Entry 3: Two Quotations

My first quotation is:
“One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything, except a good reputation.” - Oscar Wilde 

The meaning of this quotation is shown nicely throughout The Hunger Games. Katniss survived all the obstacles that were thrown her way while in the arena. She survived the fire balls-the trackerjay stings-the numerous attempted murders-the mutant wolf monsters-the pain of losing her friend as well as the pain that there was a good chance she could have lost Peeta. She had to survive all these things on her own, and she did. Then at the end of the novel when she and Peeta has just won, there was a change in the rules. Once again only one of the Tributes were allowed to win. So she did what no one was expecting and she made a plan for her and Peeta to eat the poisonous berries. Even though they were stopped just in time and they were both considered the winners in the end, she still got a bad reputation for the daring act. This shows that she survived everything but she will never live down the bad reputation she got for surviving it all.

My second quotation is:

“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.” - Oscar Wilde

This quotation means that no one can survive with out hope. If you don’t have the hope to continue on then you don’t really have anything. This quotations make me wonder how Katniss stays hopeful in The Hunger Games when she is forced to overcome these challenges every few minutes in exchange for her life. In the beginning, her chances of surviving were very low. There were twenty four Tributes competing including herself, two from each of the twelve Districts, and lots of them were stronger. Especially the ones that lived in the Capitol and had been training to win this their whole lives. The only way she was going to be able to fight was to have the hope that she could win. That she could beat all the people that were stronger than her and that she would get to go back and live her life with her sister, mother and best friend Gale, once again. This was the hope that she needed to survive The Hunger Games.

Source

Wilde, Oscar. "Survival Quotations." Think Exist. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. <http://thinkexist.com/quotation/one_can_survive_everything_nowadays-except_death/164666.html>.