Mockingjay & the Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins

If you have not read Mockingjay, please cut the two-page epilogue from the book and burn it before reading. This Happy Ending Device trivializes all three of the books that have gone before and insults the intelligence of the reader. I can't believe Collins fell victim to the same Happy Ending pressures that felled J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. And they all lived happily ever after...after unspeakable trauma, the epilogues of both series are crushingly bad. I have removed these pages from my copy of Mockingjay.

YouTube has many videos of Suzanne Collins, including this one of her reading the first chapter of Mockingjay:  http://youtu.be/1MY6yEt6aZs

I finished Mockingjay a few days ago and I feel confused--as confused as our hero Katniss feels most of the time. The amount of death and violence in this book makes Hunger Games and Catching Fire seem mild. Yet, I kept reading and felt compelled to do so. I am disturbed that I liked such violent books so much. And I am disturbed with the duality of Katniss's role. She flips like a coin in the air from ingenue beauty queen sweetheart to hard-bodied killing machine soldier.

Where is Katniss herself in this pink/black dichotomy? That's the question that kept me going. How would Katniss survive this role whiplash? I have felt this so many times (especially in adolescence)--that the choices presenting themselves don't fit me at all and yet I am forced to choose one. As I discussed in my blog on Catching Fire, it is the fact that these books are psychology evocative that makes them so good. I have many times felt the hate and blackness and helplessness and coercion. The images that I have searched for to represent these feelings have been violent and black. (I wrote a poem titled "Birth of the Baby of Death"!)

A scruffy tiger cat helps humanize this book.
I could write a complete essay on the cat's
role in the story.

Mockingjay finishes out Collins's trilogy. Katniss is still on her feet, physically safe, but filled with guilt, horror, and anger. She is turned into a public relations device for the districts' uprising against the Capitol, a pawn who once again is manipulated into unthinkable relationships with unspeakable horror. And the reader shares the impact of all of this with Katniss. She struggles to maintain her humanity in the face of her own participation in every level of coercion and violence. I won't go into detail about the plot...it's a war story.

I loved Katniss. I wanted to help her. I wanted to see her survive somehow, some way, somewhere. My engagement with her was one of the key factors in keeping me reading through to the end. Her fate became entwined with mine--if she could find a way to keep going, I guess I can. When I imagine what I would have thought of these books if I had read them 35 years ago, I see my teenage self clinging to these books, keeping them by my bed, valuing their reflection of my inner turmoil.

And truly, if you want to step way, way back and get all metaphysical, these books can be viewed as a hero journey for the adolescent. Adolescence can be seen as a lengthy battle for identity, autonomy, value, perspective, and wisdom. Adolescence is a fight like Katniss fights.

And, of course, these battles never really end as I grow into middle age, but I have more tools and strategies now, and nothing inside me is as serious as it was then. The important things are outside me now. And Katniss finds out what we all sort of find out (or should)--that sometimes evil is not punished, sometimes wrongs are unrighted, and many questions go unanswered. Loving anyway is what comes out of the struggle. Loving yourself anyway, loving another person, loving life anyway. Emerge from the flames and ashes still able to love.

The Hunger Games trilogy is impressive and strong. Even with all the violence and torment, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend these books. They have some strong truth in them.

Much useful information at this site, including summaries, character lists, study guides, and other resources on this trilogy:  http://www.gradesaver.com/author/suzanne-collins/

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Spoiler Alert: If you have not read Hunger Games yet, watch out for spoilers in this review. I'm doing my best to avoid them, and only revealing things that were foregone conclusions in the first book. Still, I do apologize if any of your reading experience is marred. Also, if you have read Catching Fire, the illustrations on this blog entry will be more meaningful.

Katniss's Mockingjay pin

The second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, picks up right where the first book, Hunger Games, leaves off. Katniss is back home after her ordeal with the Hunger Games. She has much to ponder...love, family, self, betrayal, loyalty, the future, the past, the rebellion (if there is one), and what her participation in the Games has done to those she loves--Mom, Prim, Peeta, Haymitch, the people of District 12, and Gale--especially Gale. Her token, the mockingjay, has become popular in the Capitol as a memento of the Games, but in the outlying districts it is associated with resistance against the government. So, Katniss is required to keep wearing it to keep the Capitol happy and is also punished for it. These types of double-binds fill this book and give it a claustrophobic quality.


Horror is introduced in the character of the Nazi-like Thread, who takes over the security forces in District 12 and starts to actually enforce the rules coming from the Capitol. It seems that his actions wreak the worst havoc on people connected to Katniss. Her guilt is immense, but everything she tries to make things better makes things worse. As a Games veteran, she is pretty much trapped. She fought in the games because it would make things better at home, but nothing is better.


The first half of this book involves the victory tour of Katniss and Peeta. (OK, sorry, this is a major spoiler if you haven't read the first book.) The Hunger Games take place every two years. In the off years, the victors tour the twelve districts to keep it fresh in the minds of the people that the central government can snatch their children and put them to death in the arena any time it wants to. During the tour, Katniss and Peeta learn to see their own district with new eyes--especially its isolation and sparse population. They also see first-hand evidence of repression and resistance and begin to question whether or not they have a duty that transcends devotion to family and district, to self, and to each other--a duty to all of the people of Panem, a duty to speak out, to lead. They are lightning rods for the resistance whether they like it or not...and maybe it's the right place to be.

When the second half of the book takes us back to the arena--I won't reveal how--it is almost a relief. Yeah, for about 10 seconds. The way the combatants psych out the features of the arena and its hazards is fascinating. Katniss and Peeta have allies in this Games (called the Quarter Quell) this time--but everybody but one must die. Katniss hates allies; the more you rely on them, the more likely you are to die at their hands, she thinks. The Games are as gruesome as ever, with lightning, tidal waves, floods, and other tortures recurring regularly. It seems that the only lesson Katniss really learns is the various forms that can be taken by sacrifice.


So, the bleak vision of Hunger Games continues in Catching Fire. What saves the books is the fierce affection I developed for Katniss (and Haymitch, but not so much Peeta or Gale). What happens to her has become deeply important to me. The author has drawn Katniss wonderfully. She is someone I would like to know. And, I realize, I do know Katniss...I've met her at Sojourners where I work. She's the annoyingly feisty girl who came to us after her home broke up and she took pills to cope. She's the dull-eyed boy who has seen way too much violence and hunger. I see her every day.


I would like to search E-Bay for a magic wand that really works, an undo spell for the unloved and unlovable, a hug that heals. And this is why this book is important. The ordeals my youth undergo are not as dramatic as those Katniss faces, but they feel the same. There is the same hopelessness, the same feeling of No Way Out. Metaphorically, the book is a parallel to everyone's life. There is much pain in living. I feel the pain of not being able to help much. Respect and courtesy and knowing that I do not know everything is about all I can offer. It never feels like enough. In that sense, my journey and Katniss's are the same.


The third book (called Mockingjay, I think) will arrive in the mail soon. I can't wait to find out what happens. 


Sidebar: The Fallacy of Helping
In most therapy/support groups, there is a rule against helping through advice-giving--a rule people fight and fight to defeat. Advice can be a form of psychic violence. Now that I'm sort of mature (in my fifties!), I have started to be able to actually act on people's advice to me, to accept it. But I'm never happy about it and my first instinct is always to RESIST. Alas.


I work at an agency that helps children and young adults whose lives have gone off-track (sometimes from birth). Ideally, we help most by empowering, but I am constantly aware of the fact that help is often applied in such a way that it becomes as much a problem as the problem we're trying to help. To stand back and have faith that unconditional acceptance will eventually have a curative effect, that takes more discipline than most of us have. We have such a desire to intervene, to correct, to control. How to make help not a trap is a constant question for me.