The Hunger Games Essay: A Hero's Journey

The hero's journey is the way a hero in a story starts and ends. It has four main parts, with more ideas within each part. Those four parts being Call to Adventure, Initiation, Transformation, and Hero's return. In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen goes through this journey. Katniss goes through every part of the hero's journey.

In the first step to the hero's journey, Call to Adventure, is when the hero or main character starts their journey in becoming the hero. The call to adventure for Katniss begins at a ceremony called the reaping where a male and female tribute get chosen to compete in the hunger games and her sister Prim gets chosen but she volunteers to take her place. There are 3 steps to the Call to adventure, The ordinary world, Call to adventure, and refusal. The ordinary world were we see where they live and how they live. The call to adventure is when the hero is given there task. Lastly the refusal is when the hero refuses to accept the task. The ordinary world for Katniss is District 12, Panem were you have to hunt, trade and gather to survive like katniss said, “With both of us hunting daily, there are still nights when game has to be swapped for lard or shoelaces or wool, still nights when we go to bed with our stomachs growling.”. The Call to adventures when the reaping begins and her sister Prim is chosen to compete in the hunger games. Lastly, Refusal is when Katniss refuses to let Prim compete in the hunger games and says, “I volunteer as tribute!”

The Initiation is when the hero gets help, starts their adventure, and they meet their allies and enemies. Like the Call to Adventure there are also three parts to the initiation, mentor, crossing the threshold, and tests allies and enemies. The Mentor step is when the hero meets the person or mentor that helps them throughout their journey. Crossing the threshold is when the hero leaves the ordinary world to start their journey. And Tests allies and enemies is when they face challenges or tests and meet their friends and enemies. In the hunger Games, the mentor stage is when they meet Haymitch and he coaches them for the hunger games. The next step is crossing the threshold, this is when the hero leaves district 12 to the capitol to prepare for the games and again when they are sent to the arena. Finally, it tests allies and enemies, in the hunger games this happens at many points throughout the journey. The first ally Katniss meets is Peeta, he is the male tribute for the games and later she meets Rue, a younger girl who helps her destroy the enemies supplies but later dies. The enemies are introduced when Katniss is chased up a tree by a group called the careers, this is also where she faces a task of getting rid of them so she decides to cut down a branch with a tracker-jacket nest  to try and scare them or kill them.

The next step, transformation, is when the hero faces their final task and loses something important to them but also gets their reward. The three parts to transformation are approach, ordeal, and treasure. The approach is when the hero starts to fight the final conflict but fails and has to go back and prepare to return with allies to fight, and then the ordeal is when the hero loses something but returns stronger than before. And the treasure is when the hero kills the final conflict and gets there reward. In The hunger games the approach step is when Peeta was injured and the had to stop and recover before they fight. The ordeal is when there realize there can only be one winner so they decide to both commit suicide but the gamekeepers change the rule for this so they both win. Lastly, the treasure is when Katniss and Peeta both win and get to go home to their family.

The last step of The Hero's Journey is the road back or the hero's return. The three steps for this are road back, growth, and reward. The road back is what the hero goes through to get home to the ordinary world. Growth is when the heroes accept the consequences of what happened throughout their journey. The last part is the reward which is when the hero returns home to the ordinary but changed world. In the hunger games the road back is when katniss had to deal with the capital being upset with her for how she ended the games. Growth is when they have accepted their new life in district 12. In the end the reward is when they finally get home and get to stay in district 12 and Katniss and Peeta give their district and others hope for the future....