Catching Fire: Grace to the Guilty

In The Hunger Games, the Capital rules the Twelve Districts with an iron fist. As punishment for their uprising seventy-four years earlier, every year each district must offer up two teens to fight in the annual Hunger Games. The teens fight to the death; only one emerges alive. Last year, Katniss Everdeen volunteered to go to the Hunger Games in place of her sister. Through a combination of tenacity, luck, and trickery, both Katniss and the young man from her same district, Peeta, survived as victors. The sequel Catching Fire picks up immediately after the first book, as both Katness and Peeta pick up the pieces of their lives, having survived the horrific Hunger Games. 

The nightmares wake Katniss every night. They leave her shaking, scared, terrified…

Last year the Capital dragged her into the Hunger Games. The horrific ordeal has left her terrorized. She lost friends. She was forced to kill other teens just to stay alive. She watched an ally die.

And now? Now she’s celebrated as the survivor. She won the Hunger Games, along with her friend Peeta. As part of the victory celebrations, she must relieve the Games…all the time…both while awake…

And now she has nightmares.

Katniss and Peeta discuss their nightmares in the book:

“I see them every night,” he says.

I know what he means. Nighmares – which I was no stranger to before the Games – now plague me whenever I sleep. But the old standby, the one of my father being blown to bits in the mines, is rare. Instead I relive versions of what happened in the arena. My worthless attempt to save Rue. Peeta bleeding to death. Glimmer’s bloated body disintegrating in my hands. Cato’s horrific end with the muttations. These are the most frequent visitors. “Me, too. Does it help? To paint them out?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m a little less afraid of going to sleep at night, or I tell myself I am,” he says. “But they haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Maybe they won’t. Haymitch’s haven’t.” Haymitch doesn’t say so, but I’m sure this is why he doesn’t like to sleep in the dark.

The movie Catching Fire did a fantastic job portraying the effect these nightmares have on Katniss. While hunting wild turkey, Katniss looses an arrow. She doesn’t see it strike the bird, however. She sees another tribute, another human, fall under her arrow instead.

And when that happens, she runs.

Some have posited that Katniss suffers post-traumatic stress disorder. My armchair analysis of the situation doesn’t disagree. She’s gone through a terrible ordeal in the Games. It would be enough to mess anyone up. If I had survived (and I doubt I would have) I would be pretty messed up, too. And would be suffering from the same affliction.

Guilt.

Katniss suffers two kinds of guilt. First, she suffers the guilt of murdering other teens. Then, and more prominently for her, she suffers guilt for surviving when her ally Rue did not. That guilt appears in the book and movie in the form of nightmares and several outbursts.

Guilt is a particularly clever little hobgoblin. Though I’m fairly certain you’ve never served as a Tribute for the Hunger Games, I’m sure you can identify with Katniss in wrestling with guilt. You’ve tossed and turned at night over doing this or that or maybe not doing this or that. Maybe you’ve suffered nightmares, too.

Guilt knew exactly how to drag Katniss down. She could face any enemy. She can fight anyone else, and often does. She can put up defenses and never let anyone in. But she cannot battle her own mind. She cannot fend off her own dreams. And so she is a victim of her great guilt which declares, “You are a sinner! You need to be punished! You need to be hurt for what you’ve done!”

Though Katniss and the world of Panem are imaginary, guilt is not. Our world will tell you to find ways to cope. Katniss coped by falling into Peeta’s waiting arms. Peeta coped by painting. Everyone told her that she only did what she had to do to survive.

Something inside her kept screaming, though. Sure, she did what she had to do… but it was still wrong.
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What would I tell Katniss — or anyone else dealing with intense guilt?

Assuming Katniss would give me an audience (I’m not convinced she would, having read the novels, but let’s pretend here), I would say to her:

“Katniss, you’ve suffered a lot. Let’s face it, you’ve survived hell on earth. You’ve had to do things that I don’t think I could do. And you really do have blood on your hands. I know. I saw. All of Panem saw.

Look, this is serious. Your guilt is telling you something very real. There’s a Judge, and he’s going to look at what you did, and he’s not going to be happy. As powerful as President Snow is, he’s nothing compared to the Judge you’re going to face. As much as President Snow seems to know everything about you, this Judge really knows every thought you’ve ever had. You’re going to face him, and your guilt is telling you that he’s going to find you guilty. And that scares you.

“You should be scared. Your guilt is right. You’ve done terrible things. But listen, listen, Katniss. What if I told you that there was someone who Volunteered for you?

“You know how much you love your sister? Yeah, I know you volunteered for her. Everyone knows. How could we not? You chose to go and die for her. Well, a Man volunteered for you. Except he didn’t go to any Games. The Judge proclaimed you guilty, but this Man volunteered to go take the death sentence from you.

Katniss, This is what’s so amazing. This Man who volunteered? His guilt never screamed at him… because he didn’t have any guilt. None at all. He chose to be declared guilty in your place so you could go free. He traded places with you, the guilty for the not-guilty.

What is your guilt saying? It says you deserve to die for what you did in the Games last year. For not succeeding in rescuing Rue. For surviving when she didn’t. You didn’t do what you know you should have done. You’re a failure, and you feel that guilt. You want to be punished for it.

“You can’t be punished, though, because the Judge already punished someone else in your place. He didn’t fail to rescue you. Or Rue. Or anyone else. He took the punishment for you and her and everyone else. All the punishment you deserve? This Man received it and let you go…free.

“The Judge can’t hurt you anymore. The punishment is gone. And if there’s no punishment waiting… what power can guilt have over you? It can’t threaten you. It can’t tell you that you deserve anything anymore, because all the punishment is gone.

“Katniss, no, you don’t have to feel guilty over what this Man did for you. Because you know what? Your guilt was enough to drag you to death. It was enough to drag him to death, too. But it wasn’t enough to keep him in the grave. On the third day, this Man rose from the dead. And your guilt? It’s still lying dead and cold in the tomb.

“Katniss, this Man has a name.

“His name is Jesus.”

Katniss isn’t the only one who deals with guilt. You do, too. Maybe your guilt comes in the form of a “big sin,” or maybe “little sins” bother you. I can assure you, though, that your sin has brought guilt on you. How do you cope? 

However you cope – whether through nightmares, hiding in the arms of another person, painting it out, or any of the millions of ways that humans have found to try to deal with guilt, I can guarantee that Katniss didn’t find Jesus in the novels. She never learned of the One who removed her guilt from her.

But you can see the real struggle that guilt causes in the novels and the movies.

You don’t have to struggle.

Your guilt has been removed. You are pure.

“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:22)