

In the here and now, we are still trying to crack the puzzle of PTSD. Recently, researchers at Johns Hopkins announced that they could erase traumatic memories by removing a protein from the brain—in mice.
²²
That’s huge, but it doesn’t help Peeta or Katniss or any real-world sufferers of PTSD. We are very far away from having an easy fix for the problem.

So how can what is broken be mended? Can Katniss recover from the damage done? The short answer is that she will never be the same. She will never be the person she might have been if she hadn’t been traumatized. The stress, the loss, the shock:
There is no undoing that, just as there is no way to save Prim or Rue. Katniss may always struggle with nightmares. A trigger might surprise her and set off a memory she wants to forget. But it is possible to move forward, and Katniss is doing that as well as she is able.

Peeta shows us one path to recovery: He paints. He recreates the scenes of horror that haunt his dreams. It may seem contradictory to focus on those images instead of trying to ignore them. Katniss certainly feels that way when she says, “All I do is go around trying to forget the arena and you’ve brought it back to life” (
Catching Fire
). Still, Peeta really is on to something. His own nightmares haven’t stopped, but when he holds the brush in his hand, when he paints, he is in control of the images. He may not erase them from his memory, but he can tell his story through painting. He’s working through the process of moving those images from the place in his brain devoted to emotion—particularly fear—and shifting them to other places of his brain. It doesn’t happen fast, but his paintings are a way to move forward. Expressing the story is an opportunity to reshape reality, to rebuild it. The hand holding the brush does what the brain wants. Mind and body grow back together. Once the memory is shifted out of the place of fear, it is less likely to escape and intrude into every waking moment.

Most of the progress is a small comfort, like the bit of rope that passes from Finnick to Katniss to Peeta. The key is to focus on this moment, the present. It may be nothing more than a distraction at first, that bit of rope, but it is so dependable. It is there. It is real. And it helps. Your favorite color is green and mine is orange. You always tie your shoelaces in a double knot. Those are the tiny things that are real. Knowing those little truths is a place to start to build the world over again—and relearn how to trust it.