A Reflection of Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory in The Adolescent Character of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games Trilogy

Abstract

           This study aims to analyze the cognitive development and the factors that influence the cognitive development of the character of Katniss Everdeen, the main character of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy through Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development.  The findings indicate that in The Hunger Games Trilogy, Katniss develops her cognition in accordance with Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory in all the aspects such as hypothetical reasoning, thinking about possibility and probability, and propositional operation etc. In addition, the findings indicate that the arena environments contribute greatly to her cognitive development in her struggle to survive the killing games. However, Katniss’s cognition seems to develop faster than that of an average real-life adolescent because she is portrayed to live in brutal surroundings and confront situations that are far more dangerous than those in the life of an average real-life adolescent.