Linda Holmes at NPR's pop-culture blog, Monkey See, has a really interesting take on gender roles in The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. (No real spoilers, but lots of character analysis if you're some kind of ultimate spoiler-free freak.)

Consider the evidence: Peeta's family runs a bakery. He can literally bake a cherry pie, as the old song says.

He is physically tough, but markedly less so than she is. He's got a good firm spine, but he lacks her disconnected approach to killing. Over and over, she finds herself screaming "PEETA!", not calling for help but going to help, and then running, because he's gone and done some damn fool thing like gotten himself electrocuted.

Her larger mission—her war against the Capitol—often drifts out of focus behind her smaller, more immediate mission: saving Peeta. She lets others know that if it's down to the two of them, he should be saved because of his goodness. She is unsurprised when she's told she doesn't deserve him.

He encourages her to talk about her feelings. He encourages her to share herself with others. He promises her, falsely but selflessly, that her indifference doesn't hurt him and she owes him nothing. If she ever wants to come to her senses, come down from those fences, he'll be there.

He's better than she is, but softer. He's less knowing than she is. He's less cynical than she is. He's just as tough and as brave as he can possibly be with the skill set he has, and she's responsible for mopping up when that's not enough. To fail to protect him is to betray her, because that may well be the only job she gives you.

Read the rest! Somehow, I hadn't really latched on to this aspect of the gender dynamics in these books and films. It's a really, really interesting point—and, Holmes says, while we all know people who subvert gender dynamics in our lives, guys like Peeta rarely get to be on screen.

Thanks, Slog Tipper Kitri!