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.

Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

I just finished reading Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, a few minutes before sitting down to write. First thought: Hunger Games reads hard and fast. By hard, I don't mean "difficult to comprehend." I mean that the blows just keep coming as thick and fast as the pages keep turning.


Collins pulls us into a post-apocalyptic world in which order is maintained through a cruel parody of the Olympics--the Hunger Games. The games demonstrate the power of the central government of Panem over the provinces. All residents of the country are forced to watch as 24 contestants--two from each district (or state) battle to the death in an arena as rigged against all of them as they are against each other.


Katniss becomes the contestant (or tribute) from District 12, a coal-mining region that resembles the Appalachians--hilly and green, fertile. But the mining people of the district--Katniss's people--are starving. Katniss and her friend Gale dare to go outside the fence to find food to feed their families. I will not tell you how Katniss comes to be one of the tributes from her district, but I will tell you that it made me gasp. Katniss is joined by the boy tribute, Peeta, who is a towny in District 12.


Katniss and Peeta (and I, as a reader) are then swept up in the games--a gruesome contest of wit, strength, cunning, and survival. Again, I am not going into detail here. However, my gasp at Katniss's selection ceremony was repeated over and over as certain scenes crystallized into some of the most poignant moments I have ever read. You may need kleenex, but keep in mind that this is the first book of a trilogy. Knowing that someone is going to survive helped me keep going through some pretty grim events.

The hero couple from the movie Logan's
Run (that's Michael York on the left).

A recurrent theme in this book is exactly how much rebellion against the Capitol of Panem will be tolerated--and whether Katniss and her associates can stay within these boundaries. As the characters mature, will they make the choice to live in the wild? Will they become fighters for freedom? Katniss, Gale, and Peeta have demonstrated in this book that they have the skills to do so. This theme places Hunger Games solidly in the tradition of 1984, Logan's Run, and numerous other science fiction and fantasy stories in which a sterile or controlled environment is breached or escaped and heroes seek their own fortunes. Even my favorite movie, Jeremiah Johnson, is a form of this story.


The idea of the winner-take-all games is also not new--but it is done so well here that it does not feel at all stale or derivative. Cheers to Collins.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in the
movie of Hunger Games, 2012

My next issue is whether Katniss's journey is a hero journey--a quest. She is invited to step out of her milieu, she is cast into an underworld of a kind, she acquires tools, allies, mentors, and emerges victorious. But this is only phase 1 of Katniss's journey. She doesn't reach adult understanding in this book, especially with regard to her relationship with Peeta. At the end of this book she is on the cusp of adulthood, on the edge of self-determination. She has not yet transformed.


I thank Collins for writing such a good female character--one who is brave, strong, smart, and skilled without being unrealistic. Katniss is not a super-hero. She even has braids like Pippi Longstocking, my gold standard for heroines. However, Katniss doesn't have to be comic to be strong, a hayseed to be smart. I am in love with her and want to adopt her as my daughter and nurture her courage and help her grow up and out into a wide, wide world. Our world needs girls like this and people to nurture them.


I can guarantee that I'll be reading Catching Fire, the second book in the trilogy, tomorrow.


Sidebar: Pippi Longstocking

Pippie Longstocking, from the books by Astrid Lindgren, was my favorite girl character from my childhood reading. She was strong, smart, funny, skilled. She could live on her own. She could walk the ridgepole! (Which I admired even though I didn't know what a ridgepole was.) She walked where her path took her, exposing humbug and hoohaw, sticking up for the weak, daring whatever there was to dare. In exchange, she was ugly, awkwad, and ridiculed. It was worth it to her, I think, if Pippi could be seen as having an inner life.


Not for me the Laura Ingalls Wilders or Rebeccas of Sunnybrooks. My life has been one long ridgepole, and I'll walk it awkwardly, but straight and sure!






Sidebar: Logan's Run
When I was a freshman at Ohio State in 1978, I would go over to West Campus (since dismantled) early each morning and study in one of the classrooms. As the height of modernity, there was a TV monitor in that room and every morning it would show Logan's Run, a movie I had already seen a few times. All quarter long, I took in Logan's Run along with Psych 100, Biology, and Classics. It's difficult to say which had a longer-lasting impact.

The fatal dot from Logan's Run

Michael York plays Logan, who gradually becomes aware that the treasured ceremony of passing over into a different world is really a ritualized method of population control--there are no old people in Logan's world. When an implant glows in your palm, it's your time. Logan decides to escape--that's his "run." One of the most poignant scenes is when he (and his of course scantily clad female companion) see an old person for the first time. I developed a great love for this B-movie-so-good-it-gets-an-A over the course of that quarter. I never knew why it repeated morning after morning. If you know, please get in touch with me.