that time I read the Hunger Games trilogy in like three days
FEELINGS, Y'ALL. So my Hunger Games Post is going to be two posts actually, lmao. I have decided to try and touch on what I took from the first two before I get to Mockingjay, which will probably be a much longer part because it'll tackle my feelings about the series as a whole too. So here’s the first two books now, and I’ll finish writing out my thoughts on Mockingjay when I get home later. LOL TL;DR I HOPE I HAVEN'T GUARANTEED THAT NO ONE WILL ACTUALLY READ THIS.
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games grabbed me by the heart so quickly and completely that I was already crying within the first 25 pages, when Katniss walked onto the stage for her at the reaping. It was a great introduction to the characters and the world. I fell immediately in love with Katniss, who within a chapter was established as practical and strong and amazing in the face of unimaginable hardship that only gets harder and harder through the series. But she’s still very much a 16-year old girl, an emotionally closed-off one, and that’s the most heartbreaking thing. All she wants is to keep the people she loves fed and safe and protected and that need drives her every action from the moment we meet her, as more people enter and leave that circle of love and protection.
I loved her relationship with Prim, the only person Katniss is sure she loves, her much more fraught relationship with her mother who abandoned her in everything but body and left her and Prim to fend for themselves, and the deep kinship and friendship she has with Gale, the way they lean on each other. Then, of course, there’s her relationship with Peeta and Haymitch, both of which start out distrustful but evolve in a subtle kind of way as they lead up to the games. I loved Cinna instantly and his private moments with Katniss are almost all tearjerkers for me.
Then the games started and it became a total rollercoaster. I spent the whole thing on the edge of my seat and the verge of tears. Despite that I’ve seen very similar stuff in Battle Royale and similar. It was both horrifying and extremely engaging from the off, and it's kind of interesting how Collins condemns the Games, but gives us a hell of a ride in the process. I could not. stop. reading. We learn even more about Katniss, how she can be cold and calculating and will do anything to survive, how she keeps the real enemy in sight (Snow and by extension the citizens of the Capitol) and figures out how to manipulate them in the context of the game. Collins doesn’t pull punches and isn’t afraid to really flesh Katniss out, and she remains all the more sympathetic and amazing a character for that, imo anyway. She kicks ass without being a spunky stereotype and she’s very very relatable despite the extreme circumstances.
I kind of loved Katniss and Peeta’s relationship through this whole book. How they go from sizing each other up as enemies and end up protecting each other by turns in the arena. Kat starts to feel something real for him and I bought that. I thought it was believably tangled and confused in her mind with what she was fabricating for the cameras. Which is where I think Collins’ use of first-person narration is the most interesting - there are times when we’re more aware of Katniss’ feelings than she is, which makes things seem predictable in spots but somehow still keeps us guessing. I thought the theme of Kat feeling indebted to Peeta for his crush on her as a kid could’ve gone somewhere really problematic but, in this book at least, avoided that trope -- because romance was the furthest thing from her mind, and because she tends to view a lot of her relationships through a lens of debts that can’t be repaid. Also, one of the subtleties of their relationship is the class difference -- that she’s from the Seam and he isn’t; he hasn’t known the extent of deprivation and desperation and single-minded focus to survive that she has. They come from different worlds, even though they’re from the same district, and it made sense that they were never quite on the same page.
I grew to love Peeta for his kindness and deep-down goodness, but still wanted to smack him when he put that guilt trip on Kat for not returning his feelings. He told her in the beginning that it was only a ploy, and blaming her for not noticing his actual crush was wrong. Made worse by the fact that she herself felt guilty when she had no real reason to, as far as I’m concerned.
I still tear up whenever I think about Rue. Practically speaking I knew she would die and that Katniss probably wouldn’t be the one to kill her (Collins does pull SOME punches after all - rarely was Kat in the position of having to make uncomplicatedly direct kill even though she was shown as willing to do so), but seeing them ally with each other, help each other out and provide that brief time of happiness and friendship before it was snuffed out just filled me with hope. At that point there was still a chance in my mind that the games could be subverted somehow. Even knowing that it would be a trilogy, but still ... RUE. And the parallels with Prim that go deeper than I realised at the time... oh, I was a sobbing mess when she died.
The only thing about this book that fell flat for me at the end was the inevitability of the love triangle situation. It just seemed so ... off the point of the books, to get into all that when what I wanted to see was for Kat to bring the Capitol down. Not to mention that I didn’t feel we knew Gale very well at all and we didn’t see Kat’s reunion with her mother, with Prim. It was all about setting up this situation between Gale and Peeta when at that point, it wasn’t immediately clear that she wanted to be with either of them (which I loved, and which made me love her even more). Interesting enough, but I wasn’t looking forward to it becoming a big focus.
Catching Fire
Catching Fire might be my least favorite of the trilogy, which, mind you, is just compared to the other two books -- which is to say, still damn entertaining. It doesn’t work as well on its own as THG did; not that there’s any reason why it should have being a part of three, but I was damn glad I had Mockingjay handy because about half of CF was setup for that. And just from a narrative standpoint it didn’t make as much sense because somewhere in the middle of the book, the focus is taken away from where it might be the most interesting. (Now that I’ve read Mockingjay I think I understand her decision a little better, but these are my thoughts as I was reading.)
I thought Collins portrayed the rising rebellion (through Katniss’ limited perspective) during the Victory Tour brilliantly. It had a sense of buildup to it that was both hopeful and ominous, and deeply deeply chilling. The beginning of the book was a too much Peeta vs. Gale for my liking (I just don’t feel like the romantic aspects of the triangle ever had much tension - Gale was never really in the running as far as I could see and Katniss’ main concern was keeping them both close and safe, not necessarily marrying either one) but the plot quickly picked up speed as the rebellion outside started to affect District 12 and the crackdown began. I got so engrossed and hopeful; it was what I was hoping for since the very beginning basically. And here’s when we got to know Gale a little more. In the first book we already know he’s more gung-ho about rebelling than Katniss, whose priority is still the safety of those she loves. We see more of that in the second book when he doesn’t hesitate to fight while Kat remains conflicted. I was really happy that she DID decide to stay and fight, though, so much that I was frustrated with Haymitch for shooting her down. (I was also frustrated with Haymitch for telling her she could never deserve Peeta, because fuck that. At the same time, Haymitch is a little too much like Katniss, which is a recurring theme, so maybe it makes sense that he’s voicing her own insecurities to her.)
So anyway, yes -- the revolution will not be televised. (Not in this book anyway, haha.) And I start to really get into it, get into Kat’s indecision, her fear for her family, and the tide of change. All that stuff. But then they suddenly have go back into the arena? WHAT? At that point my emotional investment was with the world at large, and Katniss’ relationships with her family, and how 12 and the other districts were going to mount this big uprising. At this point we’ve even got an inkling that there might still be a district 13! So yeah, Collins’ decision to isolate Katniss from everything felt really jarring to me. Especially when it meant returning to the old formula from the first book. It’s just difficult having an arena situation that isn’t totally predictable and I saw the destruction of the arena and Plutarch’s complicity in it coming from pretty early on.
That’s not to say the Quarter Quell was totally pointless or uninteresting; far from it. We got to see how things were changing in the Capitol. We got to meet the other victors which was awesome - Finnick and Johanna especially. (no seriously i LOVE THEM. More on that when I talk about Mockingjay.) And there was Haymitch’s pact with Katniss to keep Peeta alive in the arena. There was a heartbreaking symmetry in that compared to the first book. Which led to some fantastic scenes.
At the same time, while I was frustrated at her being cut off from everything, I have to respect Collins’ decision not to make Katniss singlehandedly spearhead the rebellion as a 17-year old girl. Kind of a brave choice to show things solely from her POV, to make her unaware of a lot of things and essentially a cog in a machine -- a piece in a different game. I didn’t feel like this diminished her characterization at all, but the entire tone of the series shifted at that point, took an even darker turn. That’s not to say I agree with Haymitch keeping the master plan from Katniss. I think he took a lot more risks in NOT telling her and Peeta what was up, and because of the first-person thing again, some things became obvious to us that weren’t obvious to her and maybe should have been. So it’s frustrating - but it’s also a little like life in that sometimes big things happen around us and we don’t have all the info but it’s all we can do to keep ourselves afloat where we are.
As far as the love triangle - idk, I had some problems with this in CF, more than in THG and Mockingjay. Because at some point during this book, Gale and Peeta started to represent the two options Kat was struggling with in the plot: Gale represented the rebellion, and Peeta represented the safety of the status quo, or at least, a more inward-thinking focus on keeping her family and friends safe before anything else. And there was no separation in the narrative between her interpersonal indecision and her moral indecision, which then leaves no option for her to, say, choose rebellion and remain single. (*waves Team Katniss flag*) Especially problematic because she STILL is not sure she wants either of them in a romantic way - she feels strong affection for them both but it’s all mixed up with friendship, and obligation, and wanting to keep them safe. You constantly see her chafe at the idea of being confronted and pressured with a romantic choice at a time like this - understandably so! Her confusion was believable but it made the prospect of either ship really troubling for me... she didn’t have a lot of options either way.
Meanwhile, the boys are putting pressure on her that she doesn’t need. Gale does so almost consciously, and Peeta not so much. After laying the guilt trip on her at the end the first book, Peeta backs off a bit - apologizes for said guilt trip (which definitely won him some points with me) and proceeds to give her space and be an actual friend to her. I liked that. But even though he honestly tries to give her space, I don’t believe she ever feels like she has a choice, not in this book, because of her insecurities and feeling indebted, not to mention the public ruse they’re keeping up ... and that’s a problem. Then we have Gale who confuses the situation even more with his declarations of love, even though she couldn’t have made it more obvious that she wasn’t ready for all that, that she didn’t love him in the same way at that point. And then he got all pouty over a situation that he knew she had little control over or choice in. Maybe a human reaction, but at that point, Team Gale was dead in the water for me.
Also, I’ve been reading some fan reactions about how Katniss is mistreating both dudes, doesn’t deserve them, and whatever, and CAN I JUST SAY: Regardless of her own insecurities about the situation and regardless how Haymitch feels about whether she deserves Peeta (wtf haymitch does not even go here), in no way is Katniss obligated to return Peeta’s or Gale’s affections, or to hurry up and choose one and ~end their suffering~, just because they’re nice guys who like her. No way does she in fact owe Peeta anything just because he apparently crushed on her from afar for years. No way does she have to love him just because his love turned out to be genuine and not an act (sorry that she was too busy surviving and by the way KEEPING HIM ALIVE to notice this). And no way does her long-standing friendship with Gale obligate her to try for anything romantic with him. Look, to the peeps who want to call Katniss selfish: I get that everyone reads something different into a source, but no, actually, you are wrong, and to condemn Katniss for feeling like she does is to miss the entire point of her. Not to end this on a bad note or anything, cough, ahem. I just have a lot of feelings.
Oh and I may have more Notes To Fandom (tm) when I talk about Mockingjay. -__-’
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The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games grabbed me by the heart so quickly and completely that I was already crying within the first 25 pages, when Katniss walked onto the stage for her at the reaping. It was a great introduction to the characters and the world. I fell immediately in love with Katniss, who within a chapter was established as practical and strong and amazing in the face of unimaginable hardship that only gets harder and harder through the series. But she’s still very much a 16-year old girl, an emotionally closed-off one, and that’s the most heartbreaking thing. All she wants is to keep the people she loves fed and safe and protected and that need drives her every action from the moment we meet her, as more people enter and leave that circle of love and protection.
I loved her relationship with Prim, the only person Katniss is sure she loves, her much more fraught relationship with her mother who abandoned her in everything but body and left her and Prim to fend for themselves, and the deep kinship and friendship she has with Gale, the way they lean on each other. Then, of course, there’s her relationship with Peeta and Haymitch, both of which start out distrustful but evolve in a subtle kind of way as they lead up to the games. I loved Cinna instantly and his private moments with Katniss are almost all tearjerkers for me.
Then the games started and it became a total rollercoaster. I spent the whole thing on the edge of my seat and the verge of tears. Despite that I’ve seen very similar stuff in Battle Royale and similar. It was both horrifying and extremely engaging from the off, and it's kind of interesting how Collins condemns the Games, but gives us a hell of a ride in the process. I could not. stop. reading. We learn even more about Katniss, how she can be cold and calculating and will do anything to survive, how she keeps the real enemy in sight (Snow and by extension the citizens of the Capitol) and figures out how to manipulate them in the context of the game. Collins doesn’t pull punches and isn’t afraid to really flesh Katniss out, and she remains all the more sympathetic and amazing a character for that, imo anyway. She kicks ass without being a spunky stereotype and she’s very very relatable despite the extreme circumstances.
I kind of loved Katniss and Peeta’s relationship through this whole book. How they go from sizing each other up as enemies and end up protecting each other by turns in the arena. Kat starts to feel something real for him and I bought that. I thought it was believably tangled and confused in her mind with what she was fabricating for the cameras. Which is where I think Collins’ use of first-person narration is the most interesting - there are times when we’re more aware of Katniss’ feelings than she is, which makes things seem predictable in spots but somehow still keeps us guessing. I thought the theme of Kat feeling indebted to Peeta for his crush on her as a kid could’ve gone somewhere really problematic but, in this book at least, avoided that trope -- because romance was the furthest thing from her mind, and because she tends to view a lot of her relationships through a lens of debts that can’t be repaid. Also, one of the subtleties of their relationship is the class difference -- that she’s from the Seam and he isn’t; he hasn’t known the extent of deprivation and desperation and single-minded focus to survive that she has. They come from different worlds, even though they’re from the same district, and it made sense that they were never quite on the same page.
I grew to love Peeta for his kindness and deep-down goodness, but still wanted to smack him when he put that guilt trip on Kat for not returning his feelings. He told her in the beginning that it was only a ploy, and blaming her for not noticing his actual crush was wrong. Made worse by the fact that she herself felt guilty when she had no real reason to, as far as I’m concerned.
I still tear up whenever I think about Rue. Practically speaking I knew she would die and that Katniss probably wouldn’t be the one to kill her (Collins does pull SOME punches after all - rarely was Kat in the position of having to make uncomplicatedly direct kill even though she was shown as willing to do so), but seeing them ally with each other, help each other out and provide that brief time of happiness and friendship before it was snuffed out just filled me with hope. At that point there was still a chance in my mind that the games could be subverted somehow. Even knowing that it would be a trilogy, but still ... RUE. And the parallels with Prim that go deeper than I realised at the time... oh, I was a sobbing mess when she died.
The only thing about this book that fell flat for me at the end was the inevitability of the love triangle situation. It just seemed so ... off the point of the books, to get into all that when what I wanted to see was for Kat to bring the Capitol down. Not to mention that I didn’t feel we knew Gale very well at all and we didn’t see Kat’s reunion with her mother, with Prim. It was all about setting up this situation between Gale and Peeta when at that point, it wasn’t immediately clear that she wanted to be with either of them (which I loved, and which made me love her even more). Interesting enough, but I wasn’t looking forward to it becoming a big focus.
Catching Fire
Catching Fire might be my least favorite of the trilogy, which, mind you, is just compared to the other two books -- which is to say, still damn entertaining. It doesn’t work as well on its own as THG did; not that there’s any reason why it should have being a part of three, but I was damn glad I had Mockingjay handy because about half of CF was setup for that. And just from a narrative standpoint it didn’t make as much sense because somewhere in the middle of the book, the focus is taken away from where it might be the most interesting. (Now that I’ve read Mockingjay I think I understand her decision a little better, but these are my thoughts as I was reading.)
I thought Collins portrayed the rising rebellion (through Katniss’ limited perspective) during the Victory Tour brilliantly. It had a sense of buildup to it that was both hopeful and ominous, and deeply deeply chilling. The beginning of the book was a too much Peeta vs. Gale for my liking (I just don’t feel like the romantic aspects of the triangle ever had much tension - Gale was never really in the running as far as I could see and Katniss’ main concern was keeping them both close and safe, not necessarily marrying either one) but the plot quickly picked up speed as the rebellion outside started to affect District 12 and the crackdown began. I got so engrossed and hopeful; it was what I was hoping for since the very beginning basically. And here’s when we got to know Gale a little more. In the first book we already know he’s more gung-ho about rebelling than Katniss, whose priority is still the safety of those she loves. We see more of that in the second book when he doesn’t hesitate to fight while Kat remains conflicted. I was really happy that she DID decide to stay and fight, though, so much that I was frustrated with Haymitch for shooting her down. (I was also frustrated with Haymitch for telling her she could never deserve Peeta, because fuck that. At the same time, Haymitch is a little too much like Katniss, which is a recurring theme, so maybe it makes sense that he’s voicing her own insecurities to her.)
So anyway, yes -- the revolution will not be televised. (Not in this book anyway, haha.) And I start to really get into it, get into Kat’s indecision, her fear for her family, and the tide of change. All that stuff. But then they suddenly have go back into the arena? WHAT? At that point my emotional investment was with the world at large, and Katniss’ relationships with her family, and how 12 and the other districts were going to mount this big uprising. At this point we’ve even got an inkling that there might still be a district 13! So yeah, Collins’ decision to isolate Katniss from everything felt really jarring to me. Especially when it meant returning to the old formula from the first book. It’s just difficult having an arena situation that isn’t totally predictable and I saw the destruction of the arena and Plutarch’s complicity in it coming from pretty early on.
That’s not to say the Quarter Quell was totally pointless or uninteresting; far from it. We got to see how things were changing in the Capitol. We got to meet the other victors which was awesome - Finnick and Johanna especially. (no seriously i LOVE THEM. More on that when I talk about Mockingjay.) And there was Haymitch’s pact with Katniss to keep Peeta alive in the arena. There was a heartbreaking symmetry in that compared to the first book. Which led to some fantastic scenes.
At the same time, while I was frustrated at her being cut off from everything, I have to respect Collins’ decision not to make Katniss singlehandedly spearhead the rebellion as a 17-year old girl. Kind of a brave choice to show things solely from her POV, to make her unaware of a lot of things and essentially a cog in a machine -- a piece in a different game. I didn’t feel like this diminished her characterization at all, but the entire tone of the series shifted at that point, took an even darker turn. That’s not to say I agree with Haymitch keeping the master plan from Katniss. I think he took a lot more risks in NOT telling her and Peeta what was up, and because of the first-person thing again, some things became obvious to us that weren’t obvious to her and maybe should have been. So it’s frustrating - but it’s also a little like life in that sometimes big things happen around us and we don’t have all the info but it’s all we can do to keep ourselves afloat where we are.
As far as the love triangle - idk, I had some problems with this in CF, more than in THG and Mockingjay. Because at some point during this book, Gale and Peeta started to represent the two options Kat was struggling with in the plot: Gale represented the rebellion, and Peeta represented the safety of the status quo, or at least, a more inward-thinking focus on keeping her family and friends safe before anything else. And there was no separation in the narrative between her interpersonal indecision and her moral indecision, which then leaves no option for her to, say, choose rebellion and remain single. (*waves Team Katniss flag*) Especially problematic because she STILL is not sure she wants either of them in a romantic way - she feels strong affection for them both but it’s all mixed up with friendship, and obligation, and wanting to keep them safe. You constantly see her chafe at the idea of being confronted and pressured with a romantic choice at a time like this - understandably so! Her confusion was believable but it made the prospect of either ship really troubling for me... she didn’t have a lot of options either way.
Meanwhile, the boys are putting pressure on her that she doesn’t need. Gale does so almost consciously, and Peeta not so much. After laying the guilt trip on her at the end the first book, Peeta backs off a bit - apologizes for said guilt trip (which definitely won him some points with me) and proceeds to give her space and be an actual friend to her. I liked that. But even though he honestly tries to give her space, I don’t believe she ever feels like she has a choice, not in this book, because of her insecurities and feeling indebted, not to mention the public ruse they’re keeping up ... and that’s a problem. Then we have Gale who confuses the situation even more with his declarations of love, even though she couldn’t have made it more obvious that she wasn’t ready for all that, that she didn’t love him in the same way at that point. And then he got all pouty over a situation that he knew she had little control over or choice in. Maybe a human reaction, but at that point, Team Gale was dead in the water for me.
Also, I’ve been reading some fan reactions about how Katniss is mistreating both dudes, doesn’t deserve them, and whatever, and CAN I JUST SAY: Regardless of her own insecurities about the situation and regardless how Haymitch feels about whether she deserves Peeta (wtf haymitch does not even go here), in no way is Katniss obligated to return Peeta’s or Gale’s affections, or to hurry up and choose one and ~end their suffering~, just because they’re nice guys who like her. No way does she in fact owe Peeta anything just because he apparently crushed on her from afar for years. No way does she have to love him just because his love turned out to be genuine and not an act (sorry that she was too busy surviving and by the way KEEPING HIM ALIVE to notice this). And no way does her long-standing friendship with Gale obligate her to try for anything romantic with him. Look, to the peeps who want to call Katniss selfish: I get that everyone reads something different into a source, but no, actually, you are wrong, and to condemn Katniss for feeling like she does is to miss the entire point of her. Not to end this on a bad note or anything, cough, ahem. I just have a lot of feelings.
Oh and I may have more Notes To Fandom (tm) when I talk about Mockingjay. -__-’
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