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What are some flashback examples in Suzanne Collins's Catching Fire?
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Some flashback examples in Suzanne Collins's Catching Fire include Katniss recalling how Hazelle, Gale's mother, struggled after her husband's death to provide for her family, and another when Katniss remembers her father teaching her to swim. Additional flashbacks include Gale unexpectedly kissing Katniss and Katniss and Peeta watching tapes to see how Haymitch won the Hunger Games.
Throughout Catching Fire, second novel in the Hunger Games trilogy,
author Suzanne Collinsuses flashbacks to provide the reader
with background information.
One flashback can be found in the first
chapter. After hunting, she goes to Gale's house. As she approaches
the house and sees Gale's mother, Hazelle, through the window, Katniss reflects
on how much she admires Hazelle and uses a flashback to explain her
affection for Hazelle by recounting some of her family's history. According to the flashback, Katniss's father and Hazelle's husband were killed in the same explosion. Hazelle was left alone to fend for herself and three boys, with a new baby expected any day. Katniss further explains that Hazelle began providing for her family by doing laundry. She started working so hard for her family that her "hands got so red and cracked, they bled at the slightest provocation." In addition, Gale,...
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at the age of 14, "the eldest of the kids, became the main supporter of the family." He signed up to receive tesserae for grain and oil, in exchange entering his name "extra times to become a tribute," which is a competitor in the government's fight to the death event called the Hunger Games.
A second example of a flashback can be seen in Chapter
3. While bathing away her worries, she flashes back to when
her father was still alive and taught her how to
swim. According to her narration, she and her father used to spend
"hot summer Sundays in the woods" at the lake. She was so young that she
doesn't remember actually learning to swim; she only remembers "diving, turning
somersaults, and paddling around." She also remembers her father hunting for
waterfowl while she scavenged for eggs and roots. The final memory she recounts
in her narration is of the dinner of roast duck her mother would fix when she
and her father returned home from the woods. The memory serves to remind the
reader of Katniss's happier times and to generate empathy for
her desires to obtain happier times again.
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