The Hunger Games: Mockingjay

 The following is my review of Mockingjay, as well as closing thoughts on the trilogy as a whole.

**CONTAINS SPOILERS**

I picked up The Hunger Games over a year ago with the hopes of enjoying a good, quick read, but also to stay culturally current in the Young Adult (YA) world.  While I did zoom through the story in two days, I was a tad disappointed with Susan Collins' rule-bending and unnecessary teenage romances.  Peeta and Katniss reminded me of when I used to watch "The Bachelor" with my mom, and on one of the first dates one of the lucky girls got to go on with the bachelor was some extreme sport--bungee jumping, sky diving, etc.  The interesting thing is, the girl who got to go on that date usually stuck around for a while.  Why?  My psychoanalytical theory is that when you're thrown into a life-and-death (or scary enough to be a life and death) situation with a person, you form a weird bond.  This is what I equated Peeta and Katniss' relationship to.

I was very much Team Gale throughout the entire series, up until Mockingjay.  Sure, Peeta worshiped the ground Katniss spit on, but Gale was the constant--the guy her family knew and loved, the steady companion, the one who knows her and would protect her over anything.  What can I say?  I prefer the strong silent type over the clingy artistic type.  And it made sense for Katniss.  That was until Gale suddenly became obsessed with sticking it to the Capitol.  Sure, Gale always seemed kind of rebellious, but it wasn't until the last book that you really got to see, as Collins suggests, his "true character."

Overall, Mockingjay was a bit of a depressing conclusion to the trilogy.  Many fans were angry that there wasn't that much action, that Peeta was brainwashed, that certain deaths (Prim's, for example), seemed unnecessary and random.  While these things did disappoint me as a reader, I think, as a critic, I understood where Collins was coming from.

Let us take, for example, Katniss not being heavily involved in the war.  This was actually one of my favorite themes in Mockingjay.  Think about it--throughout The Hunger Games, Katniss is made up to be this symbol--The Girl on Fire.  She is little more than a character in a soap opera for the people of the capitol.  Now, Katniss is the leader of the rebellion.  She finally gets to fight for what she believes, and take the action necessary to--wait, nope.  She is now the symbol for the rebellion.  Once again, she has her own design team and camera crew.  No matter what side she is on, she is presented as a character of herself. 

Let us also consider Peeta's brainwashing.  While frustrating, it does adequately represent the horrors of war to, well, those who enjoy YA.  Consider the audience who would enjoy books like Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars, etc. (I sincerely apologize for clumping these if someone out there finds this offensive, but stay with me).  The people who enjoy YA novels such as these are either teenagers who enjoy teenage love stories or young adults who enjoy teenage love stories, or people who tend to disregard the teenage love story aspect of YA but recognize its presence.

What could be worst thing to happen to the male protagonist--worse than death, worse than having him lose feelings for the girl and fall for another?  Having him be brainwashed into despising the girl and wanting nothing to do with her, or kill her?  Having there be no way for you to reach out to them--having to sit idly by, not knowing if they will ever be their true selves again?  Having them forget every happy memory of you?  It was this that moved me; it made me think of my most loved husband not knowing me and hating me irrationally.  It chilled me.  Should the horrors of war already be horrible enough for us to not need a teenage-y romance-y example of pain?  Yes.  Can I honestly say that seeing a soldier shot, or a building blown up effects me like it should?  No.

And isn't that one of the mystifying things about the hunger games?  All the people in the capitol treat children fighting to the death as a spectator sport.  We dress them up and cheer for our favorites, and throw the remote at the TV when they die.  The rebellion isn't real until it drives the fur underwear store out of business.  Until fish is taken off the menu because District 4 is under attack.  Until the hero and heroine's love story is put in peril.

How strange it all is, these things we are attached to.  How small our world is, no matter how expansive we like to claim it is.  How upset I get that Nathan used the last roll of toilet paper during Syria's rebellion.