**A note to those who haven’t read it yet: This thread will begin with a super-big spoiler. Even I (who actually like to have stories spoiled before I go in to read them so that I can fully appreciate the craft of exposition and development) would not have wanted to know this before I started the book.
If you haven’t read Mockingjay, but think you might, you should probably stop reading this thread. **
OK, so at the end of Mockingjay, why does Katniss agree to the new “Punish the Olde Guarde” Hunger Games? Is it just because she wants Coin to announce it so that all of humanity will see her for what he is? Or is she curious to find out what the populace’s reaction will be?
It seems to me that this could only keep the fighting going, as those who wanted the games to end would continue to fight those who thought the suffering should just be redirected. Given Katniss’s gentle sympathy for her childlike prep team, it doesn’t seem to me that she could reasonably be in the “re-direct the suffering” camp.
And maybe more intriguing, why does Haymitch agree? Katniss’s internal conversation says she’s waiting for his answer, thinking it will show her whether they are really alike. Alike how? Whether they are equally vindictive? Whether they both see the wisdom of exposing Coin? Whether they are both so curious about the overall state of mankind that they want to see what the populace will do?
OR are they both hoping for an outcome in which the fight continues until the only remaining humans are made up only of those who wouldn’t stomach it and fought against it?
Bonus Question: And why doesn’t Peeta become finally and completely disinfatuated with Katniss having seen her agree to this horror?
She’d seen Coin’s ruthlessness and knew that she (Coin) was a threat to her and had seemed to want her dead. She didn’t really want new Hunger Games, but voted in favor of them to keep up the appearance that she supported Coin when she was in fact planning to kill her.
Haymitch voted with Katniss because he knew what she was up to, or at least knew that she was up to something he would support. Recall that at various points along the way, there had been references to how Katniss and Haymitch just seemed to have an intuitive understanding of each other.
Note: this only became clear to me after another Doper pointed it out in a previous Hunger Games thread. No points for insight for me- I didn’t figure it out when I read it, either.
Not sure about the Peeta thing.
A lot of it is part of the ingrained “all gummint is bad, bad, bad” motif that underlies all three books, which I found terribly disappointing.
No, we shouldn’t be making kids read boy-scout, boy’s-life rah-rah pieces about Our Amazing Government, but highly influential stories that make government - all government - a bad thing are a terribly counterproductive thing. A Tea Party-era take on “same as the old boss,” without the slightest artistic justification.
Coin never wanted an honest government; she just wanted to be the next Snow and she needed to know if Katniss was her pet archer or a true revolutionary. Had Katniss voted against the new games, Coin would not have let Katniss be in a position to assassinate her like that and would probably have found a way to eliminate her asap.
The problem is that Collins sped to the end so quickly, she didn’t handle the last bit of drama well at all.
Credit a publishing contract that specified three equally-sized books, not allowing any room for the exponential growth of a story. There were chapters in the third book that covered more ground than either of the first two books. Very disappointing, but the Marketing Department Must Be Obeyed.
Why on earth is that “counterproductive”, and why on earth do you say there’s no artistic justification for it? Art doesn’t need to be productive. For myself, I think it’s very valuable for kids to be instilled with a healthy skepticism about authority figures, and I think these books do a great job of it.
As for artistic justification, the ending was artistically perfect, IMO. Over and over in the world we see that revolutionaries become the dictator once they take power. It doesn’t always happen, but it happens often enough that if there’d been no power-mad revolutionary at the end of the book it would have been artistically questionable.
The entire series suggests that the Powers That Be are cynical manipulators who don’t have your best interests at heart. Nothing in the world wrong with that.
Having an 11 year old daughter, I got sucked into the Hunger Games series and I found the ending to be one of the biggest steaming piles of fetid crap I could ever remember. From the emotional manipulation to the plot holes, to the stupidity and poor logic skills of the characters, I would be hard pressed to find anything good to say about the ending of Mockingjay.
And there were certainly ways to make that point without devolving the series into nonsense. YMMV.
You have a rather parochial interpretation I think. Tea Party? Check out the Mexican Revolution sometime. Many of the revolutionary leaders of Mexico were less interested in helping the people than they were in acquiring power for themselves. You see a counterproductive lesson whereas I see a productive one. First, allies today might not necessarily be allies tomorrow. Second, people working for a common goal may be doing so for very different reasons.
I think that by that time, Katniss was so psychologically damaged, that she had become as cynical and vindictive as Haymitch. She wanted revenge. I don’t buy for a minute that is was some scheme to eliminate Coin. She killed Coin when she had the opportunity, but it was a spur of the moment decision when the opportunity presented itself. By the end of Mockingbird Katniss was broken and (IMO) completely unsympathetic. In fact I didn’t really like anyone by the end of that book.
Uh, Katniss specifically mentions to herself that she is disgusted by the idea of a new set of games using capital children. She also knows that Haymitch shares her attitude about the games but hopes that he will vote with her because she knows something is up. It was a scheme to show Coin that Katniss was still on her side. The book spells that out quite implicitly.
Concur.
I absolutely hated the third book. Way too rushed. I had to read the assault on the Capitol twice because things happened way too fast. Peeta not being shot immediately during the attack was laughably unrealistic, and Primm dying seemed like just a nifty way for the author to be able to set Peeta and Katniss together without making the Gail fangirls upset.
There are three governments presented across the trilogy. The first is the existing one, which is an irredeemably evil upper class exploiting 12 districts of worker bees.
The second is the revolutionary government, which almost instantly turns out to be corrupt, evil and self-serving.
The third, vaguely outlined, is the government put in place after the revolutionary cabal… and in a few sentences, she dismisses it as being as bad as the others but at least it sort of leaves them alone.
It’s that message, that all government is bad and to be shunned and ignored, that disappoints me. Very much Tea Party thinking, and wrong, and corrosively wrong when hammered into young minds. Propaganda, even. It would not have been some bad thing for the final government to have been presented with positive aspects, showing that there’s a reason to band together and create a better - community - future.
More tea?
No, it wouldn’t have been a bad thing. But the story is told from the point of view of a young woman who has very good reasons to have a cynical view of government. Not only that but the community she knew was destroyed during the war. The book ended happily, or, as happily as it could I think, but Katniss and others are still deeply affected by their lives before and during the war. Propaganda? No, I don’t think Collins’ intention was to turn readers into anti-government types.
She’s certainly following the zeitgeist. In a book for adults, I’d shrug it off - grupps are grupps and entitled to read and absorb any wisdom, nonsense or propaganda they choose. I find it disturbing in a YA context; as hopelessly naive as it might sound, I think YA authors have to have some consideration for ideas they may be embedding in their works that naive readers may swallow, and incorporate, whole.
Would it have ruined the story for the final, post-oppression, post-revolution government to have been presented as a ‘success’ to some degree, even if the notion that all governments are prone to corrupt dissolution was retained? That there’s some point to fighting for ‘better’ and winning, not just a weary, half-hearted “at least us and our kids are being left alone” attitude?
Same here. I read the first book because my kid liked it, then kept going. I thought the first was pretty good, if light, and the second was okay. The third was a really tough slog.
Fair enough. I don’t think this is anywhere near the scale of something like Twilight which romanticizes what is essentially an abusive relationship.
There was some success to a degree. For example, Katniss and Peeta have children which is something she wouldn’t have agreed to before the revolution. They’re left to live in peace and there are no more Hunger Games. That’s success right there.
I think you’re wrong about this. My impression was that the third government was imperfect, but was better than the other two. I was kind of amused by the idea that the best government was the one established by a military coup.
I think the idea of a positive, truly Democratic Governemnt is at least injected by the comment to Katniss “Maybe we are seeing the evolution of the human species.” Who said that again?
Anyhoo, while I didn’t mean to start an overall review of the book, I’ll jump in and say this: The entire progression through the Capitol felt to me like the direct result of a marketing meeting with the Nintendo representatives. It’s like that scene in any kids movie where they go flying up and down and around turns in a mining cart or a runaway carriage. I immediately start making bets with myself about how much money the flick has to make before Disney World starts construction on the corresponding ride.