Small Strokes Big Oaks

I’m sure by now you’ve all noticed I’ve been conspicuously absent these past few days (or maybe you’ve been busy enough with families and turkeys that my absence hasn’t really been noted).  I honestly haven’t even turned my computer on or so much as checked my Twitter or Facebook pages in four days.  All because of the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  Well, ok.  Because of tofurkey and family fun, too.  But it’s been a long time since a book or series of books has made me completely useless and dead to the world like the Hunger Games trilogy.  In fact, I think the last time this truly happened, I was deep in my fantasy book phase, devouring every single Anne McCaffrey and Dragonlance series book I could get my grubby little sixth-grade hands on.  And playing Magic: The Gathering.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Magic: The Gathering. I bet you can’t picture that, can you?

And, honestly, maybe that’s part of the reason I avoided the Hunger Games trilogy for so long.  People kept describing them as sci-fi young adult novels, and, as such, I avoided them like the plague.  First of all, I left my sci-fi/fantasy books behind me long ago and, as much as I loved them, I was sure that delving into the pages of a new one would leave me right in the middle of that lonely, angsty, teenage nightmare that was middle school. ¹  I also have been wary of other teen series-novels that have gained popularity like wildfire.  Harry Potter, for example, or even worse, Twilight.  I’m simply not interested in reading about teenage fantasy worlds where angst and drama prevail.  I lived through that once, and now I teach in the midst of it; I certainly don’t need to be reading about it in my precious time off.  Which is probably why I also tend to avoid young adult novels in general; the drama and drivel seem to be things that we’re trying to teach our students to avoid, not relish in.  However, after reading this trilogy, I would not classify it as young adult, sci-fi, or fantasy – although the voice of Katniss is decidedly seventeen and the arc of the trilogy does definitely follow that of a typical sci-fi or fantasy narrative with two battles followed by a third battle that decides the fate of the war and a little love story mixed in.  Which is probably why I loved it so much – it had all of the things I have always loved in books wrapped into one easy-to-read trilogy.

Do not read any further if you plan on reading these books but haven’t yet.  For real.  If you spoil the ending, you’ll be disappointed.  So stop now.  Read the books.  Come back later.  I’ll wait, I promise.  Also, I don’t really do plot summary, so if you do continue reading, it may not make a whole lot of sense if you haven’t already read the books.  The full review, spoilers and all, is after the break.  (You will also not be disappointed to know that I actually had a sign that looked like this hanging in my room when I was younger.  Except, of course, instead of spoilers, it said dragons.  I never cease to amaze you all, I know.)

So when The Hunger Games (the book, not the trilogy) was selected as our district’s summer reading for 2011, I was intrigued but cautious.  However, as an English teacher and therefore cheerleader for the summer reading program, I dove in right away.  And I have to say, I was not disappointed.  With all of the talk recently about trying to entice our population of boys to read (because girls are more likely to read on their own – for real, it’s true), I was thrilled to find a badass female character in Katniss who reflected not only rebellion towards the values of her dystopian society, but who was also very true to how a seventeen-year-old girl acts.  She faced the same self-doubt I remember at that age, and her devotion to her family and few friends as well as her desire to always do the right thing are traits that many teens have but are often overlooked because of other, more trouble-making classmates.  But girls like Katniss exist!  And they were the reason I so loved those fantasy novels in my youth.  There was always a seriously badass female character there that I could, and did, look up to and identify with.  Katniss, in this area, did not disappoint.  She hunts, shoots a bow and arrow with ease, values human life, and doesn’t get too wrapped up in any of that high school drama (which is made easier, of course, by the fact that she really doesn’t go to high school in her society).  She even manages to save her friend, Peeta, and herself from the Hunger Games, even though there is only supposed to be one winner.  Heck, these kids fight to the death.  For real!  How many young adult novels can claim that?  And Katniss’s mostly positive outlook and occasional biting sarcasm make her an even more lovable and realistic character.  Even the love story in this book – although real for Peeta – is a contrived piece to feed the media in the Capitol that Katniss doesn’t even have time to consider because she’s busy doing other things.  There are moments when the feminist in me cringes, though – like when they try to play up her girliness for the cameras or berate her for having a hot temper or lack of “personality”.  They try – albeit unsuccessfully – to make her into a girly-girl, but it seems, in the end, she’s unwilling to change that part of her save for in front of the cameras to save Peeta’s life, and the people around her love her just the same.

Suzanne Collins is masterful with the cliffhanger chapter endings in these three books, and the book endings are more of the same.  Luckily I have my Kindle because if I didn’t, I’d have had to wait until after Thanksgiving and then braved the Black Friday crowds to get my hands on Catching Fire, the second book in the trilogy.  The second book in the trilogy is, truly, more of the same with more of an emphasis on the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Katniss’s best friend, Gale, and how Katniss is trying to decide between the two.  However, given Katniss’s age and the fact that “One of the few freedoms we have in District 12 is the right to marry who we want or not marry at all.  And now even that has been taken away from me” (location 560), this seems a reasonable train of thought.  At times, the love triangle thing becomes tiresome, and I found myself wishing that she’d just make up her mind already and stop stringing these boys along.  Her delving into which boy to choose brings her even deeper into the self-hatred that propels her through the third novel – she hates herself that she cannot choose, she hates herself that she killed those people in the arena in book one, she hates herself that she cannot protect her District or her family.  Sounds like a typical perfectionist to me, although her teeter-tottering between the boys becomes just a bit much for my feminist subconscious.  Except just when you think you can’t stand it any longer and you just need to know who she will choose, you’re struck in the chest by the injustice of it all that her and Peeta have to go back into the games.  As I was reading this novel, I wish I could have forced myself to put a few days between the first and second, because I found myself so upset by the violence that not only seemed to repeat itself from the first book, but also grew in intensity and injustice.  Fortunately, many of my favorite characters (Come on, who didn’t love Finnick?! Seriously!) made it out of the arena alive this time but, in yet another cliffhanger, we find that Peeta is being held prisoner by the Capitol and that’s about where the story ends.

Again, thank goodness for my Kindle, because I bought and began reading Mockingjay, the third book in the trilogy, immediately.  And then stayed up until 2:00 AM last night finishing it.  In Mockingjay, unlike in the other two books, we are turned inward into Katniss’s fragile psyche, being held hostage by her inner demons and nightmares that seem a realistic aftermath of the blood, gore, and killing she’s been forced to witness.  This particular book also focuses quite a bit on military strategy, the pros and cons of killing for any reason, and the toll it takes on both people and the Earth itself.  At times, the anti-war agenda Collins obviously has becomes almost heavy-handed with statements like: “‘Oh no.  It costs a lot more than your life.  To murder innocent people?’ says Peeta.  ‘It costs everything you are.'” (location 320) and then as we see Gale becoming more the soldier man and less the hunter boy Katniss fell in love with while hunting in the forest (she may not admit this ever, but I’ll go ahead and admit this for her), she says to him:

“So, it’d be easy for you?  Using that on people?” I ask.

“I didn’t say that.” Gale drops the bow to his side.  “But if I’d had a weapon that could’ve stopped what I saw happen in Twelve… if I’d had a weapon that could have kept you out of the arena… I’d have used it.”

“Me too,” I admit.  But I don’t know what to tell him about the aftermath of killing a person.  About how they never leave you.

We see Katniss’s full  transformation in this book from the staunch fighter and friend to the traumatized young woman still determined to make a difference in her society.  She fights, speaks in public, puts a face on the revolution.  But she still has this pesky boy problem to deal with.  In the midst of the battle they are fighting (because that’s the best time to do it?), she is finally able to talk to the boys about her tug-of-war, and only in a state of delusion brought upon by the Capitol’s torture is Peeta able to call her out on her stringing them along: “‘And it was okay with both of us?  You kissing the other?’ he asks.  ‘No.  It wasn’t okay with either of you.  But I wasn’t asking your permission,’ I tell him.” (location 2975).  My feminist heart fluttered a bit at this, underlining the passage and murmuring a good for you.  Even though I wanted her to choose, I wanted her to do so at her own pace.

Soon after that, however, she is in battle in the Capitol and everything happens so disappointingly fast that I’m not sure Collins herself even knew what was going on.  Part of me thinks she was trying to mimic Katniss’s despair and her falling in and out of shock, but I’m not quite sure that was the desired effect.  At many points during the final narration, I wished Collins had made the choice to move us out of Katniss’s narration and into someone else’s.  Before I could even process what was happening, children are being used as a shield for the Capitol, then are being bombed by who knows which side, and Prim is dead and Katniss badly burned.  Eventually, Katniss comes back to consciousness and the narrative is easier to follow, but then in a matter of pages, we find out that Katniss actually votes FOR HAVING ANOTHER HUNGER GAMES WITH THE CHILDREN OF THE CAPITOL?!?!?! (How on earth could she possibly have come to this decision?!), then she assassinates President Coin – the rebel leader who wasn’t much better than President Snow (the president of Panem who installed the Hunger Games in the first place), and  we learn that the one who probably designed the bomb that killed Katniss’s little sister, Prim – the girl who really started this whole thing off because of being chosen originally for the Hunger Games and Katniss taking her place – was Katniss’s best friend, Gale, and are left with Katniss never being able to forgive him for this.  She’s taken back to District 12 with her drunken mentor, Haymitch, and pretty much left to her own devices to sweat out her grief.  Gale never comes back to 12, but Peeta does, and sort of by default, Katniss and Peeta end up happily ever after.  (If you’re confused or out of breath reading this recap, you and I are feeling the same way about the last chapters of the novel.)

This is where I was the most disappointed.  I expected the long and drawn-out war narratives from years of reading fantasy trilogies and was happy to have that whole thing resolved.  But Katniss choosing who she wanted to spend her life with ending in this way?  This, I was not prepared for from the badass fighter I met in the first novel.  She had absolutely no agency in this situation; she’s left with Peeta because Gale didn’t come back to her.  Honestly, she may have cared for Peeta, but Gale was the one who was by her side the whole time.  As he put it himself, she truly could not have survived without him helping her hunt or holding her hand or backing up her half-cocked war strategies.  Of course, the feminist in me also wants to scream “You don’t need a man, Katniss!”, but I did decide to quiet that part of me, because I think she absolutely did need someone at the end of this novel to help her cope with the trauma she experienced.  And, for the love of god, after all that girl had been through, she deserved a little happiness and peace and quiet!  Haymitch was drunk and useless, her mother was completely washed away by grief because of her sister’s death, which pretty much left Gale or Peeta.  It just surprises me that after all the complaining Katniss did about not having autonomy over her own marriage that she wouldn’t actually get to have some autonomy over it in the end as a sort of payback to those who made her pretend to be in love with Peeta in the first place.  I suppose you could argue that she made her choice when she told Gale she could never forgive him for possibly designing the bomb that killed Prim, but even after that we find her desperately searching for a way to prove it wasn’t him rather than seeking out Peeta, having made her decision.  So she ends up sitting at home, grief-stricken and totally self absorbed, and ends up in the arms of Peeta, who happens to show up at her doorstep.  It left me wanting to see a little more of that fire she claims to still have at the end – needing a dandelion (Peeta) instead of more fire (Gale) – than we’re left with. She really takes the perfect fodder for a feminist character and turns it into a soccer mom.  (I can’t take credit for that line – that one was my mom’s 🙂 ).

All in all, I loved the trilogy, and really only take issue with the ending (even though her happiness made me intensely happy and relieved).  There is enough bird and fire imagery and war commentary to write a dissertation, and I still feel these novels are much more mature and foster much more critical thought than the typical young adult novels I find my students pouring over.  In fact, when I did get to the ending, I was crying so hard Tim was worried about me.  I was just so relieved about her happiness – as well as angry, frustrated, sad, and happy.  It’s been a long time – maybe since the fantasy novels of my youth – since I’ve had that sort of release (followed by a heartbreaking emptiness) after reading a good book.  I’m excited to tackle even just the first one with my students next year, and excited to hear comments from those of you who’ve read it here!