Warning: Spoilers abound. There’s also some Harry Potter spoilers, too, if you’re one of the twelve people who hasn’t read that series yet. I know, I’m bad.
I finally got around to reading all three books in The Hunger Games series last week. This is mostly because I was living under a rock and didn’t even know these books existed until the end of August when every other word on my Twitter feed suddenly became “Mockingjay.” After a little research I figured out that this referred to the last book in a series. A very popular series. So, I set out to read it.
I got The Hunger Games from the library as soon as I could. I cracked it open and read it through in one day. It was really good. I mean, really, really, really good. I went to work the next day and told everyone about it hoping to win some converts. The book was nearly perfect. It had romance, political corruption, social unrest, crippling poverty, and a reality-style fight to the death. I even loved reading Suzanne Collins’ inspiration for writing the book. Per Wikipedia: “Collins says that the idea for The Hunger Games came to her one day when she was channel-surfing, and the lines between a reality show competition and war coverage ‘began to blur in this very unsettling way.’” The book really spoke to me and I thought it reflected something about the state of our world today.
So imagine how anxious I was to read Catching Fire. I even went out and bought it. In hardcover. For $15! Okay, Catching Fire was good. I was mostly annoyed with the Katniss-Peeta non-romance. The boy was so clearly in love with her and she was, quite cruelly, faking affection for him (even if she did have a good reason to). I mean, seriously? You don’t love the boy who saved your life at the Hunger Games? You may or may not be in love with your hunting partner, Gale? And maybe it speaks to the way the horrors of war effect our ability to form lasting attachments, but the whole I-don’t-know-if-I-love-you-let’s-see-how-this-plays-out-for-the-next-two-books-thing wore on me very quickly. And the Hunger Games again? Really? Yeah, the new games were really cool and the plot to escape the games without declaring a winner was awesome, but I found it hard to believe Katniss was so clueless that whole time. I mean, even I knew something was up or that it couldn’t end with all the victors killing each other. Plus, seriously, President Snow? A Hunger Games for the victors? The people those guys in the Capitol love and adore? You really thought that was a good move politically?
So, even though Catching Fire didn’t live up to all my fondest dreams, I was fully prepared for Mockingjay to knock my socks off. After all, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix underwhelmed me at first (I now sees its place in the series and love it), but Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows came back to rock the house. I’m sorry, but Mockingjay was definitely not the high point of the series. Oh, Bella… I mean Katniss, you’re still not sure whom you love? Should you be the Mockingjay or shouldn’t you? What is President Snow doing to Peeta? Isn’t Gale kind of a homicidal jerk? And why would you ever trust these District 13 weirdoes?
Okay, I thought Collins did a lot of things right. For starters, I liked that District 13 had the evil going on too, because it showed that, in war, one side is not all bad while the other is all good. I also kind of liked the tough positions Katniss was forced into. And, sorry Peeta, but thank God the Capitol brainwashed you against Katniss, because I could not stand one more book filled with you following her around with sad puppy dog eyes.
I guess the thing that mostly annoyed me was that it didn’t seem like Katniss actually knew herself by the time we had gotten to this final book. She railed against the Capitol without fully understanding the potential for corruption in District 13. She flip-flopped between Peeta and Gale, in the end, settling on Peeta for who knows what reason. And she was okay with the Hunger Games for the children of the Capitol. What? Even killing Coin seems like an afterthought.
Now, here’s the part where I compare it to the end of Harry Potter. Deathly Hallows ends beautifully, perfectly, and poetically with Voldemort destroying himself. Harry, who has more right than Katniss ever did to kill, refuses to take out his mortal enemy, instead offering him a chance at redemption. I know Hunger Games does not exist in the same world as Harry Potter, and that Katniss’s best bet probably was to shoot President Coin, but that whole climax seemed unsatisfying. In fact, the whole last book, which our narrator spends in a drug-induced stupor, causing us to miss many important pieces of information, cannot compare with the lucid, fully-realized storytelling in the final Harry Potter. Harry feels and shares everything with us while Katniss seems to sleepwalk through the end. Harry is the Chosen One, the only person who can stop Voldemort, while Katniss is the reluctant Mockingjay posing for her photo opportunities, unsure how to act from one moment to the next.
If you've read The Hunger Games trilogy, what do you think?
-- Lisa
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