Peeta Mellark is one of the protagonists of The Hunger Games trilogy

The Hunger Games trilogy

The Hunger Games trilogy is a young-adult adventure science fiction series written by Suzanne Collins. The trilogy consists of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay....

 by Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins is an American television writer and novelist.-Early life:Suzanne Collins is the daughter of an Air Force officer. She graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts and earned her M.F.A. from New York University in Dramatic Writing....

. He is the male tribute from District 12, picked alongside Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen is the main character of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy. Her name comes from an edible plant called katniss. Jennifer Lawrence is set to portray Katniss in the upcoming movie The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross....

 to participate in the 74th annual Hunger Games, a competition forcing children from 12-18 years of age to fight to the death on live television to remind the citizens of the Districts in the futuristic dystopia of Panem not to rebel against the ruling Capitol.

Character background

Peeta is a baker's son, which makes him wealthier and better fed than most people in District 12, the main source of Panem's coal supply. He has two unnamed older brothers and two parents, all of whom die in the fire bombing of District 12 by the Capitol after a rebellious act during the Quarter Quell. Peeta also attends school with Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen is the main character of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy. Her name comes from an edible plant called katniss. Jennifer Lawrence is set to portray Katniss in the upcoming movie The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross....

. When Peeta is chosen for the Games, Katniss recalls that he once saved her life by giving her bread when she was 11. At that time, Katniss and her little sister were starving because her father had recently died in a mine explosion and her mother had become paralyzed by depression. Peeta surreptitiously burned two loaves of bread, receiving a beating from his mother for doing so, in order that the loaves would be discarded. He then gave them to Katniss, saving her life and giving her hope that she would be able to feed her family. Katniss never talked to Peeta until the Games because even though they went to the same school, Peeta hung out with a different crowd of people while Katniss stayed off by herself. She was also uncomfortable about the debt she owed Peeta due to his assistance.
Peeta loved Katniss since he was five and heard her sing in front of the class.

The Hunger Games

Peeta is introduced when he is chosen to be the male tribute for District 12 in the Games. Katniss recalls that he gave her bread when she and her family were starving to death, receiving a beating from his mother in the process. When interviewed before the 74th Hunger Games, he confesses that he has secretly been in love with Katniss, which she assumes is a strategy of his to gain popularity with sponsors watching the Games. It seems that view is justified when Peeta teams up with the "Careers," a pack of tributes from the richer districts who are actively hunting Katniss. Much later, Katniss learns that this was actually a ploy on his part to protect her, since he knew that they would try to attack her first and he wanted to be in a position to interfere with their plans. Later, the Gamemakers announce a new rule: if the final two tributes are from the same district, they can both be crowned Victors. Katniss immediately seeks out Peeta, who is injured and near death from infection and blood loss. She cleans him up and takes him to safety, and realizes that if she pretends to be in love with him (as she believes he is pretending to be in love with her), she will gain sympathy from the viewers, and as a result receive life-saving gifts from sponsors. Later, Katniss risks her life by fighting with other tributes to get medicine to cure Peeta's moribund infection. Finally, Katniss and Peeta are the last alive, but instead of being crowned joint victors, the rule is said to be invalid so there can be only one victor. Katniss readies to defend herself, but Peeta throws away his knife. Katniss then suggests that they commit suicide (while communicating to him with body language that she's bluffing), with the thought that the Gamemakers would rather have two victors than none. The ploy works, but the two later find out that it was considered by President Coriolanus Snow to be a rebellious act against the Capitol, invoking his ire against them. Once the two are safe, Peeta finds out that Katniss was at least partially pretending to be in love with him for the cameras, and he is heartbroken. Katniss finds out at the same time that Peeta really was in love with her the whole time and had not been faking it as a ploy for sponsors, throwing her into confusion. Due to a leg injury in the Games, Peeta ends up losing a leg and receives an artificial limb. When he discovers that Katniss may have been faking love for him in the Games to get sponsors, he is horrified and remains cold toward her through the beginning of the next book.

Catching Fire

Peeta and Katniss embark on the Victory Tour, an event strategically timed in between each Games; the victors visit the other districts to remind everybody of the Games, as another cruel way for the Capitol to remind the districts of its power. Peeta and Katniss have barely spoken since the end of the Games because he is angry at her for faking affection for him, and she is confused about her feelings and is uncomfortable around him, especially due to her friendship with Gale Hawthorne, who is in love with her. President Snow visits Katniss and tells her he knows she was faking her affection, but her actions in the arena have fermented rebellion, one that can only be averted if she presents their attempted joint suicide in the arena as the act of love-crazed teenagers rather than as rebelliousness. She is enjoined to convince everyone in Panem that she really loves Peeta... or else he might kill her mother, her sister, Peeta, and/or Gale. Peeta proposes to Katniss as part of this charade. Soon Katniss finds out that there are uprisings in several of the districts, which are being sparked by Katniss and Peeta's act of defiance against the Capitol, and that the President does not feel that their love charade was adequate—meaning he will retaliate in some way. Indeed, there is a crackdown by Peacekeepers in District 12, resulting in Gale getting whipped almost to death, the closing of the black market, and the temporary closure of the mines, resulting in mass hunger in the district.

Katniss and Peeta think they are going to become mentors for the Quarter Quell, the special Hunger Games that occur every 25 years and come with a change in rules, usually to make them more gruesome than the normal Games. The new twist for the 75th Games is that the tributes will be chosen from living victors. District 12 has only 3 living victors: Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch Abernathy, their drunken mentor who won the 50th Hunger Games (the second Quarter Quell). It's clear Katniss will be the girl tribute, as she is the only living female District 12 victor. Peeta makes Haymitch promise to work to save her, not him, and he also vows that if Haymitch is chosen, he will volunteer in his place. Katniss makes Haymitch promise that if Peeta is the male tribute, she and Haymitch will work together to keep Peeta alive, even at the expense of Katniss's life. When Haymitch is drawn as the male tribute, Peeta volunteers to take his place.

Many of the other returning tributes are friends with each other, but Katniss and Peeta have met none of them, as they are the newest victors. Peeta hopes to play on their sympathies to gain protection from others in the arena, and support from sponsors for Katniss. To this end he lies to everybody on national television, saying they secretly got married before the Quell was announced, and that Katniss is pregnant. During the Quell, Peeta comes in contact with a force field and his heart stops, but Katniss and Peeta's ally, Finnick Odair, the District Four male victor tribute and a stunningly good-looking young man, restarts it by using CPR. The three soon band together with three other tributes: Beetee and Wiress from District 3, and Johanna Mason from District 7. Eventually, they find out that the arena is shaped like a clock, with 12 sections, and each section is triggered at the same times each day, when it releases a deadly threat, such as muttations, blood rain, acid fog, and lightning storms. As they formulate a plan to kill the remaining tributes, Wiress is killed and Katniss is attacked by Johanna. But Katniss realizes that Beetee had designed a way to destroy the forcefield surrounding the Arena. She triggers it and a rebel-controlled hovercraft arrives and rescues Katniss, Finnick, and Beetee, but Peeta, Johanna, and Enobaria end up captured by the Capitol. Finnick, Beetee, Wiress, Haymitch, Johanna, Mags, and a few other tributes were part of a plan to help Katniss and Peeta escape from the arena to foment revolution.

Mockingjay

Peeta is captured by the Capitol and is tortured physically, emotionally, and mentally. His feelings and memories are distorted with hallucinogenic tracker jacker venom, a mind-control technique. The Capitol uses this method to turn Peeta against Katniss, making him believe that she tried to kill him numerous times, and that she is not even human, but rather an evil mutation. This leads him to try to strangle Katniss when he is reunited with her in District 13. While imprisoned by the Capitol, he also witnessed the torture of Portia, his stylist for the Games, and the rest of the members of his prep team, as well as the torture and murder of Avoxes Darius and Lavinia, who served the District 12 tributes before the Quarter Quell. The doctors of District 13 begin to try to undo his hijacking, but he still wants nothing to do with Katniss. When the rest of the victors journey to the Capitol to fight, Peeta is initially kept behind, considered too unstable to be sent into combat. However, President Coin then changes her mind, and sends him not only into combat, but assigns him to Katniss's squadron named the "Star Squad". The members of the squadron do not trust him, and in fact he is responsible at least in part for the death of one member, when he accidentally throws him into a barbed-wire trap. They repeatedly debate whether or not they should kill him, and they believe Coin sent him there to kill Katniss, who President Coin sees as a political rival. After the rebels win the war, Peeta stops Katniss from committing suicide after she kills President Coin. Knowing that Katniss is temporarily insane over the death of her sister, and seeing many of her friends die in combat, he comforts her. Later, after having largely recovered from his brainwashing and being released from 13 to return to District 12, he plants primroses beside Katniss's house in memory of her sister, Prim. Katniss and Peeta slowly grow back together after the war, stating that Peeta's arms are there to comfort her from her nightmares, and eventually his lips. In the epilogue, which takes place about 20 years after the events of the novel, it is revealed that he and Katniss have two young children, a girl with dark hair and blue eyes and boy with blonde hair and grey eyes.

Appearance

Peeta has bright blue eyes, and is described by Katniss as being "medium height, stocky build, and has ashy blond hair that falls in waves over his forehead." He had his left leg amputated at the thigh and uses an artificial one, the result of an injury sustained at the end of the 74th Hunger Games from a sword that deeply cut into his upper thigh by District 2 tribute, Cato. Collins has referred to Peeta as handsome in his interview during the 74th Hunger Games.

Personality

Katniss knows that Peeta is gentle and kind, but when he is threatened, he fights like a Career. He's bold; he announced he was in love with Katniss to the entire nation. He's kind and she thinks of him as a "dandelion in the spring."

Peeta thinks very well on his feet and has a very kind and funny personality and a flair for showmanship. He is also wise beyond his years in his approach to the Games and able to work with Haymitch on goals and strategy. Unlike Katniss, he is able to keep a secret and is trusted by Haymitch. Peeta is very selfless, and willing to do anything to protect Katniss, the girl he loves. Peeta is also very persuasive, able to sway crowds in his likable way and have them do what he says. It was his declaration of love for Katniss that began to sway the crowd to rethink the morality of the Hunger Games. Peeta is an excellent liar, but only lies to protect the people he loves. In Catching Fire, Finnick states that Peeta is one of the only truly good people to survive the arena—he never killed anyone unless it was to protect Katniss.

Abilities

Peeta's main talents are baking, painting and camouflage. His artistic talents developed from helping out at his parents' bakery by making bread and decorating cakes. His larger build and strength also give him an advantage during hand-to-hand combat and wrestling. In the Games, he usually carries a knife or a sword, although he rarely uses them in battle as he is not particularly violent and avoids killing except defensively. Peeta has a lot of strength from working at the bakery; Katniss says she's seen him lift bags of flour over 100 pounds. In Catching Fire Peeta reveals his artistic skills, first painting pictures of the Games, then painting a picture of Rue during his private training session, in order to "hold them responsible, just for one moment, for killing that little girl." Peeta has a talent for speaking to crowds for he can always pick the right words to say to win them over. Katniss mentions that Peeta is "able to turn his pain into words that will change people". He can also decorate pastries with skill. He decorated the cake for Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta's wedding.

Critical reception

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

said that Peeta, as well as Gale Hawthorne

Gale Hawthorne

Gale Hawthorne is one of the main characters of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy.-Character background:Gale is two years older than the main protagonist, Katniss Everdeen. His father was killed in the mine explosion that also killed Katniss's father, leaving his mother, Hazelle, a widow...

, were "thinly imagined".

Film

In March 2011, Lionsgate began casting the role of Peeta for the upcoming film of The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games (film)

The Hunger Games is an upcoming science fiction action drama film directed by Gary Ross and is based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins. It stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth...

. According to The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter

Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

, contenders for the role included Josh Hutcherson

Josh Hutcherson

Joshua Ryan "Josh" Hutcherson is an American film and television actor. He began working in the early 2000s, appearing in several minor film and television roles...

, Alexander Ludwig, Hunter Parrish

Hunter Parrish

Hunter Parrish is an American actor and singer. He is known for playing Silas Botwin in Showtime's television series Weeds.-Personal life:...

, Lucas Till

Lucas Till

Lucas Daniel Till is an American actor. He began acting in the early 2000s, and has since appeared in a number of films and television parts, including his roles on House, Hannah Montana: The Movie and X-Men: First Class...

, and Evan Peters

Evan Peters

Evan Peters is an American actor, best known for his roles as Tate Langdon in American Horror Story, Jesse Varon in the ABC TV series Invasion and as Cooper Day in The Days, also on ABC. He also had a recurring role in Disney Channel's show Phil of the Future as Phil's geeky friend Seth...

. On April 4, 2011, Lionsgate announced that Hutcherson would play the role.