Sorry! That last post came off a bit more gruff and accusatory than I intended. My iPhone doesn’t help encourage nuanced posts either. I do enjoy discussing and debating books since I don’t have anyone to discuss them with in real life.
Anyway, my point was that there wasn’t any reason for Coin to kill Katniss right before the execution, even if Katniss opposed the new games. From Coin’s POV, she had plenty of time to deal with Katniss.
My second objection is that Katniss was in no place to influence or even know about the succession to Coin. There was no set successor and it’s a bit of an overreach, IMO, to say everyone except Coin was good and trustworthy. Surely there was a stron faction in support of new games or Coin wouldn’t have proposed it. It’s only luck that one of them didn’t succeed Coin.
I’m still a little lost about Plutarch Heavensbee. Wasn’t he one of the members of Coin’s inner circle that apparently bombed the children as a strategy for quickly resolving the battle for the Capitol? Katniss goes on and on about how he’s a gamemaker by heart, and Suzanne Collins certainly seems to imply that he’s an ends-justifies-the-means type. Yet Katniss doesn’t seem too fussed that he’s the “Director of Communications” for the new government. Maybe it’s just because she’s basically catatonic at the end of the book (or for that matter, throughout much of the book)? Anybody have any insights?
Katniss didn’t deserve Peeta and I am kind of annoyed they ended up together by default.
Yes - it’s one of my very favorite books. I have a weakness for young adult literature, but absolutely no apologies are necessary when it comes to loving I Capture the Castle.
I just finished Mockingjay. I had forgotten a lot about the first two books, but I think I liked this last book more than anyone else here. To me, it captured the dread, horror, futility, and just plain ugliness of war and “heroism” better than most books with a hero. Katniss is deeply flawed, trying to do the right thing in extraordinarily bad situations. I liked how Collins didn’t act like she was a great person or so gifted or so blessed that she could remake the world just by wishing it so. She was a pawn–a frustrated, angry, belligerent, tired, broken pawn in a very large game. She was too brittle to bend without breaking. She wasn’t brilliant, or incredibly kind, just hard enough and mean enough and stubborn enough and lucky enough to push through.
I liked the finale, too. I agree that Katniss’ thinking with voting for the new games (and asking Coin to be sure to pin the rose over Snow’s heart) was to make sure Coin believed Katniss was on board with Coin as the new leader.
I agree that that Coin was unlikely to cancel her involvement in Snow’s execution either way, but Katniss could believably believe that the chances that Coin would casually expose herself to being shot by Katniss would go way, way down.
I also agree that the way the author chose to resolve the Peeta or Gale dilemma wasn’t well set up. I can’t remember anything in the first two books that made Gale’s turn into a cold-hearted pragmatic kill-by-any-subterfuge seem in character.
Also – after the first book, Katniss was bound to be way cool in the eyes of young readers. To the point of aspiring to be like her in ways our society pretty much disapproves of: solving her problems through violence, killing, threatening suicide. Anyone else feel the, uh, de-heroineization was at intended? Katniss was pretty much destroyed by this book – near catatonic a lot of the time, her position as pawn stressed over and over, she loses her home, her sister, her looks. Sort of a 'yeah, she’s heroic BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO BE LIKE HER message?
Huh, never thought of it in that connection. I thought Panem = Pan America, as in all America, but misspelled to not refer to the defunct airlines. <shrug>
I bought Mockingjay and gave it to my girlfriend. She gave it to her son as a birthday present. Once they’d both finished reading it, I was allowed to borrow it.
I finished it last week, and have thought about it for several days now. This is what I think:
I don’t like that the whole quest to assassinate Snow was pointless–whether they failed or succeeded, they may as well have just gone with the main Rebel army… both groups arrived at the Presidential mansion at the exact same time (convieniently enough.)
I don’t like that Snow was captured off-page. I don’t like that Snow didn’t have any escape available–Snow would have had an escape ready and another two or three backup plans… failing that, he would have had poison.
I don’t like that Prim was killed in such a stupid manner. I just don’t buy the exploding-parachutes-from-heaven bit.
I don’t like that both Gale and Peeta survived the assault so that the angsty ole love triangle could continue for a little longer–real soldiers would have put Peeta down the second he turned hostile.
I don’t like that Katniss had head-to-toe burns–everywhere except for her face.
There were parts of it that were excellent–like bringing the mountain down and Katniss getting shot and the defense of the hospital and Katniss wondering who she was breathing in when she was first touring the destruction of 12.
I love the dirty, gritty world Collins created, with hovercraft and non-burning flames, yet the people often can barely scratch out a living by hunting with a bow and arrow. And even that is illegal.
I really like how Katniss was used over and over again–often manipulating her manipulators–until, like any real human, she just broke.
On the whole, I liked the last book. I feel, though, that Collins got lazy and sloppy for most of the final third of it. It’s almost like she had a different ending plotted, then changed it at the last minute.
Oh, Katniss and Prim’s cat would never have become pals… but it’s nice to think that they did.
I think you’re right (Katniss mentions something along those lines at some point), but why would you name your country after a derogatory phrase? They might as well have named the country “Dystopia.”
I knew when I saw the silver parachutes coming down that the bombs were going to go off twice. Back in Special Weapons development, Beetee and Gale are talking about that very strategy. I don’t think Gale would ever wish that on Prim, and although you might hold him (or Beetee) ultimately responsible for the idea, that it happens the way it does immediately telegraphed to me that President Coin had developed their plan and ordered it be done. Katniss herself wonders who, after all, would have allowed her 13-year-old sister to serve as a front-line medic when she’s not even old enough to be a soldier according to District 13’s regulations.
I do think Plutarch frequently puts his own ends before others, and that he has a lot of self-serving ulterior motives, but ultimately I don’t think he’s “in” on the bombing action with Coin. I think she is the one who orchestrated it (as I explained above) - perhaps even in concert with something President Snow had worked up - and Plutarch’s men just happened to be there to capture it on film. They were probably expecting something else, such as a glorious storming of Snow’s mansion, resulting in his capture by rebel forces.
After all, who could trust their own leader if they new she’d been secretly communicating with the enemy president?
It is specifically this. Plutarch explains panem et circenses to Katniss in Mockingjay.
Snow points out to Katniss that he had no hovercraft left available; that the one which bombed the children was piloted by rebel soldiers. Katniss thinks he might be lying about this, but I think the fact that she chooses to shoot Coin instead of Snow tells you that she realizes he’s telling the truth.
That Snow didn’t escape, and is being held in his own mansion instead of a dungeon at the bottom of District 13 (as were fairly innocent Capitol citizens like Effie and Katniss’s prep team) speaks to me of some kind of expectation or arrangement between him and Coin. Sure, Coin brought the hovercraft full of bomb-parachutes, but who would’ve had the time to conveniently round up a mess of Capitol children corralled in a concrete barricade right outside the Presidential Manor - unless you suspected what might be coming?
Additionally, he’s very ill, and his health declines steadily over the course of the second and third books. Finnick reveals that Snow has already been poisoned or even poisoned himself, probably several times over (perhaps he built up an immunity to Iocaine powder?), in efforts to get rid of his political rivals. Thus, there may not be much left of him for Coin to execute anyway. Katniss says nobody’s even certain that he didn’t choke to death, coughing up his own blood as he was staked for execution.
I didn’t like it either, but again, I think this was orchestrated by Coin, perhaps in tandem with Snow. Coin had the idea for the bombs from Gale and Beetee, she had the hovercraft, and she also could have commissioned a [specific] under-age girl to be a combat medic.
Snow had gathered the Capitol children in a cluster outside the mansion, and would likely have had to deactivate the Capitol’s air defenses to let a hovercraft even get that close - there’s earlier dicussion about a lack of air support for the rebel advance after the Capitol’s anti-aircraft missiles take a terrible toll on the rebel fleet.
Peeta wasn’t “obsessed” with bread. Actually he was artistic and not that interested in the bread baking business (eventually, he started decorating cakes). At any rate, many of the children in the book had names related to something about what their parents valued.
Katniss and Primrose were named for an edible root and a flower, respectively, by their forager/herbalist parents. Children in wealthy districts named their children after luxury goods, like Cashmere and Glimmer. A guy from a fishing District was named Finnick. Two kids from a bread-making District were named Chaff and Seeder. Etc. Not everyone, but a lot of them.
Anyway I had my own theory on what made Mockingjay so shite - that some editor was very against the book being longer than the others and made the author cut it down by half or more.
I haven’t read any of them yet. The above opionion seems to be the consensus. Would those of you who’ve read all three recommend that I only read the first one and sort of pretend that books 2 and 3 don’t exist?
I do want to see the movie, but probably not until it’s on DVD.
I could barely make it through these books as Katniss irritated me and I hate stuff written in the present tense, and I obviously have bad taste. (struggled on, skimming to the end due to book club choice & job in high school library). but I can’t remember - what happened to Gale? curious, but not curious enough to go back to the book.
Anybody’s who’s far enough into this thread - the title of which includes the phrase “massive spoilers” - and hasn’t even started reading the first book can make no complaints about our spoiling things this far down, as we’ve already given away and thoroughly discussed the ending to the third book!
… so I’m not going to feel bad if someobody who hasn’t even started reads what I’m about to tell well he’s back about Gale’s fate.
Shortly before the remnants of Squad 451 reach President Snow’s mansion, Gale pulls himself into a shop on the main street to avoid a trap underneath the street’s surface. Once inside, he is immediately accosted by Peacekeepers.
He shouts at Katniss, and at first she can’t hear what he’s saying. By the time she can finally understand that he’s screaming at her to go on, she realizes that his first shouts were for her to shoot him so he wouldn’t be captured. That’s the last Katniss ever sees of Gale.
She later learns that although Gale was shot twice during the final assault on the Capitol, he survived, and has now taken an “important job” in District 2.
While obstensibly District 2 is the location of Panem’s rock quarries, and is officially the “Masonry District”, it was, before the rebellion, also the Capitol’s secret weapons development area, home to its military command and control center, and primary recruiting ground for its unswervingly loyal Peacekeepers.
This implies to me that Gale is now employed in some high-level military capacity.
This was my impression as well. I thought that Katniss blamed Coin for Prim’s death, so in order to get in a position to kill her, she did what she had to do.