i get why a lot of people don’t like reading mockingjay as much as the rest of the trilogy, but i think it’s actually so essential to understanding the central thesis of the entire hunger games series.
the whole point of the hunger games is this: all human life is valuable, and artificial divisions between people keep them weak. and the only way out is radical love.
and this is something that is literally echoed again and again in the books. take, for example, gale. why is gale such an interesting, complex, and yet reprehensible character? yes, it’s because at the end katniss cannot separate his bomb from prim’s death. but it’s deeper than that. why does gale build the bomb in the first place? it’s because gale doesn’t see every human life as valuable. gale is willing to kill people and to deny them their humanity simply because they are his “enemy.” so, there’s the obvious example of his willingness to blow up the nut with everyone inside and his disregard for the human casualty. and the people in the nut aren’t even from the captiol, he just wants to do it because the stereotype of that district is their allegiance to the capitol, and gale hates that.
but there’s another scene, also in mockingjay, that i think goes under-discussed which is his view of katniss’ prep team. when katniss finds her prep team literally imprisoned in 13, she’s horrified and upset by the conditions they are in. but gale isn’t. and he’s confused about why katniss would care for them! her response is to say that it’s because they cried when she went to the quarter quell. and gale is like, “sure, but they’re still from the captiol.” and this argument is so important. because katniss argues that the prep team deserves to be treated as human beings, and when he presses her on why, she basically says because they treated her as a human being. but gale can’t see that–all he can see is that they’re from the capitol, and he’s confused about why katniss should care.
and this is, so crucially, what katniss learns in the hunger games. she realizes that she doesn’t want to kill the other tributes just because they are from the other districts. she hates the fact that they have turned her against people who are, in their core, just like her. frightened children who have been manipulated to kill other children against their will, all selected based on their district, a social divide that has literally been invented and imposed on them.
and another just absolutely essential thing to understand here is that peeta knows this all along. we talk at length about how peeta’s defining trait is his kindness. but what’s so important about peeta’s kindness is how it transcends any boundaries of social class or social division.
when peeta gives katniss the bread, it’s important to note that just before he does that, we hear his mother talking about “seam brats pawing through her trash.” peeta’s mother buys into the social divides in district twelve–she views herself as better than someone from the seam simply because of her standing as a merchant, and reinforces these class divides by refusing to extend the simplest humanity to a child from the seam. she literally refuses to feed a starving child on the grounds of a social divide, within a world that already has divided them into districts. but peeta doesn’t see it like this. peeta refuses to deny katniss food just because she’s from the seam. peeta gives her kindness. peeta gives her humanity.
and he does the same thing in the games! his entire first interview, the dramatic king focuses, not on the games, but on his genuine love and adoration for another tribute. how radical! to refuse to subscribe to a system which asks him to hate her? to want to kill her? and to instead confess his love for her? sure, katniss ends up being the mockingjay. katniss might have held out the berries. but peeta in that moment is the one who sets the rebellion in motion. peeta is the one who refuses to engage in the senseless hatred of someone who “should” be his enemy. instead, he reaches out in love.
and it all culminates at the end of mockingjay, when katniss votes for the capitol hunger games to gain coin’s trust. and peeta is utterly horrified by this. because he can’t understand how she could have been through everything he has been through and not understand that continuing to senselessly kill human beings (children!!) for some kind of revenge just reinforces these binary modes of thinking. but the thing is–katniss DOES see that. and when coin proposes it, that’s when she knows she has to stop her. because coin, like gale, like peeta’s mother, and like so others many around her, is still buying into these divides. is still viewing the captiol as the enemy. is still viewing a human life as expendable.
and there’s a quote in mockingjay that i think lays this out pretty explicitly. katniss says, after she kills coin and is recovering, point blank: “they can design dream weapons that come to life in my hands, but they will never again brainwash me into the necessity of using them.” she’s realized the crux of the entire hunger games–that manipulating us to hate and kill our fellow humans, that drawing up divisions between people because of where they live and what they produce, that believing that hating someone on the basis of any of these is justification for their death, is all a farce. it’s all a distraction. it’s all pretend. she says, in the same chapter: “no one benefits in a world where these things happen.” not the districts. not the capitol. not the victors. no one.
the entire arc of the hunger games is really just about katniss catching up to what peeta has known from the start. katniss overcoming all the manipulation from those around her, all the glitz and glamour, all the artificial social and class divides to see what peeta has seen clearly from the start: love.
ok but the hunger games literally did mention it All like… the use of propaganda by the elite as an attempt to divide the minority groups they oppress by making them perceive each other as rivals and prevent them from recognizing and uniting against their real enemy? check. criticism of the way we consume media with no consideration for other people’s privacy like we’re entitled to every detail of their lives and a lack of empathy for their pain because it makes good entertainment? yeah. realistic depictions and explorations of the effects of trauma, particularly that caused by conflict? hunger games has you covered. acknowledgement of the existence of and links between racism and classism, and that conventional standards of beauty are influenced by the societal elite, which people are encouraged to harm themselves in order to conform to (the fact that the weathier people in district 12 are white, blonde and blue-eyed while the coal miner families are mostly people of color; that the two poorest districts, 11 and 12, have majority poc populations; that most people, katniss herself included, consider prim to be prettier than katniss partly because she looks like her white, blonde, blue-eyed mother, who was from the wealthier part of the district; that the first thing that happens to the tributes when they’re taken to the capitol is they they’re “prepped” to conform to capitol beauty standards before they even meet their stylists in ways that literally violate their bodies permanently, and that many of the capitol residents have extreme body modifying surgery that can take a severe toll on their health and wellbeing in the long term)? none of this is accidental, and is both brought up and criticised multiple times throughout the trilogy. the sexualization of minors for adult consumption, especially young celebrities? the fact that politicians in positions of power and authority gain those positions through corruption and by considering anyone harmed in their acension collateral damage? the significance of propaganda and social influence in modern warfare? the misery caused by poverty, which is caused and intentionally maintained by the wealthy elite? the brutal and violating experience of living in a surveillance police state, especially as a member of a minority group and/or poor person? the inherently immoral and corruptive nature of warfare and the military and the unimaginable atrocities and suffering it leads to for ordinary civilians? every YA dystopia novelist tried so hard to be mrs collins but most didn’t even understand half of what went into her books that made them so compelling.
you’re a painter. you’re a baker. you like to sleep with the windows open. you never take sugar in your tea. and you always double-knot your shoelaces.
another Unforgivable omission from the hunger games movie is when they announce ‘oops jk there can only be 1 winner good luck!’ and katniss immediately, instinctively draws her bow and points it at peeta to kill him, before realizing what shes doing, and who he is, and that she could never/would never want to do that! and then he tells her to do it anyway bc 1 of them has to win! but she WONT so he rips off his tourniquet so he’ll bleed to death and she can win and go home. and she drops to her knees and tries to stop the bleeding and cover his wound and BEGS him not to die……………yeah…they fucked up
OH MY GOD..and the entire scene where katniss wakes up on the ship after theyve rescued them from the arena was not in the movie AT ALL. when katniss watches them operating on peeta and she pounds on the glass and SCREAMS at them bc she thinks theyre still in the games and theyre hurting peeta. and then she backs away from the glass and sees a rabid feral animal girl in the reflection and realizes that its her…..and that line where she always wondered why the family members of a dying person stay to watch them and ‘now she knows. its because you have no choice’ that is RAW that is LOVE and they left it all OUT
