So here it is: The finale. The end.
The very last post I may ever write about Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games.
My review of Mockingjay.
Well. Let’s clear up some stuff
first. Number One—the first HG book was awful. Number Two—the second HG book
wasn’t much better. Number Three—these books offer no hope that humanity will
change, that there is a force of good that can overcome the evil of carnality
and bring us to a place of peace and goodness. Mockingjay was no different.
While some character(s) advanced a
little (Finnick, by name), the writing quality really didn’t. Katniss is still the flipping-back-and-forth girl
we’ve seen since book one. She doesn’t change at all. AT ALL. Hasn’t changed in
three books! I detect no growth here, in the finale, and I didn’t think there
would be any, anyway. And while Peeta had a more determined air about him, he
was still soppy and bent on keeping Katniss alive at all costs. Granted, he
loves her, but really? You’re going to kill yourself to keep her alive, Peeta?
Stupid, if you ask me. Why not fight for her, BY HER SIDE, until the end creeps
up on you? Whenever that may be? And Gale? That moment when he was about to cry
really made me . . . annoyed.
And the plot? While near the ending
the twists became clear, the fulfillment of answers and the reveal were
nonexistent. We know next to nothing about Coin’s full plan and how she enacted
it, who she got to be with her, and why she wanted Katniss alive even after the
former thought the latter was dead. (Oh, wait. Spoiler alert.) On that Katniss
note, why did she not kill the Mockingjay in her sleep? With an overdose of
morphling? Would have been so easy.
But no. Nothing like that. Bah. Major holes riddled the book, like how Katniss
and Finnick “figured out” the Capitol was set up like the arena, which was a
scene not entirely clear in wording or in action anyway. Oh, and the whole
meeting-of-former-tributes near the end about enacting one last Hunger Games?
Random, and quite frankly unneeded. And the fact that Katniss, who was a
confessed hater of the Capitol and their Games, said “Yes do it?” . . . what?
Again I say, honestly?
Oh, and that’s another thing. Hate.
This book’s energy is hate. The plot’s driver is hate. The entire reason Katniss exists is her HATRED of the
Capitol. That’s why she does what she does, is because of hatred! Even close to
the end of the book, there, she’s devising ways to kill herself. She loses her
hatred, and therefore her reason for being flies out the window, so she gives
up. And the fact that she “lets” Peeta revive her? Don’t get me wrong, I always
knew she would end up with him (sorry, spoiler alert), but I didn’t think their
final reunion would be so . . . not cheesy, but random. There should have been
more leading up to it. A talk, for instance. In which there is both healing and
baring of souls and uniting of hearts. Instead, they have sex. How shallow.
And don’t get me started on the
epilogue. Sure, we see Katniss’s and Peeta’s kids, their finality in marrying
and stuff, but what of Panem? What of Gale? What of Haymitch and District 12
and how the country really turned out? We. Get. NOTHING.
The entire Hunger Games series presents nothing for a world full of hatred
already. The point that brutality can
only be beaten by brutality is not one a hopeless world needs to hear. Violence
cannot quell the human corruption called carnality. Only Jesus can soothe our
wounds and hurts and bring us into a fullness we can only imagine without Him. The Hunger Games presents us with a
perfect picture of how hopeless our world truly is, and how desperately it is
crying out for a Savior.
Luckily, we’ve already been given
one.
Speaking of giving, I give Mockingjay Two flipped pages out of Ten.
Why two? Because we didn’t go into the arena again.
