I’m super excited for the upcoming Hunger Games prequel, the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (especially as someone who has read the book and thinks it’s amazing). However, today I decided to write up a brief post about the original Hunger Games movie and a scene which I think is the most underrated moment in that film. I’m not saying this is the best scene. I think that, without a doubt, the moment after Rue’s death where Katniss surrounds her in flowers and then salutes District 11 is the best scene in the movie. That might be one of the greatest moments in the whole franchise. But let’s get back to Cato.
Here’s a little context, before we get into the analysis. The final three survivors of the Hunger Games, Cato, Peeta and Katniss, are on the cornucopia surrounded by the terrifying mutts the gamemakers have unleashed. Cato has Peeta in a headlock and Katniss must find a way to save Peeta, using her bow, while also killing Cato. This moment of pause, during the action sequence, gives Cato a chance to say a few words. He says:
“Go on, shoot. Then we both go down and you win. Go on, I’m dead anyway. I always was, right? I didn’t know that till now. How’s that? Is that what they want?
I can still do this. Just one more kill. It’s the only thing I know how to do. Bring pride to my district. Not that it matters.”
To give some context, Cato is a career tribute, or a tribute who had been trained to be a killing machine since a young age. Like the other careers he presumably volunteered at the reaping to be in the games and hopefully win to gain pride for himself and his district, as well as money, fame, etc.
Cato, so far, has largely treated the games as a kind of sporting event, not unlike the way the people in the Capitol view it. From his previous behavior, and also from this speech, we as the audience come to realize that Cato never seriously contemplated the probability of his own death; he never felt the real weight of the deaths of the other children in the arena. He thought there was some way he could still be in control, that he could “win” (but of course, as Haymitch says, there’s no real winning in the Hunger Games, there’s just surviving). In this moment he realizes that he never really stood a chance. He was, like all the other tributes, “dead anyway. I always was, right?”
His line, “Is that what they want?” also sheds some light on the fact that, because the Capitol have largely fell in love with the engineered love story of Peeta and Katniss, his own entertainment value is gone. Cato, as a person from a more privileged district, didn’t realize that he too was a pawn, moved at the whims of those more powerful than himself.
In his next few lines Cato seems to regain some sense of a survival instinct. Despite what the capitol wants, Cato decides that he can somehow still pull it off and survive. He just has to do what he has been training to do his whole life: kill. It’s strangely heartbreaking to hear Cato, who is arguably one of the least likable characters in the film, say, “Just one more kill. It’s the only thing I know how to do.” All he knows how to do is be violent and kill for his district. He has been raised, his whole life, to serve a form of nationalistic pride through the use of violence. But his last line, “not that it matters,” really hits home. Why would bringing “pride” to the leaders of his district matter when he is about to die? What use is there in enacting violence for others when these same forms of systematic violence will end up killing him anyway?
It is deeply and unexpectedly tragic that, at least for a little bit, Cato has broken through the brainwashing he has been fed his whole life, only to die a brutal and horrifying death. This moment speaks to the larger themes of the franchise and I think its a great yet subtle scene.
jujurevu.wordpress.com 