Exactly the same is true of Spartacus, if not the Kubrick version. He was just some dude who got caught up in something much bigger than expected. He was just fighting for his life. The interesting part of the Spartacan revolt is what happened afterwards to the people who crushed it.
Like the teenaged love triangle?
I enjoyed the first book, but the revolution and political structure from the sequels never seemed to make any kind of coherent sense. The capital seemed to have pretty much limitless power to control and enforce its will on the districts, so it never made rational sense that they would choose the games, or that they would be so effective for 75 years, or even be the rallying point for revolution.
It seemed to occupy that ‘uncanny valley’ of fiction. Some aspects seemed to go too far, but many others didn’t go far enough and it just didn’t seem like the antagonist’s actions matched their supposed motivations. Not a fatal flaw, lots of sci-fi gets stuck in this valley, but it stopped the series from attaining legendary status in my book.
I agree it’s much more character-driven. What kept me reading (especially through the 3rd), was curiosity of the final outcome of the characters, not their world.
But Spartacus became a leader of the rebellion. Katniss is co-opted as a figurehead, but she doesn’t lead anything. And on the few occasions when she tries to, her own agenda keeps getting in the way.
It’s not really a triangle. Peeta has a crush on Katniss, which plays a big part in the story, but there’s not really a rivalry between him and Gale. And Katniss isn’t particularly interested in having either one of them as a boyfriend.
Yes, it’s easy to map the few vague details you’ve heard onto well-worn tropes. But that’s not how the books actually play out.
Ok, this is kind of interesting. Spartacus was almost certainly co-opted as well, but as best as we can tell, he had no agenda. That’s kind of a neat inversion.
The love issue sounds like the film Agora. It was pretty well done there.
I’m not trying to graft tropes onto a book I have not read just to be a curmudgeon. I really did try to find positive reviews just to see if, at first glance, I was interested enough by the premise to read the book. I read gave Harry Potter a fair shake and read the first one because I could easily buy into what Rowling was trying to do. I just got a sense from even positive reviews here that I wasn’t going to the able to relate to this one, but it may well be that I am mistaken.
I don’t want to give too much away, but Katniss is only indirectly fighting for her life. The fact that Katniss has shut down emotionally is a large part of the arc of the trilogy. The love triangle is a minor side note that related to this and I hope they do not try to push this into prominence in the film. Katniss’s emotional world is very, very small for a very good reason and how she views the world effects every aspect of the story as it is told in the first person with no cheating (you only know what she knows). To her, love is pain and weakness and she wants no more than she is already burdened with.
[QUOTE=Ann Hedonia]
It’s been a while since I read the books, but I remember Gale as a peripheral character…Katniss’s “I have a boyfriend” dude and someone that was representitive of her pre-Games life. I was suprised to see the character headlined in the movie.
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He becomes a bigger character later on, and he is jealous, controlling asshole.
At one point he tells her, without meaning to, that he would have preferred it if she died, instead of flirting with Peeta to win.
Katniss is a bit too young and loyal to run screaming.
[QUOTE=Ann Hedonia]
Peeta is an interesting character and I’ve always been hesitant to write him off as a lovesick puppy. When I discuss these books with the young adults in my life ( I sent them all copies of the trilogy the day after I finished it ), one of my questions is “how much of Peeta’s lovesick behavior was really game strategy?”…he didn’t confess his mad love until after the contestants were selected and while it SEEMED real, as strategies go, it was a good one.
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I was referring only to his overt behavior, which is a pretty spot-on “lovesick puppy”. I’m not writing him off, he’s by far the most functional of the bunch.
[QUOTE=Waenara]
IIRC, every child from the Districts (not the Capital), has their name entered starting at age 12. IIRC, each year your name is entered additional times, and the number of entries is cumulative. So for the drawing each year, every 12 year old is entered once, every 13 year old is entered three times (1+2), every 14 year old is entered 6 times (1+2+3). And so on. So every 18 year old is entered 28 times.
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Nitpick: Only one ticket is added every year. If you remember, the mayors kid has only five tickets at 16.
Added a note to the thread title indicating there are spoilers in the thread.
I never thought that Peeta had a strategy to win. I always thought his strategy was to help keep Katniss alive.
Borrow the first book from someone. It’s a quick read, so within 30 minutes to an hour, you should be able to figure out if you want to keep reading or not.
I agree with this. It’s a short book. I’m not sure it took me much more than 2 hrs 22minutes to read (the runtime of the movie), though I am a fast reader.
If you have Amazon Prime you can borrow the ebook version for free.
I did, too. What happened in the end didn’t bother me, it just seemed very rushed. The book needed about 50 more pages with more dialogue toward the end.
I’ve heard that they’re going to split the final book into two different movies. I’m hoping that means they add a lot more material and fix the problems that book had.
(I feel really silly posting here, BTW. This was a much more obscure name when I picked it.)
They did pull one significant punch, IMO:
Katniss never has to kill a sympathetic character, just the tributes that the author has been working at making us hate.
There seems to be so much dystopian fiction and film out there these days; this is only one small part of it. Zombies walking on TV, a whole slew of recent films set in the post apocalyptic garbage heaps of our present world, doomsday preppers, you name it. IMO it’s a sad comment on people’s attitudes toward the future, as if we can no longer imagine–even just for entertainment’s sake–a future that’s better than the present.
I’ve heard it said, on this very board, I believe, that she actually never really had to make a difficult decision at all. Everything just kinda happens around her and she’s forced to react.
Yeah, well that didn’t last long. She shot an arrow through the heart of a civilian without blinking. And she didn’t do it for the greater good, she did it because she wanted to kill Snow.
I just finished the third book, and I liked it. I think the first book is one of the best books I have ever read, the second one is damn near as good as the first, and the third one is good.
As for the controversial third book, I kind of wish they’d spared me about fifty pages of logistical details and a constant influx of names of people who are unnecessary to the story. It was confusing. I went from loving Katniss in the first book to not liking her very much, but I think that matters as part of the reader experience.
I think it ended just about as realistically as possible. I love that Katniss, the girl who hardly emoted in the first book, ended up a basket case by the middle of the third book. She had no ability to relate to people, she kept getting pissed off about relatively petty things, and she was a pain in the ass, and arguably a liability to the cause when it came to actual battle.
I wanted to be pissed off at her but I also felt like it’s hard to judge someone whose life has turned to complete shit.
I loved the ending. Actually it was the first time I felt I could relate to Katniss in any way. And as I said, it was a pretty probable outcome.
Katniss did not survive because she is somehow better or more deserving than the others. All of those kids should have lived out their lives without being murdered on TV. Even the kids from District One should have been able to live regular lives without being turned into killing machines. These kids did not die because they were not because they were not brave or smart or wiley enough, but because they were part of a political show that they had no choice and no part of.
The games are a charade, an utterly bullshit ritual without redemption-- devoid of heroism or bravery-- that kills and traumatizes children for political reasons. If Katniss had won out because she had made better choices, that would lend some small legitimacy to the games. That would make her an actual hero.
But Katniss won because she happened to be the best option in someone else’s narrative. She started out a pawn, and she remained a pawn, and that’s the whole point.
You found Coin to be a sympathetic character?
I think she’s talking about the Capitol woman whose house they came up into. Coin wasn’t a civilian, she was a politician. THE politician, really, after Snow.
And toward the end of book 3, she and Gale were killing pretty much indiscriminately, anyone who got in their way and threatened their progress.
No, but she does remind me of Cain from Battlestar Galactica.
I was talking about the civilian she killed when she was spotted in the street. And yeah, by the end they really weren’t paying much attention to who they killed.