During the Games, both Katniss and Peeta suffer from numerous injuries, but perhaps the two most salient of these injuries are Katniss's hearing loss in her left ear and Peeta's blood poisoning and eventual leg amputation. Katniss and Peeta must both learn to adjust during the games. Katniss soon feels vulnerable, stating, "I can't adjust to the deafness in the ear. It makes me feel off-balanced and defenseless to my left. Blind even. My head keeps turning to the injured side, as my right ear tries to compensate for the wall of nothingness where yesterday there was a constant flow of information" (228-229). Katniss views this as a disadvantage during the games, and she struggles throughout the rest of her novel to eventually adjust her survival strategy to no longer having her sense of hearing on the left. Likewise, Peeta's leg injury makes him essentially immobile for days as Katniss takes care of him. When he does regain movement, he is significantly slowed. Katniss even remarks that when the mutts are chasing them, Peeta is "about fifteen yards behind [her], hobbling as fast as he can" (339). Peeta must continue to adjust after the games, when his leg is ultimately amputated. He is described as "almost losing his balance" (361) upon his reunion with Katniss after the Games, clearly still becoming used to his prosthetic leg.
The Capitol is quick to erase the disabilities Katniss and Peeta received from their Games. As Katniss wakes up after leaving the arena, she remarks, "Not only are the scars from the arena gone, but those accumulated over years of hunting have vanished without a trace." (359). Furthermore, her hearing in her left ear has returned completely. The Capitol has been quick to erase any signs of the physical and emotional trauma the Victors went through in the Games in order to downplay the severity of the Hunger Games. Though the Capitol could not heal Peeta's leg, they are careful to hide it from the audience, making no mention of Peeta's amputation until Katniss notices the prosthetic on camera. To the Capitol, the violence of the Hunger Games is just entertainment. If they had allowed Katniss and Peeta to showcase their disabilities (war scars of a sort) to all of Panem, it would harm the vision they had crafted so carefully of the Games. Constant reminders of the violence endured by the tributes in the arena could lead people all across Panem to question whether the Games are really just.
But perhaps we ourselves aren't so different than the Capitol in this respect. The film adaptation of the Hunger Games entirely disregards Katniss' loss of hearing. Not once do we see Katniss suffer to adjust to her newfound deafness in the first movie. Though Peeta's leg injury is shown, Peeta ultimately does not have an amputation in the film adaptation. After the Games, Peeta's leg is somehow completely cured, and he has regained full mobility. The erasure of Peeta's amputation eventually leads to plot holes in the series' later films. In Catching Fire and Mockingjay, Peeta often struggles to physically keep up with the other tributes and rebels. In the books, this is clearly attributed to his struggle to adjust to his prosthetic. However, the movies offer no explanation for why Peeta is constantly left behind in physical challenges. In refusing to show the full extent of Katniss and Peeta's injuries, the film series, in a Capitol-like manner, completely erases one of Collins' most important themes, as well as representation for individuals with disabilities.
In The Hunger Games, physical disabilities mark traitors, not victors. Other than the injuries sustained by Katniss and Peeta in the Games, the only characters we see with disabilities are the Avoxes. Haymitch explains to Katniss that an Avox is “someone who committed a crime. [The Capitol] cut her tongue so she can’t speak” (77). While the Avox are physically voiceless, they are also metaphorically invisible. In the Capitol, the Avox are merely servants. Even if they had a tongue, their voice would be no use to them anyway. Acquiring physical defects in the Games relates Katniss and Peeta to the Avoxes because they both exhibit evidence of the cruelness of the Capitol. Katniss and Peeta’s scars and disabilities serve as a blatant reminder of the brutality of the Games. Erasing these impairments ultimately serves the Capitol. Helping the victors recover from their wounds is not a sign of compassion, but rather a statement of ownership. These body makeovers stem from the desire to make the victors appear more Capitol-like since scars and hearing loss do not fit into the Capitol’s standards of beauty. Ultimately, Katniss and Peeta are externally characterized as the Capitol’s children, but internally they are destined to resemble the Avoxes as Capitol traitors.
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