The Hunger Games: MockingJay

Genre: Dystopian 

Author: Suzanne Collins 

Rating: 100/5⭐️

What did you think about Katniss's character arc across the entire trilogy?:

    By the middle of Catching Fire I felt so incredibly maternal towards Katniss. She was a young girl who wanted nothing more than to survive despite the capital's efforts to make sure that it's hard. She cared about her family and it drove her to grow up quite fast. Another thing about Katniss is that because she grew up so fast and she was stuck in survival mode for so long she hadn't figured herself out emotionally especially. She didn't know how to recognize her emotions and how she felt nor did she know how to understand things going on around her because she was in a survival mode state for so long. She thought that people around her were trying to hurt her and she couldn't see that that wasn't the case until she was blatantly told. She can never figure it out on her own. 

    I cared a lot about Katniss as a character because of her mistreatment from the people around her. My biggest one will always be her relationship with Gale. That was so painful to see and read about because it was someone who she learned to open up to in her way and someone she was genuinely close with but he expected something out of her that she wasn't able to give him and not because she didn't want to but because she had so much being demanded from her and it just hurt me to see that happening to her because Gale of all people should be able to see that now is not the time to be demanding her of understanding those kind of emotions when she is just a young girl who's being ripped into a Hunger Games and a revolution. I think it was just very sad to see how one of her closest friendships became a sort of resentment and betrayal.  Katniss didn't deserve that especially not from Gale and it was so painful to read about. Gale is insufferable but I love the shot she threw at him in the last chapter. 

    As far as everyone else I just didn't like the way that everyone used her for this revolution and I understood that it was for the greater good of the world but she was just a teenage girl who was pressured to do something she never wanted to do in the first place. Haymitch made decisions for her life and I know that that hurt because Haymitch was no longer just a mentor he became sort of a father figure and someone a part of her family especially towards the end of the series and that hurt even me because for someone to blatantly lie to your face like that and make decisions for your life that you have no knowledge of is so disrespectful and I can completely understand why she smacked the living crap out of Haymitch because I would have done the same. And then there was just everyone else like Coin and Plutarch and even Cinna. We all know how Coin and Plutarch used Katniss for the revolution but what's not talked about is how Cinna made Katniss the face of the revolution from the very beginning without the girl's knowledge and as much as their relationship is so deep and meaningful he still used her without her knowledge by making her a political symbol from the very beginning and she had not a clue and everyone just decided that that year of Hunger Games was going to be the start of a revolution. Katniss never got to say and it was her life.

    I think with all that being said, Katniss’ character development was something incredibly beautiful because she is someone who fought from the very beginning and as much as she wanted to run away she didn't allow the people around her to scare her from gaining her freedom and she did what she had to do. She accepted her trauma in the end and she learned that it was a part of her. She learned her emotions and that she doesn't have to answer to someone like Gale or anyone for that matter. She had every right to feel what she felt and she now knew that as much as she was being used for revolution she also wanted to be free so she did what she did and she became the Mockingjay not for everyone else but her freedom and because she was sick of seeing people die. That is an incredibly powerful and brave thing to do. In the end she didn't get a complete happy ending because her happy ending would have been a world where Prim is alive but what she got was an ending where she was free to be a girl who is traumatized and she was free to be a girl who could finally experience a love without it needing to require so much of her. I love that Katniss found herself and she finally got the room to heal from what she went through and I honestly felt very proud of her. 

The series constantly asks whether people can use violence for a “good” cause without becoming like the people they're fighting. How did you feel about that conflict, especially with characters like Gale, Coin, Snow, and Katniss?

    I think that violence for a “good” cause is only acceptable when you are doing it with the intention of stopping something worse from going on but when it's characters like Coin and Gale and Snow they are fighting with violence because they want to win and because they want revenge.  Katniss wanted for their mistreatment to end just as much as anyone else if not more than but she never ever saw hurting and killing innocent people as a way to get there especially if there was another way.

    Characters like Gale and Coin wanted to believe that sacrifice of innocent people was necessary for the revolution which I personally just don't believe is true because that makes you just as bad as the Capital and the whole point is to be better but that wasn't their point their point was revenge and to hurt the Capital just as much as they were hurt or at least that was Gale’s point. Coin wanted power, she wanted to be the new ruler of Panem and she was willing to do whatever it took to get there which is what made her character so brilliant because from the very beginning that was her goal and she persevered time and time again but she wasted innocent lives for her own gain and that made her just as bad if not worse than Snow because she is also an incredibly calculated person. Katniss had no clue that Coin started the first revolution then left the rest of the districts to suffer for their actions. When Snow revealed that Coin always intended on taking his position that showed us exactly who Coin really was, especially with her plot to get rid of Katniss. You have characters like Katniss and Peeta who would never do that to people and those are two people who were in The Hunger Games and who have been pawns of the Capital before and they have been directly in their hands especially Peeta but that never took away their humanity and if anything it made them see why what Gale and Coin were doing was wrong.

    So personally no, I don't think violence for a “good” cause is a good enough reason to hurt innocent people because it does make you just like the people you're fighting and it's not a solution. I think people get clouded by the feeling of hatred and revenge and they forget that lives are special. Even Snow himself said that he would never waste a life. Blowing up the Capitals children would have been no benefit to him so that wasn't something he would have done but Coin and Gale did what they did for similar reasons. Coin wanted to hurt Katniss, she wanted to break her because she saw Katniss as a threat rightfully so and Gale was so bloodthirsty and hell bent on revenge on the Capital that he would have done anything to win the Revolution and he didn't see the Capitals people as people. He thought if you're from the capital then you are not innocent whatsoever. It doesn't matter who they were, child or adult, they were deserving of death. That is not okay and that makes them just as bad as the capital. I stand on that. 

What made Peeta and Katniss's relationship so meaningful to you, and what do you think Peeta represented for Katniss by the end of the series?

    Katniss and Peeta's relationship was meaningful to me because it represented two people who came together in unlikely situations and who persevered through incredible challenges and still found their way back to each other not because of fate but because of a true relationship.  Katniss had a hard time understanding herself and her emotions and it took her a while to see that she didn't just care about Peter because she wanted him to survive she cared about him because she loved him and even if she wasn't in love with him from the beginning she cared about him extremely deeply and I don't think she truly recognized that until Finnick gave her the room to finally be honest with yourself and say yes I'm in love with Peeta. 

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    I think she had a hard time accepting that because of everything that she had going on around her and because she had Gale as a guilty conscience. Even then Katniss had to push her personal life to the side and fight for a revolution which of course doesn’t give you much time to think about a boy or any motions at all but what I will always appreciate about Katniss' and Peeta's relationship is that they were there for each other in ways that no one else was there for them and they had one another to lean on. 

What Peter went through was very sad and I think it made him his own character because for a long time Peter was a part of Katniss's character. I think him being in the Capital's hands in that way made him more human to everyone around him because Peeta was seen as a sweet, caring boy but what happened to him in the Capital made him scary and it made the people who underestimated him and take advantage of him realize that he is human and he is more than just this boy who is in love with Katniss. He also has trauma and family he cared about and things that he lost and people seemed to forget that Katniss wasn’t his whole world.

    One of my favorite things about Mockingjay is that it drove people to stop treating Peeta as this weak link and I love that he was so honest and brutal out of his mouth and it made him say what was really on his mind especially to Katniss because she also took advantage of him. When Peeta was finally in District 13 she thought everything was going to be okay and that he was going to grab her and kiss her and it was all going to be good and that he was probably still so in love with her but she got humbled because he quite literally snatched her by the throat and I did laugh out loud when I read that because I was like girl this man has just been tortured by the Capital and you're thinking he's about to what come up to you and kiss you so passionately? No that's not all that Peter is, he's a human being and he has a life and emotions outside of you. Even if Peeta wasn’t hijacked it wasn’t fair for her to expect that sort of reunion out of him after what he’d been through. That was her using him to feel something. 

    I really appreciated it when Haymitch made her see that the way she was taking out Peeta’s trauma on him wasn't fair to him because Peeta would have never treated her like that if she was in his position and Katniss had no right to take out how she was feeling on Peeta which she has done time and time again. Yes Peeta said hateful things but she needed to hear it because she was using him and Gale to distract from what was happening around her and Peeta was the least deserving of that. She had to recognize that Peter was not someone that she could keep using to feel something and that just because he was no longer the innocent boy that needed her protection and would swoon over her wasn't his fault and it wasn't fair of her to make him the villain just because he no longer pushed his feeling to the side to protect her. She was wrong for how she was using him and she needed to see it. It forced Katniss to recognize Peter as more than just someone who was in love with her and someone that she had to protect. He was a person who was just as damaged as she was and he deserved grace. 

    That's one of my favorite things about the relationship and I also love Peter as a love interest because he was so understanding of who Katniss was and her importance outside of him which a lot of people in the book did not see. Despite how he felt about her and how much he loved her he understood that she's an important person to so many people in the Revolution and that his feelings towards her isn't something that she should have to stop and recognize like Gale wanted her to. One distinction between Gale and Peeta is that Peeta in the Quarter Quell Arena let Katniss know that it's okay for you to love Gale and that she had people who loved her and needed her back home and that's why he needed her to survive. He wanted her to survive even if that meant not loving him the way he loved her and that is a clear difference between the way Gale loved Katniss and the way Peeta loved Katniss because Gale would have never told Katniss that it was okay to be in love with Peeta he wanted her to choose him no matter what and that is why I will always appreciate the way that Peter loved Katniss because he loved her the way she was deserving of. 

    I think in the end Peter represented healing and acceptance of what they've gone through.  When she had said that she didn't need Gale's hatred and fire because she had enough of her own, what she wanted was the sunshine and the dandelion because that's what Peter represented for him. He represented a life that was separate from being full of hate because she was by the end so sick of hating everything around her and she just wanted to be free of that emotion because it can take over someone and it's draining to constantly be in this mode of survival and revenge. That can literally drive someone crazy. 

    So I do love that the relationship between Katniss and Peter wasn't just simply her choosing Peeta over Gale it was her choosing a life of healing from what she's gone through and Peter was someone who was going to allow her to do that where as Gale was most likely was never going to be able to let go of that fire. 

How did you feel about the ending—not just Katniss and Peeta's future, but the way Collins portrayed grief and trauma after the war?

    The ending was extremely realistic and precious to me. I really appreciate it that Collins did not give us a fairy tale ending and she gave us an ending that was absolutely realistic. It was so sad to see Haymitch go back to alcohol but it was realistic for his character and what he'd been through. Just because the war was over does not mean that the nightmares stop and that everything that they'd gone through would be completely erased from their minds. They were still these incredibly traumatized and hurt people and that isn't something that disappears because the world is no longer a place where they have to survive. 

Haymitch going back to alcohol was used as a symbol of trauma is not something that disappears because you get what you wanted. Just because Haymitch got sober doesn’t mean he did not have every intention of numbing himself when it was all over. He drank because of what he’d been through and I guarantee that that time of being sober was probably so hard for him because he could no longer run from the memories so of course he went back to alcohol. 

    I feel the same thing about Katniss and Peeta. When it is said that Peeta still has his times of grabbing on to something and clenching and having these flashbacks despite all the time that's passed it still continues to put him in this place of being someone that is human and it is a reminder to the readers that once again Peeta is not just this love interest for Katniss but he is a human being who also went through The Hunger Games, who also went through something so hurtful and traumatizing, and just because they were free doesn't mean that he was going to return back to the same boy he was in the first book and that he was still entitled to his trauma and there was nothing that was going to erase it. 

With Katniss where she still has the nightmares and she still gets reminded of what they've gone through and she's sitting there thinking about one day I'm going to have to explain to my kids why me and their dad have these moments where we can't get out of bed and she accepts that that's the case because she recognizes that healing is not something that just happens to people and you can be a healed person while also still having moments of remembering what you've gone through but what's important is that they do not allow it to consume them. 

    The ending to me is not perfect and that's what makes it so beautiful. Human beings aren't perfect and neither is life and I really appreciate that from Collins and it made the characters so meaningful.  

Looking at the entire trilogy, what do you think Suzanne Collins was ultimately trying to say about war, power, propaganda, and the people caught in the middle?

    

I think that Collins was trying to say that power is something that is addicting and dangerous no matter who it is. Human beings are always going to be people who want control and there's always going to be people who are never satisfied with the way the world is. 

When Plutarch says to Katniss that right now everything's okay because people are sick of fighting but eventually there's probably going to be a change and we might need you again and that says a lot about human nature and how the world works. 

    I think Collins really does a great job at showcasing how war and power is something that is so calculated and probably something that we're always going to go through. I also really appreciate that Collins doesn't shy away from the fact that there are always going to be people caught in between the hatred of both sides and there's always going to be a place of deciding whether or not those innocent lives are worth losing and there's going to be people in those world who believe that they genuinely are. 

Collins is a very brilliant author and officially one of my favorites. I love The Hunger Games and the message of this trilogy is so powerful and I hope it is always appreciated. 

Thank you guys so much for tuning in to my journey of The Hunger Games. It is such a beautiful trilogy but we're not done yet because we have two more books in the series to read and I’m very excited. 

Until then our next read will be: The Jasad Heir!!! Yayyyyy. 

Thank for reading!🌸

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