For a young adult novelist, Susan Collins certainly has no
problems holding back punches. The final
book in her Hunger Games series, Mockingjay, ends far from the “everyone
lives happily ever after” cliché we have come to expect from the genre. Although far from the best book in series,
Collins stays true to the characters and the world that she has created and
ends things with a bang. Nothing has
been easy about Katniss Everdeen’s life and that theme continues here. Tough decisions, monumental loss, extraordinary
violence have all been cornerstones in her life and continue to afflict her in
this last volume. But what makes these
stories so special is the fact that Katniss is extremely human in the imperfect
manner she deals with all her ordeals.
She isn’t the flawless hero, or the tragic hero, she’s a normal person
caught in an abnormal situation who plugs through as best she can. She comes out the other side scarred by her
mistakes, indifferent to her successes, wanting nothing but a normal life that
will most likely always be out of her reach.
Mockingjay does a wonderful job of
attacking ideas like war and government even though its audience isn’t usually
confronted with these issues. Unlike the
series it is most compared to, the Twilight
books, The Hunger Games is not just a
frivolous story about teen love and ridiculous drama. Collins addresses important ideas and does so
in a way that isn’t overly corny. In Mockingjay those ideas become fleshed
out to a point the other two books never suggest. The story shifts from the idea of the weak
rising to overthrow the powerful to the idea that absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Collins made the bold choice
of making the rebel government no better or appealing then Snow’s reign. Just as she builds the momentum for the glory
that comes with victory in war, she throws her readers a curveball and suggests
that no matter the government, people like Katniss will always be a pawn in
their own game of power chess; that there is no glory in war, just a lifetime
of having to deal with the choices it forces people to make. This seems a heady statement to be making to
tweens and I wonder how many kids walked away with an understanding of what
Collins was implying, but I can’t help but applaud her for throwing it out
there none the less.
One of the
most discussed aspects of the books was the Katniss/Peeta/Gale love
triangle. After now reading all three
novels, I can’t help but feel that thing was media hype in reaction to the Twilight books, as if the Hunger Games had to match the aspects
that made the Twilight books so
popular. There really never was much of
a triangle. It was always Peeta and
Katniss never really came to a point where that wasn’t the case. And although Gale expressed his love on a few
occasions, he never did much to fight Peeta for Katniss’ affection or try to
convince her he was the better choice.
There never seems to be much reason for a “Team Gale” or “Team Peeta”
here when as special a person as Gale may be to Katniss, Peeta was always the
best choice for her.
I picked up
the first book in this series expecting to hate it, wanting to hate it, but
three books later I can only describe myself as impressed. These books are everything the Twilight novels could never hope of
being, with Mockingjay being the most ambitious of the three. The writing is wonderful, the characters are
deep and thoughtful and the world they inhabit is well drawn out. Collins has created a series that both
children and adults can enjoy without sacrificing the idea of well written
literature.
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