Let The Games Begin

In addition to reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I'm still reading The Hunger Games. As of right now Katniss is in the middle of the games, with only ten people remaining out of the original 24. After the first few days of the competition, Katniss has already had several near death encounters.

First, when the competition began Katniss hardly got away from the other tributes. When the gong has been hit, all of the tributes race to get some of the items that have been scattered about by the Gamemakers. All of the items that have been scattered are things the tributes would not be able to find in the environment. When Katniss attempts to grab something, a boy tribute runs toward her with a knife but before he can stab her, another tribute stabs him splattering blood onto Katniss (gross!).

Then when Katniss is walking through the woods, fireballs begin to fall near her. She knows this has been done by the Gamemakers in attempt to make the games more interesting for the audience, and also to kill another tribute. Katniss begins to run to escape the fireballs, but one grazes her leg. Once it has hit her, she stumbles to the ground in pain. Too afraid to look at her leg, Katniss slowly gets up and shuffles to safety.

Also one night when Katniss is sleeping in a tree, she awakens to find two eyes staring at her from another tree. Soon after, she discovers that it is the little girl tribute, Rue. Rue points out to her that there is a trackerjacker nest above her in the tree, a deadly wasp/bee created by the Capitol during the war. Hearing that the Career Tributes are beneath the tree Katniss is in, she decides to cut the branch off that the nest is on and drop it onto them. If one is stung by one of these deadly insects, it could possibly cause death. So Katniss drops the branch onto them sending them all fleeing from the site. Unfortunately Katniss was also stung a couple of times by the bug, causing her to stumble around and halucinate.

So far, the games have been going towards Katniss' favor, I just hope they continue to stay that way. Peeta still is hanging around the career tributes, which Katniss does not like at all. She doesn't want the career tributes to kill him off thinking he is useless, but then again she doesn't want to be the one to kill him either. Katniss continues to puzzle over these questions as the game continues on, but hopefully thinking about them won't distract her too much from the games.