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[faithful_summer]

Poll: The ending of Mocking Jay sucked. Real or not real? Discuss. How would you have ended it?

Do not read comments if you have not yet read the book and don't want to see spoilers.

Comments

[akiko]

I disagree that it sucked. Let me find and copy a comment I wrote in someone else's journal, because I like that comment I wrote a lot...

Katniss said she didn't want to have a child that would be raised in the same environment she had, with the constant threat of the Games hanging over their heads, because she wouldn't be able to protect them. So when Panem was changed and the Games were abolished, she changed, too.

I think to make the ending more satisfactory inasmuch as drawing a line between the ending and the epilogue there would have needed to be another at least 50 pages, if not 100. Which is beyond the usual YA page count (except Harry Potter).

She kind of pulled an Eowyn, in a way. They're both very damaged, if in somewhat different ways, and they have similar responses: fight, literally, to protect the people/country you love. They both find healing when the fighting's over in similar ways. Eowyn and Faramir recover from their shell shock PTSD the Black Breath together, and they both dedicate the rest of their lives to healing the wounds of war (in the gardens of Ithilien, and Eowyn studies the healing arts). Katniss and Peeta help each other recover (offscreen, unfortunately) from their PTSD, and they spend a good bit of time memorializing the horrors of the 75 years of the Games and helping clean up the mess.

I wanted her to pick Gale, and up until the part where she was never sure he didn't kill her sister, I was sure she would. But that bit of doubt, and that shrug from him implying he didn't know or it didn't matter because it was war, that would chafe and become a huge rift. But I felt that the romance was resolved well enough (I hate love triangles so much), because Katniss and Peeta had an understanding of how the other had been tortured and they could help each other heal. I didn't think it was particularly fair to Gale, but that whole what-if would make an uncomfortable point in a relationship.

[faithful_summer]

I was happy for her to end up with Peeta (though I went back and forth over that pretty much throughout the whole series), but the things that bugged me most were:

--As you mentioned, there wasn't much connection between the ending and epilogue. It kind of had a "and then they lived happily ever after (as much as two traumatized people could)" feel. I would have liked to see more how they got to that.

--All the glossed over scenes where she's sick/injured/out of her mind and tons of important things obviously happen (the final overthrow of Snow, the aftermath of Coin's assassination) but we only see Katniss' drugged up dreams or her thoughts of suicide. Though, doing more there would have certainly made the word count even longer.

--So, her best friend/whatever Gale just disappears after she shoots Coin and we never see or hear from him again? Seems out of character.

--Edit for one more addition: I guess I'm also just kind of pissed off that Katniss got so broken and stayed that way. Or at least, did for a majority of what we see.

I was really expecting right up until almost the end that she would assassinate Coin and somehow bring to light to the people the truth about her tactics. Then *some stuff* would happen and someone else would be elected leader and Katniss and many of the other prominent "good guys" would take on some kind of role as advisors or *something*. And they'd work out the love triangle thing somehow or other in the process. And we'd get more of a look at how Panem recovered/restructured. I didn't have every last detail worked out for how I thought it should end, but that's a general overview of what I was kind of expecting/hoping for.

Redeeming quality for the ending the way it is now:
The cat came back. It made me happy even though it was kind of sad.

[akiko]

See, I thought it was a really nice touch that we got to see Katniss suffering from some serious PTSD and taking medication for it. There's such a stigma against medicating for mental illness in this society that having this major character take meds is huge.

What the friend whose post I commented on said in response was interesting: the reader is in a way as much of a voyeur as the people watching the Games, so Peeta and Katniss healing off-screen finally gives the some privacy. Whether that was deliberate on Collins' part, who knows, but it's certainly an interesting reading.

I think with Gale, and the chance that it was his bomb that killed Prim, there was no going back for Katniss there. She can't live with the unresolved question of whether he did it or not, and he wasn't talking.