Josh Hutcherson and Jennifer Lawrence played the main characters of the saga "The Hunger Games", Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen.

The Hunger Games trilogy has been called a love story by many. Looking closely at the story and at the relationship between Katniss and Peeta reveals fascinating aspects of human relationships but also reveals that it is not quite a love story. In fact, upon closer inspection, calling the relationship between Katniss and Peeta a "love story" neglects the questionable aspects of how their relationship develops and what their relationship is.

We Meet Katniss

Katniss is a complex and layered character. We come to know Katniss and her thoughts, traits, feelings, and motivations as she comes to share them with us and as she comes to know them herself.

Katniss is a character who has been both strengthened and hardened by her suffering and her need to provide for her family. She is not interested in romance or in frivolities, but in trying to take care of her family, particularly her sister Prim. She does not have time to take notice of or be occupied with things that girls her age would normally be able to do and has not really had the time or desire to develop social skills and other skills involved in smooth social interaction (romantic, platonic, political, etc.).

She volunteers to take her sister Prim's place in the 74th Hunger Games out of love for her sister. It is a clearly selfless, self-sacrificing, and difficult act and decision. And once again, Katniss is doing something to take care of the one she loves most.

From the beginning, Katniss shows herself to be a person with clear motivations: she takes care of those she loves. It is not fame, glory, or social status that drives her. It is love and trying to give those she loves a chance at life.

Enter "Boy with the Bread"

Peeta is a character whose motivations are deceptively clear, and by that I mean that his motivations seem to be clear and transparent but when in fact they are joint with "conflicts of interest."

We come to know Peeta, his character, and his feelings as Katniss comes to know them and through the hints that the author Suzanne Collins drops through Katniss' perspective. Peeta is shown to be sweet, sensitive, smooth-talking, self-sacrificing, and steadfast. He has a way with words and with people. He knows how to charm, please, and persuade.

Like Katniss, Peeta comes from District 12 but he comes from a slighter "higher class" or higher group. He is not rich but he does not go hungry or struggle the way that Katniss does to survive.

Katniss and Peeta have never spoken but when Katniss and her family were first starving after the death of her father, Katniss was sitting outside of the Mellark bakery weak and hungry. Peeta deliberately burns bread knowing that doing this will make the bread unsellable and after receiving a physical blow from his mother, he throws the burnt bread to Katniss. Katniss comes to associate Peeta as "the boy with the bread" who gave her hope when she had none and when her family was starving. She never comes to know or understand why Peeta did this for her and she always feels indebted to him for it.

Katniss' and Peeta's relationship began on an unequal foundation.

The Star-Crossed Lover with Bad Luck

Before the televised interviews with the tributes, Peeta distances himself from Katniss suggesting that he is preparing for what it will take to survive in the arena. But then in the televised interviews, Peeta professes his crush for Katniss, going from distancing himself from Katniss to bringing him and Katniss closer than he ever would have been able to do interpersonally. This is a strategic and manipulative move on Peeta's part both in the "game of love" and in the Hunger Games arena, which according to Peeta was not altogether without planning.

"It was my idea," says Peeta, wincing as he pulls spikes of pottery from his palms. "Haymitch just helped me with it."-Chapter 10, The Hunger Games

By professing his feelings on national television, Peeta binds Katniss to him both romantically and in the arena. He blindsides Katniss and forces Katniss into a position where she has to give a response to his feelings and places her under even greater scrutiny. He changes Katniss from just another tribute to a girl holding on to the adoration of a sweet boy from District 12, who happens to be a fellow tribute.

Will she care for him in return? Will she give him a fighting chance in the arena?

Katniss is right to be angry with Peeta for his stunt. He places chains on her when he declares his attraction to her and it is one of the only ways and one of the only times that he can.

Katniss is angry that Peeta makes her look weak. Haymitch argues that he makes her desirable. Both of these statements are correct and they are done without Katniss' consent. And so begins the narrative of the "Star-Crossed Lovers from District 12;" with Peeta playing a role in manipulating not only the hero, but the audience, and of both his and Katniss' fates. Peeta declares his feelings and crush for Katniss on national television and as a tribute without odds in his favor, he has nothing to lose.

In the movie, Katniss and Peeta have a conversation the night before the games and Peeta tells Katniss that he meant his remark as a compliment. This is a moment that hints at Peeta's manipulative nature showing how he can turn a situation in which he was clearly at fault into a situation where he had no fault. Katniss does not address his offense or the fact that declaring his crush on her and putting her in the position that he put her in was not a compliment. She lets it go and they have a sincere conversation about the games.

In the books, Katniss and Peeta have a sincere conversation about the games but Katniss ends up upset with Peeta and they part on bad terms before the games. Katniss is made to feel inferior to Peeta and is upset over the way he responds to her desire to wanting to stay alive and is upset over the way he responds when she advises him to care about doing the same.This part in the books shows some of the clash that exists between Katniss and Peeta, how Peeta is passive-aggresive about Katniss' feelings/wants, and the early dynamic of Peeta's influence on how Katniss feels about herself and/or how Peeta affects her mental health and self-worth.This effect that Peeta has on Katniss is revisited in Mockingjay when Peeta makes Katniss feel low and unworthy.

A Complicated Relationship

Throughout the trilogy, Katniss has a complicated relationship with Peeta, that becomes even more complicated as she develops feelings for Peeta.

Katniss comes to have feelings for Peeta but she develops feelings gradually and as she lets down her defenses. Katniss falls for Peeta because he is sweet and kind, because he knows and understands her in a way that no one else can, because he is her rock when her world breaks down around her, and because he gives her strength, safety, and hope. But she does not develop feelings for him because she "owes" him or because he "wins her over."

Even though Katniss has feelings for Peeta she does not fully embrace him because she knows and understands Peeta for who and what he is, and also because of how their relationship developed. Katniss cannot separate the Peeta that gives her hope and strength from the Peeta that manipulates her and wants to possess and control her, because they are one in the same. Katniss loves Peeta but has ambivalent feelings for him. Her love for him is real but conflicted (more on this here).

No Happily Ever After

At the end of the story, Peeta loves Katniss as she is, but more accurately, he is willing to take whatever Katniss is willing to give him both with respect to herself and a relationship. This is supported by the way in which Katniss leaves to rebuild her life in District 12 and Peeta comes back to Katniss. This is a marked change and it is an important one. Peeta goes from silently pushing and manipulating Katniss, to verbally demanding, to quietly accepting whatever she will give him. And because of the foundation of their relationship, it is only in this way that they can be together.

The ending of the trilogy is unresolved and that is because things never do get resolved with Katniss and Peeta. Because their relationship was built on manipulation and truth, power play and control, trauma and surreal circumstances, hope and strength, love and the lack of it, there is no way to separate all that they have been through and the ways that they have used each other.

And even though Peeta comes back to Katniss willing to accept whatever Katniss is willing to give him, it does not stop him from manipulating her in the future. Support for this is that Katniss gives Peeta children because he wants them and because he "wanted them so badly." Katniss does not want children but eventually relents and gives Peeta two children. And for the most part, Peeta and her live in harmony, grow together, heal together, and make a future.

At the close of Mockingjay, Peeta's sunbconscious and/or underlying life mission has been completed. He triumphed where his father failed. He got the girl he wanted and the harmonious and fulfilling home that he did not have growing up.

Mockingjay closes with a Katniss that is tired, patched together, and trying to get through life. She loves and is loved by a person that she has a complicated relationship with and has ambivalent feelings for. She has children in her life that she was manipulated into having and that do not yet know what the world is capable of. She is strong but her strength has been stretched thin and everything has taken a toll on her. She has a distant acceptance of life but she continues on anyway, trying to live day-to-day, and finding pieces of hope where she can.

And this is the love story of Katniss and Peeta. Realistic, complicated, and bittersweet.