Work Text:
The Name That Gives It Away
Bathsheba Everdene. Katniss Everdeen.
One letter changed. That's not coincidence—that's citation.
Collins has a literature degree. She knew exactly what she was doing.
The Character Map
Far from the Madding Crowd → The Hunger Games → Archetype
Bathsheba Everdene → Katniss Everdeen
Independent woman who must learn to see clearly
Gabriel Oak → Peeta Mellark
The steady one who waits
Frank Troy → Gale Hawthorne
The flashy, dangerous one who destroys
Boldwood → President Coin
Obsessive, rigid, believes they're owed something
Liddy → Primrose Everdeen
The pure heart; the one she'd do anything to protect
Gabriel Oak → Peeta Mellark
Gabriel Oak is a shepherd. Quiet. Competent. Devoted. He loves Bathsheba before she can see him clearly, and he never stops.
He doesn't compete with the flashy men. He doesn't pursue aggressively.
He begins the story as a suitor above her station. A gentleman farmer.
He loses his farm overnight, and she inherits her farm shortly thereafter—a massive power shift between them—but he swallows his pride and simply stays. Works beside her. Manages her farm with competence. Lets her lead. Waits.
He proves himself through action, not declaration.
When everything falls apart—when Troy is dead and Boldwood is imprisoned and Bathsheba is finally, fully alone—Gabriel is still there. Not demanding. Just present.
Peeta Mellark is the same man.
He loves Katniss from childhood. He doesn't compete with Gale's flash and fire. He throws bread in the rain. He survives two arenas beside her. He gets hijacked, broken, rebuilt—and he's still there at the end. Planting primroses. Waiting for her to see him.
"You love me. Real or not real?"
"Real."
That's Bathsheba finally turning to Gabriel after 400 pages of chaos. That's the moment Hardy was building toward. Collins just added a dystopia.
Frank Troy → Gale Hawthorne
Frank Troy is a soldier—handsome, exciting, dangerous. He seduces Bathsheba with a sword demonstration—literal flash and skill, performance as courtship.
He's passion without substance. He makes grand gestures but can't sustain them. He's careless with the people who love him. And ultimately, his recklessness destroys lives—including his own.
Gale Hawthorne is Troy with a flair for snares rather than swordplay.
The hunting partner. The action hero. The one who matches Katniss in fire and survival skills. He's exciting in ways Peeta isn't—until you look closer and see that his love is possessive, his solutions are violent, and his ideology leads directly to Prim's death.
Troy's sword demonstration → Gale's hunting prowess. Both are seduction through capability. Both ultimately reveal a man who takes rather than tends.
Boldwood → Coin
This one's subtler, but it's there.
Boldwood is a prosperous farmer who becomes obsessed with Bathsheba after she thoughtlessly sends him a valentine with a sentiment she does not feel. His initial spark of love soon curdles into possessiveness. He can't accept her rejection. He believes he's owed access to her, and when he can't have her, he becomes dangerous.
Boldwood shoots Troy in a fit of jealous frustration.
Coin follows the same arc with Katniss.
She sees Katniss as a tool—the Mockingjay, the symbol. When Katniss doesn't perform as expected, when she shows independence, Coin moves to eliminate her. She's willing to destroy what she can't control.
Coin (by association) kills Prim.
Collins flips the script by giving Katniss the agency to shoot Coin herself, since Katniss only inherited the problem and didn't start it through her own carelessness.
At their essence, both Boldwood and Coin are figures of authority who believe their position entitles them to ownership of people. Both are undone by the very independence they try to control.
Liddy → Prim
Liddy is Bathsheba's maid and closest companion. She's gentle, loyal, good-hearted. She represents the domestic world Bathsheba keeps at arm's length—the softness that Bathsheba can't fully inhabit but fiercely protects.
Prim is Liddy amplified to life-or-death stakes.
Everything Katniss does, she does for Prim. The volunteering. The survival. The performance. Prim is the reason and the cost—the soft heart that Katniss shields with her own sharp edges.
Hardy lets Liddy live. Collins doesn't spare Prim. That's the difference between Victorian pastoral and dystopian YA—but the structural role is identical.
Bathsheba → Katniss
Bathsheba is independent to a fault. She inherits a farm and insists on running it herself. She takes on Gabriel as an employee—who manages her farm as carefully as though it were his own—but in his reduced circumstances she stops seeing him as a suitor.
She's beautiful, prideful, capable—and terrible at recognizing and acknowledging real love.
She sends Boldwood a valentine as a power move she frames as a jest—and triggers a dangerous obsession.
She marries Troy for momentary passion—and it nearly ruins her life.
She doesn't see Gabriel clearly until every other, flashier, option has collapsed.
Katniss follows the same arc.
She survives on her own terms. She performs for the Capitol without fully understanding the performance. She's pulled between Gale (passion, fire, destruction) and Peeta (steadiness, bread, survival). She doesn't choose Peeta so much as finally see him, after everything else has burned away.
"So after, when he whispers, 'You love me. Real or not real?' I tell him, 'Real.'"
That's Bathsheba at the end of Hardy's novel, finally turning to the man who was there all along.
What Collins Added
Hardy wrote a pastoral. Collins wrote a dystopia.
But the bones are identical:
- An independent woman learning to see clearly
- A steady man who waits
- A flashy man who destroys
- An obsessive authority figure
- A pure heart to protect
Collins added:
- The arena (external pressure that forces internal revelation)
- The love triangle as political performance
- The war (stakes beyond the personal)
- Trauma as central text, not subtext
She took Hardy's structure and pressure-tested it. What happens to Gabriel Oak if he's tortured and hijacked? What happens to Bathsheba if she's forced to kill children? What happens to the pastoral if you burn the farm down?
The answer: Mockingjay. The darkest version of the romance. The ending that's "happy" only if you understand what survival costs.
Why It Matters
This isn't about "catching" Collins in derivation. All fiction is derivative. That's not a flaw—it's a lineage.
What matters is that Collins knew what she was doing. She took a 150-year-old character architecture and proved it still works. Gabriel Oak has been the romantic ideal since 1874—patient, competent, devoted without demanding. Peeta Mellark is his modern equivalent.
Readers who love Peeta are responding to something older than they realize. The "steady one who waits" is an archetype that predates both works. Collins just gave him a new name and a bread-based backstory.
And she told us exactly what she was doing with the name she gave to her female lead.
Everdene. Everdeen.
One letter. One hundred fifty years.
Same story. Same love. Same choice.
Coda
At the end of Far from the Madding Crowd, Bathsheba and Gabriel marry quietly. No grand gestures. Just two people who finally see each other clearly.
Hardy writes: "He accompanied her up the hill, explaining to her the details of his farm management... theirs was that substantial affection which arises... when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on."
At the end of Mockingjay, Katniss and Peeta grow back together slowly. No grand gestures. Just two people planting a garden in the ashes.
Collins writes: "What I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that."
Same ending. Same truth.
The steady one wins. He always has.
If you're an HG fan and haven't yet found Hardy, I highly recommend Far from the Madding Crowd.
You'll recognize the similarities immediately.