Most people seem to think that Cato’s monologue at the end of the Hunger Games film was a redeeming moment of characterisation for Cato, and that it showed a lot of the ‘pain and torture’ the Careers went through growing up in a lifestyle where they are forced to volunteer for the Games.
I’m hear to prove them wrong.
A. If one were to grow up in a lifestyle where they are forced to volunteer for the Games, as Cato is, one would never have the intellectual capacity to begin to “consider themselves dead,” as Cato does at the end of the film. From birth, they’re trained to reach a level of brutality unprecedented in Panem’s history, all for the pleasing of the Capitol. The Career Districts are the Capitol’s little minks that it’s got wrapped around its neck. Cato’s mind has been drained of any purity and innocence and replaced with anger and hatred to be used in the Arena. He doesn’t have compassion, he doesn’t have sympathy, and he especially does not have the ability to acknowledge that he was ‘already dead.’ He cannot be already dead, because that would imply that some past incarnation of Cato had been killed, when Cato had never been anyone else prior to the murderous boar he was in the first book. Had he wanted to, he could have refused that lifestyle. Sure, the repercussions would have been extremely detrimental, but he most definitely could have run away or rebel.
B. For all we know, this could have been a guilt-trick towards Katniss. Obviously Suzanne Collins had to approve of this for the film, being a screenwriter, but does that mean that she approved of it for the sake of making Cato turn into a good guy? No, not precisely. She could have chosen to keep the scene for the purposes of adding a layer of cunning intellect to Cato’s character, very similar to Foxface. Foxface died as a result of an internal choice, but Cato makes a lot of external choices, and I think that Collins wanted to make that contrast, but also etch in a bit of comparison between the two. You’ve got to have a hint of intelligence to be from the Career Districts, so maybe—just maybe—this scene is Cato’s way of displaying it.
C. We don’t know enough of Cato to judge whether or not this is a “defining character moment for him!” It’s a major difference between, say, Hermione leaving Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Cato’s film-only speech in The Hunger Games. For instance, by the time Hermione makes the decision to drop out of school, we have known her for six full books—not to mention six LONG books. Hermione’s defining characteristic is that she’s bookish; she needs logic to make decisions. Cato makes impulsive, comfortable decisions that he is familiar with from growing up. It’s more of a ‘defining’ moment for Hermione because we know of her life before the books, her life during the books, and we even know her life after the books—working for the Ministry, etc. We only really know Cato for a bout 200 pages by the time his death comes around, and he isn’t even in a large majority of the pages. This translates oddly to film, because Lionsgate plays Cato up as the main antagonist of the film, even though the book-readers know that the Capitol is the main enemy. It’s very hard to discern ‘shining scenes’ for Cato, because we really know barely anything about him. Come on, we don’t even know the guy’s last name, which is made obvious in the film when Caesar Flickerman’s reading the Tributes’ names, goes through the first 22 without a last name, and then reads the last names of only two tributes—Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen. Silly Caesar.
So I know a lot of the fangirls love to swoon over Alexander Ludwig’s tears at the end of Gary Ross’s masterpiece, but I, on the other hand, do not. The scene means nothing to me, I felt nothing for Cato, and I hope this piece provided some insight on my opinion.
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