Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
To begin: this review will be spoiler-free.
Katniss Everdeen has been a pawn, a victim, a fighter, and a killer. Her home is destroyed, but her family and the ones she cares for the most have safely been moved to the mysterious District 13. Everyone except Peeta. It hasn’t been easy playing into the propaganda machine of the rebellion against the Capitol, but now they want more. It isn’t enough that Katniss already feels responsible for the lives of hundreds, for the life of Peeta who’s been captured by the Capitol. Now the new leadership she faces under the ruins of District 13 want Katniss to outperform anything she’s ever done before, without the boy whose encouragement and genuine likability have carried her this far. The rebels want Katniss to become their Mockingjay.
I made the decision to read this book sooner rather than later. From the release day, it was clear there would be a lot of uncensored chatting floating around. Sometimes the readily-accessible flow of information on the internet is not always welcome. Having had other things spoiled for me in the past, it’s not an experience I wanted to repeat. I chose to sit down and read it before someone else accidentally ruined the ending for me. Luckily, it only took me a day to read (Collins’ writing is mostly momentum). Now that I’m finished, I think I’m pleased with the ending, but not blown away.
As the final installment in the Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay answers many questions and ties together loose ends, but not all characters appeared to get the same consideration as Katniss, Gale, or Peeta. And honestly, aside from any speculation on District 13 or the Capitol, we’re only really interested in the fate of the characters we’ve become invested in (primary, secondary, or tertiary, as the case may be). It isn’t until this book that we finally get to see the characters interact for extended lengths of time outside of the Hunger Games. With the kind of experience each has been subjected to, the resulting dynamics are what make up the bulk of the narrative. Collins shows us how each character has reacted to various forms of torture, how each character handles survival, how each character handles being themselves knowing that they’ve all got blood on their hands and guilt on their conscience.
Guilt was one of the most prominent themes of Mockingjay. Whether it was Haymitch losing himself in alcohol or Katniss succumbing to the responsibility of her own actions, there are many heavy considerations for any one person to deal with by themselves, not to mention several individuals learning they don’t have to face their demons alone. Katniss spends a lot of her time self-reflecting and discovering some difficult truths about herself. The fact that she discovers these things at all was a huge improvement from the character we’ve seen in the previous two books who would rather justify her actions than deal with them.
Katniss isn’t the only one that’s changed, though. Reality manages to strike Gale and Peeta as well, albeit one had more outside intervention than the other. Peeta’s realizations were in some ways the most hurtful in their utter contrast to the character he was before; I did not expect Gale to become so hard and single-minded. With no arena and no “win or death” scenarios, Collins is able to develop her characters in a way that had been disadvantageous when each was struggling desperately to survive minute-by-minute. They can slow down and digest the past few adrenaline-fueled months of fear.
District 13 was no real surprise for me, save that I expected a little more out of their nuclear background, but overall: it was about what I expected. And that’s fine. Had Collins gone further there would have been a degree of absurdity that I don’t think any attempt at dignity could have mollified. As a neutral ground for Katniss to face the Rebel leadership and the consequences of their manipulations, it was perfect. I also appreciate how Katniss, despite being the protagonist, was overwhelmed most of the time by the other characters we hadn’t seen much of in the past.
I wish some characters had been handled better in the end and not abandoned completely from the text as it appeared to be (written off or with a sudden death). I also was not enamored with the intrusion of television cameras this time around. In the very height of the civil war, the attempt to orchestrate seemed disingenuous to the cause. Juxtaposed against the brokenness of characters like Finnick, Johanna, and others who don’t need to be told to act shattered or appear resolved to revenge when they already are, it appeared incredibly disrespectful and dishonest. I was bothered that the public needed to be placated this way at all. More incredulously, the public depended on this choreography to continue feeding an apparently insatiable and unshakable appetite for entertainment and violence. Suffice to say, it’s an ugly view of humanity, but the book and the series does inevitably touch upon this subject and ones related, like extinction and of course: survival. It’s a topic I think I want to explore on my own later.
Thankfully, Mockingjay focuses more on this than on the love triangle of the previous two books. I thought the epilogue was too neat and methodical for what has been such a harrowing and brutal series, not to mention a lukewarm romance. Although the ending was appropriate, I think the epilogue, especially as related to Katniss, felt a bit overworked. Collins may have spelled out her extended future for fans not able to draw the necessary conclusions themselves (which I believe are there, without the open explanation) and those who might always question, “and then what happens?” I for one thought the rest of the book was life-affirming enough without it.
As a whole, I found myself devouring this book, if possible, faster than the others. Ridiculously fast. Whether that’s due to Collins’ narrative abilities, my desire and determination to find out what happened, or a combination of both, I could not put it down. Some fans may be disappointed (particularly those camped on one side of the romantic triangle), but I was satisfied.
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