Food’s Message to Us By Nicole Coyne
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hen thinking about all the symbolic meanings that food can hold and represent in any given circumstance, I took into consideration various examples that would represent what I wanted to deconstruct and reveal more about what food can hold. For my artifact, I decided to go with a specific scene from the movie, "The Hunger Games”. The scene that I choose was the one where we see Katniss struggling outside in the pouring rain, malnourished and starving. After seeing this, Peeta then notices her outside while he is feeding the animals bread and wants to reach out to her and passes along some bread to her as well. In, “The Hunger Games”, food is being used to show the symbolic act of life and represents comfort as well as a feeling of being at home. The bread that was being given to her wasn’t just any normal bread, he offered it to her for a specific reason to show that he cares about her well-being and wants to let her know that he is here for her, showing her this through the pieces of bread he gave to her. Peeta also had the option of just not showing any interest in her at all and could've just left her there with no food. It is also as if the bread is being represented as a peace offering when it comes to helping her out, when he knows he could risk getting in trouble for doing so.
With this being said, Peeta is showing the element of true sacrifice and hospitality in this whole exchange. In the movie, this all happened before they really got to know each other therefore they were complete strangers in a way. He shows sacrifice by giving up the freshly made bread that in their city of Panem, is considered to be good and is a very high quality piece of bread that Katniss is not used to getting. By giving this offering he knows deep down he shouldn’t interact with her because they are considered to be from different backgrounds and if he were to get caught by his father by giving away the bread from the bakery to someone who is from a lower class like her, things would not end well. Hospitality plays a role in Peeta as well as sacrifice because of the fact that they both go hand in hand when he shows his true colors in lending a helping hand to Katniss. Peeta is preventing putting Katniss’s life in jeopardy by giving her something to eat and just being there for her in general. Nothing says comfort like receiving food from a kind person, and in this case is what was happening. As said in, “Theory of hospitality” from the cookbook, “Food can be an act of hospitality rhetoric. Serving others is an act of care, discipline, or a way to convince others of something you
