Haymitch Character Analysis

Dead parents are extremely common in young adult literature, and although these characters are obviously absent throughout the story, they are still relevant and necessary to the plot because of the effect they have on their children. Because “dead parents are so much a function of middle-grade and teen fiction at this point,” it is no surprise that Collins sets up the Everdeen family with one parent deceased (Sales). However, instead of viewing deceased parents as enhancing the plot of a YA novel and adding to its complexity, many authors see dead parents as the product of “lazy writing” (Sales). These authors claim that since novels are centered on different characters’ relationships with one another, omitting a parent via death is simply
Katniss sometimes treats other characters too harshly, and comes off as an arrogant adolescent in certain scenes, so readers have to put in a great deal of effort when forming their opinions of her. If her father did not die, Katniss would be a boy-crazed adolescent girl, focusing on the perfect application of rouge and lip-gloss, rather than how she would obtain her family’s next meal. This type of behavior, typically seen in teenage young ladies, would have been a huge disservice to Katniss in the arena because she would have never been forced into hunting prey, shooting a bow, or stealthily climbing trees in the first place, since her father would be alive to complete such tasks. Mr. Everdeen’s death is completely necessary and critical to the novel’s plot because his passing molds Katniss into a young woman who fights through any obstacle in her path in order to survive and protect the people she cares about. If Collins did not purposefully and artfully invent his death, Katniss would have developed into a strikingly different character that lacks the label of a spirited