Clove Kentwell is not the kind of person who loves other persons.
And it's not because she's been learning how to kill at the District 2 Hunger Games training academy since she was eight years old. Sure, that's part of it, but Clove's disdain for the rest of humanity developed long before that, probably started developing when she was around two years old.
When she was two years old, Clove's mother left her, leaving behind nothing but a broken, bitter Mr. Kentwell and a framed photo of herself and Clove hanging on the pale pink wall of Clove's bedroom. Although at first she was too young to really understand what was going on, it didn't take long for Clove to begin to process what had happened, for the negative feelings to begin to settle in: feelings of anger and anguish, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness and abandonment. Feelings of being shoved aside and forgotten; feelings that eventually led to a constant fear of once again being left behind.
And her father did essentially nothing to help abolish that fear; rather, he helped it flourish and grow with his constant teachings that nobody could ever be trusted and that in the end everyone will let you down.
"People are never what they seem," he would always tell Clove, staring off in the distance, lost in his thoughts, lost in his memories. "One day somebody will tell you that they love you, and the next day they'll leave, just like that. As if you meant nothing to them."
And by the time Clove was old enough to get shipped off to District 2's academy, she had vowed that she would never let herself get close to anybody ever again. That's why she had no trouble adopting the lifestyle the trainers wanted for her; a lifestyle that involved betraying friends and taking no pity on victims. Because she had already chosen that lifestyle for herself, chosen a life that involved separating herself from everybody else; the academy simply gave her more motivation to continue said lifestyle.
So while she grew up, and watched the kids around her talk and laugh and interact and train with one another, she set herself apart from all of them, determined to keep everybody else away from her, becoming more stone-hearted than even the most brutal of her classmates. She ate lunch alone, she threw knives alone, she ran on the track alone, she ate dinner alone, and she was fine with it, she was fine with all of it; she was fine with being alone. Her father had always said that staying alone would in the end be for the better, and her past with her mom was proof that her dad was correct.
And Clove got along fine on her own; she was able to entertain herself without the help of other people, using her spare time to read and write and perfect her weaponry skills. She got smart, taking hours and hours out of every week to study different species of plants and berries and poisonous fruits; she learned how to build a shelter out of twigs and branches, and how to kill a man with her bare hands, if no weapons happened to be available.
And when she turns seventeen, she has already watched footage from every single Hunger Games and has memorized every single intricate detail of every single arena and has learned the fighting strategies of all the greatest contenders. She's rewatched the most intense combat scenes over and over again, studied every single move, and she's learned all the gamemakers' strategies, all of the things that they do to catch the tributes offguard. And she's pretty damn sure that she has a better chance of winning next year's Hunger Games than every other kid in her year's class, because she knows that not a single one of them has gone through nearly as much effort to prepare as she has.
Being alone is good, she has decided by the time she turns seventeen. Being alone is productive, and useful, and efficient. And, most importantly, being alone is safe, safe from getting herself hurt.
Not to her surprise, she is selected that year by her trainers to volunteer as the District 2 female tribute for the 74th annual Hunger Games, and she does so with grace and pride and the confidence that she is going to win and nobody is capable of defeating her, not even Cato, her brutal co-tribute who has a knack for slicing off heads with swords. Although during her first night in the Capitol, the boy and girl from District 12 steal away the attention from herself, her confidence is still not shaken: the only reason the Capitol thinks the duo to be special is because of the flashy costumes created by District 12's designer, and—unfortunately—flashy costumes get you absolutely nowhere once you're in the arena.
But once they're all actually in the arena and several days have passed and they're creeping closer and closer to the end of the Games, the District 12 tributes—the star-crossed lovers of District 12, as they have become known to all of Panem—have proven themselves to be much more powerful than Clove expected. Somehow they've managed to survive this long, working together to bring down the rest of the tributes, at one point even tricking Clove and her unwanted allies (her district mentor had commanded against her will that she join up temporarily with Cato and the District 1 tributes) into allowing the District 12 tribute boy into their alliance in order for him to protect the District 12 tribute girl.
The girl that he is in love with. Clove can tell; it's written all over his face that he loves her, and it's written all over the District 12 girl's face that she loves him back.
And that's what Clove doesn't understand.
Being in love isn't supposed to help people. Loving somebody is a weakness, a fault, a vice: that's what she's been learning her entire life, and that's how she thought it was supposed to be. That's what her trainers taught her, that's what her father taught her, and most importantly, that's what life taught her; it taught her that the people she loved would eventually leave, it taught her that not even the people closest to her could be trusted, it taught her that living on her own was productive and useful and efficient and what would eventually help her to win the 74th annual Hunger Games.
It taught her that people would always let her down and that she was better off alone.
And so the District 12 tributes nearly drive her to madness: people in love are not supposed to succeed, are not supposed to do well, are not supposed to win the Hunger Games together. They are supposed to tear each other down and lead to each other's destruction and bring each other to defeat.
They aren't supposed to end up happy, most of all. So, Clove decides, maybe she needs to show them that.
That's why she so eagerly attacks the District 12 girl when the opportunity presents itself at the Games' tribute banquet. That's why she so viciously hits her and throws her around and bangs her head into the ground. That's why she hurts her, and taunts her, and nearly kills her—to show her that just because she loves somebody does not mean she is invincible. In fact, it makes her much less than invincible: it makes her weak and vulnerable and pathetic.
And once Clove has the other girl pinned down and is about to deliver one final blow with her knife, she only hopes that her real message gets fully across: that loving somebody does not make you happy.
But before Clove's knife has time to pierce the girl's neck, a hand is lifting her—no, ripping her—off the girl and into the air. She doesn't even have time to react before a rock is slammed into her head and she realizes that she isn't going to win the 74th annual Hunger Games.
It's rather ironic, Clove realizes.
All that time spent being alone maybe was a waste after all.