As I started the third book of the Hunger Games series, I knew war was coming to Panem. What I didn’t expect was that its effect on the individual characters would be so poignantly and forcefully described. With Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins moves her entire series out of the realm of smart sci-fi and into an area of social commentary I had really only associated with the likes of Ray Bradbury.
The Hunger Games, as an event and a plot device, are gone. Instead, the story focuses on the growing rebellion, created and led by District 13, a part of Panem supposedly devoid of life. The insurrection would likely have stayed underground had it not been for the actions of Katniss and a few other “all-star” tributes. Their attack on the arena itself at the end of Catching Fire started an emotional tidal wave which is crippling the Capitol’s control as the book begins. Unlike the other players, Katniss was an unwitting accomplice in the rebellion’s plans. Now that she has been taken in by District 13, she must define a new life and identity, even as her whole world goes up in flames.
As a reader, I struggled with my feelings about Katniss. Once again, she is being manipulated, used as a symbol and a pawn, by older, more politically astute characters. Coin, District 13′s leader (who has a bit of Mon Mothma about her), wants Katniss to assume the Mockingjay mantle and become the rebel figurehead. Katniss accedes to this request relatively quickly and allows a camera crew to follow her around on “missions” planed by 13′s executive committee. This drove me bonkers. I was actually angry and frustrated that Katniss was letting herself be used in this way. She was once again a propaganda tool when I was looking for her to be more classically heroic. Of course, that would have been the easier, expected path for Collins to take, one which would have cheapened the book’s ultimate meaning.
It’s not often these days that I find myself aggravated and challenged by an author, especially one who then takes that circumstance and does something interesting with it. Here, though, Collins keeps Katniss from becoming the reluctant young hero who rises to a place of leadership. Instead, the main character repeats her mistakes and increases her flaws to the point where readers may actually dislike the narrator; they might start to hate the author too. This is not ineptitude, however, but intention. Collins breaks Katniss over and over again to drive home the point that war destroys people, even when it does not kill them. Through the jumbled mess of emotion which is Katniss Everdeen in this novel, to say nothing of the characters surrounding her, the reader experiences the scarring of those who live amidst military conflict. There is no way, these fictional lives proclaim, to be the same person after a war as you were before. It’s a story you can see in some of the more heartrending tales of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. I did not, however, expect to find it in a book marketed as YA literature.
For most of the last ten years, war has been a sad thread woven into the fabric of American life. It’s only natural, therefore, to find it recounted and retold in the arts. Now, perhaps Suzanne Collins would have written this story anyway, maybe she feels that strongly about war, but it’s hard not to view it in the context of our current military involvement. There is something melancholic to me in finding a piece of war literature, for that’s what Mockingjay really is, in the same stack of shelves as Harry Potter, but I am also heartened by Collins’ bravery. It’s naive to think that kids and teens are unaware or unaffected by our real wars. Things have gone on too long, too many soldiers have died, to believe that. And so, it seems that Collins is sending a much needed message here. She goes to great lengths to dispel the myth of glorious war by humanizing her characters and not being shy to recount both their physical and emotional wounds. At novel’s end, the future for Panem is a little vague. Solutions are not clear-cut for either country or characters, though there is a sense that healing has begun. In a way I found totally satisfying, Collins leaves Katniss with a sense of peace and hope which doesn’t negate the underlying sadness of what she has lost.
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There is another aspect of the ending, however, for which I must wag my finger disparagingly: the treatment of Gale. Gale has been Katniss’ best friend, her protector, even a romantic interest. At the end of all things Hunger Games, he is basically swept under the rug. That he and Katniss don’t end up together, I get. He was never really in the running, in my opinion, and too much happens between them during the war to make a relationship possible. Nevertheless, the character has had too much time and development invested to be bundled off to some mystery job in District 2. There’s no farewell scene. The reader doesn’t even get to see Katniss receive the news; by the time we’re told, she has known about it for some time. Whether it be on the part of author or editor, Gale’s sudden departure speaks of a reprehensible lack of care.
At the end Catching Fire, I was looking for Collins to take the series in a new direction, and she has certainly done that. More than just shift it’s focus or do the same thing in a different way, Mockingjay fundamentally alters the meaning and intention of the preceding books. It elevates the series and causes the reader to reconsider the social commentary of all three books. While The Hunger Games is clearly the best novel of the group, Collins has used the most recent story to bring the trilogy to a solid, thought-provoking ending.
