Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Katniss's character conflicts are the most immediate, since she is the story's narrator. She narrates in the present tense, an effective choice since that leaves the reader uncertain whether she will survive the Games intact. Were the story narrated in past tense, it would indicate to us that she must have survived since she is telling the tale. The narration is also effective in providing dramatic irony throughout the novel, as we can infer much about Katniss both from what she chooses to tell us and how she chooses to tell it.
Katniss is an example of a stoic hero – she is well aware of the unfairness of the world around her, having had to grow up so quickly to provide for her mother and Prim. However, she has quashed both her emotional responses to her totalitarian society as well as her childish identity so that she can maintain the hardness necessary to be an effective hunter and provider. A contemporary definition of a stoic is one who does not show his or her emotions, but the tradition of stoicism, going back to the Greeks, is much deeper. In the classical philosophies, a stoic is one who steels himself to lose everything in order to find true freedom. Katniss will, through the novel, come to accept this philosophy while simultaneously realizing that she does have a deeply empathetic emotional side.