Mockingjay has produced the most different reviews of the Hunger Games trilogy among my friends, and it's interesting to note that the guys I know seemed to hate it while the girls I know seemed to love it. Is the resolution of the Katniss/Peeta/Gale love triangle the source of this rift between genders? Perhaps. I'll give Mockingjay a wishy-washy and thus possibly androgynous review and take neither side. Much of the book involved constant planning and scheming without much action- I'm ok with this though, a book full of planning is right up my alley (this wasn't all that far off from a young adult version of The Stand in a few ways). Through Katniss we get to see the revolution both in its developmental stages as well as the front lines- it was a little ridiculous that the battles were constantly fought by teenagers, but then I realized that Katniss would almost be old enough to enlist in our U.S. army and she would be closer to fighting in a war at her age than I would at mine. I appreciated the more subdued ending as well- it would have been so easy for Katniss to get some real revenge on those who have done her wrong, or maybe have the revolution go out in a blaze of unresolved glory, but a small twist at the end made a big impact on the message- not just the same-old same-old about good triumphing over evil but that everyone, no matter how righteous is capable of terrible atrocities. Either way I still think Collins is probably at her best in writing the games themselves- I still hold to my stance that she could have written a dozen novels in the vein of The Hunger Games without completely runnin' that shit into the ground. That first book was undeniably fun and I'm pumped for the movie.
Open discussion time! We've seemingly all read the book at this point. Why did it suck so hard? Or, why didn't it? In lieu of writing the high school style five paragraph essay, I'll give you my high school style five bullet outline:
ReplyDeleteHypothesis - The book was a letdown.
Point A - There was too much planning and too little action, and even the action that there was wasn't intense or satisfying.
Point B - The juxtaposition of a love triangle against a "last stand civil war" was completely out of place and not in an effective or clever way where teenage angst was meant as a metaphor for revolution against a dictatorship or anything like that.
Point C - At the book's conclusion, we're left exactly where we would have been, if not worse off, at the start of the first book (Prim dead, thousands of others dead, President still in charge), but unless I missed an underlying theme and Collins was trying to offer some sort of poignant analysis on how "things stay the same" or "fighting for freedom is pointless," I'm left wondering why she ended things the way she did.
Conclusion - The book was a letdown.
Also, what do you mean when you say Katniss is closer to fighting in a war at her age than you are in yours? The Internet tells me that the average age of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is 27 or 30, depending on the source I use. Vietnam was 19 or 20, which is probably what you were alluding to. Either way though, those are overseas wars - when the war is in your own homeland, people of all ages would, in theory, be doing the fighting. Like in the American Revolution, a lot of the British soldiers were teenagers, but the American forces included everyone from teenagers to old men. Like, it makes sense to send "kids" overseas to do the fighting, but on the homefront I imagine every able-bodied person would lend a hand. Also it seemed like Katniss and company were not just "soldiers" in this war, but important strategists and leaders as well. And that's never been the case in any war in any place. I dunno, it's the same issue I have with Red Dawn. Kids are leading the rebellion? Well, we're fucked.
But I do agree that the first book was entertaining and that the movie should be so as well.