well there went two days of my life
Aug. 1st, 2012 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intrikate88I just finished the Hunger Games trilogy in two days, like a year after everyone else read them. I just really hate the battle royale trope, okay, I find it horrific and dehumanizing and I didn't like it when Ralph Ellison did it and I had to read it in every damn American lit class, I didn't like it in the Japanese Battle Royale movie. So I stayed away from The Hunger Games, knowing that that was the plot, but when I saw the movie, I saw a very personal journey of a girl of the forest, and that was far better than I had imagined. So the other day I decided I felt like reading the books, and now I need to talk about them.
The Hunger Games- I feel like the movie was a really great adaptation; the directing kept the first person unreliable narrator POV pretty true to itself, and I thought that was a strength of the series. It says a lot about Katniss's character that she doesn't feel love, but she acts to protect and defend- and the small circle of who she jealously guards grows larger as she grows. She never learns the names of most of the tributes, but she can describe in detail each meal that she eats and each outfit she wears like a weapon of its own.
Catching Fire- Even though I knew it was coming, it was so sickening for them to have to go back to the arena. But Katniss's growing view of the world, and her not wanting to be a pawn in it, is wonderful. The book swings so quickly though different situations, though- from touring celebrity to more hunger games to hey District 13 actually does exist! But I think it's decently paced, and it's interesting to see Katniss pick up some espionage tricks- asking what things the Capitol has in shortage to find out where the revolts are happening. She becomes harder, in a lot of ways, but softer, too, as she allows herself to maybe think of feeling something for people, for Gale and for Peeta.
Gale and Peeta are just so different in terms of relationship that I really don't see why Katniss should have to choose; I hate triangles in general because I don't see why everyone just can't be happy with each other. But Gale is her best friend. He was her partner, he always had her back, she knew she could trust him with her family when she went away. He knows her probably better than she knows herself and he would stand by her forever. Peeta is not someone she owes romance to for his longtime pining from afar, and I'm not sure she even owes him anything for the burnt bread he once gave her; that was just a decent thing to do, for a starving person in your backyard. Because Peeta is a decent person. But he and Katniss have experiences they can't share with anyone else, and emotions and fears that no one else will understand. They need each other, to keep from falling into the sort of despair Haymitch lives in. No matter what happens, Katniss and Peeta will always be bound to each other by the fact they lived something that no one but each other can comprehend.
And my main ship is Katniss/archery, anyway, so what if she happens to have two boyfriends on the side?
Mockingjay- The last book definitely seemed to have a different tone to me. Part of it was Katniss dealing with a shitload of emotional fallout from all she's gone through. Just reading it, I was wishing for a morphling drip just to sleep through the personal trauma. Peeta coming back so brainwashed was unexpected and felt very wrong, with him not being himself and accusing Katniss of slutting it up with him and Gale and Finnick (no, dude, no).
I'm not sure I saw the point of Prim dying; it seemed like it could be to push Katniss away from Gale so she'd end up with Peeta, or so that Katniss could realize she was being played by President Coin of District 13 just as much as Snow had made her a pawn. But Katniss was already growing more aware and angry about being a pawn in everyone's games; I don't know if Prim was necessary to push Katniss into shooting Coin, in order to make this a revolution instead of a coup. It all seemed so pointless that, after three books of the prime goal of keeping Prim safe, she would only end up dead.
I am glad that the full horror of Coin proposing Hunger Games for the Capitol children (and everyone agreeing with it) was shown. I think that alone would have been enough to go along with it just long enough to shoot Coin later.
And then, that ending. The return to District 12, the rebuilding, the happily ever after with Peeta and two children. I know the book says that she was afraid for her children, but... I don't see a happily ever after for Katniss. I don't think that after what she's been through there is any such thing as home left for her. I don't think she would ever feel safe again in her life, free from suspecting people of using her, able to have hostages to fortune and corrupt governments, that she would get married and especially have children. I'd find it easier to believe she'd go back to 12, gather supplies, and hike off into the woods to spend her life as a wild woman of the mountain.
Of course, I also think it could possible be my headcanon that the whole ending is "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" type of situation; Katniss never got home, she never married, she simply let herself waste away in the Capitol until they brought her out and executed her for assassinating the president, and the whole end of the book happened only in her head. It was all a dream of all the happiness she could imagine, after the horrors she had been through, at the end of her life.
The Hunger Games- I feel like the movie was a really great adaptation; the directing kept the first person unreliable narrator POV pretty true to itself, and I thought that was a strength of the series. It says a lot about Katniss's character that she doesn't feel love, but she acts to protect and defend- and the small circle of who she jealously guards grows larger as she grows. She never learns the names of most of the tributes, but she can describe in detail each meal that she eats and each outfit she wears like a weapon of its own.
Catching Fire- Even though I knew it was coming, it was so sickening for them to have to go back to the arena. But Katniss's growing view of the world, and her not wanting to be a pawn in it, is wonderful. The book swings so quickly though different situations, though- from touring celebrity to more hunger games to hey District 13 actually does exist! But I think it's decently paced, and it's interesting to see Katniss pick up some espionage tricks- asking what things the Capitol has in shortage to find out where the revolts are happening. She becomes harder, in a lot of ways, but softer, too, as she allows herself to maybe think of feeling something for people, for Gale and for Peeta.
Gale and Peeta are just so different in terms of relationship that I really don't see why Katniss should have to choose; I hate triangles in general because I don't see why everyone just can't be happy with each other. But Gale is her best friend. He was her partner, he always had her back, she knew she could trust him with her family when she went away. He knows her probably better than she knows herself and he would stand by her forever. Peeta is not someone she owes romance to for his longtime pining from afar, and I'm not sure she even owes him anything for the burnt bread he once gave her; that was just a decent thing to do, for a starving person in your backyard. Because Peeta is a decent person. But he and Katniss have experiences they can't share with anyone else, and emotions and fears that no one else will understand. They need each other, to keep from falling into the sort of despair Haymitch lives in. No matter what happens, Katniss and Peeta will always be bound to each other by the fact they lived something that no one but each other can comprehend.
And my main ship is Katniss/archery, anyway, so what if she happens to have two boyfriends on the side?
Mockingjay- The last book definitely seemed to have a different tone to me. Part of it was Katniss dealing with a shitload of emotional fallout from all she's gone through. Just reading it, I was wishing for a morphling drip just to sleep through the personal trauma. Peeta coming back so brainwashed was unexpected and felt very wrong, with him not being himself and accusing Katniss of slutting it up with him and Gale and Finnick (no, dude, no).
I'm not sure I saw the point of Prim dying; it seemed like it could be to push Katniss away from Gale so she'd end up with Peeta, or so that Katniss could realize she was being played by President Coin of District 13 just as much as Snow had made her a pawn. But Katniss was already growing more aware and angry about being a pawn in everyone's games; I don't know if Prim was necessary to push Katniss into shooting Coin, in order to make this a revolution instead of a coup. It all seemed so pointless that, after three books of the prime goal of keeping Prim safe, she would only end up dead.
I am glad that the full horror of Coin proposing Hunger Games for the Capitol children (and everyone agreeing with it) was shown. I think that alone would have been enough to go along with it just long enough to shoot Coin later.
And then, that ending. The return to District 12, the rebuilding, the happily ever after with Peeta and two children. I know the book says that she was afraid for her children, but... I don't see a happily ever after for Katniss. I don't think that after what she's been through there is any such thing as home left for her. I don't think she would ever feel safe again in her life, free from suspecting people of using her, able to have hostages to fortune and corrupt governments, that she would get married and especially have children. I'd find it easier to believe she'd go back to 12, gather supplies, and hike off into the woods to spend her life as a wild woman of the mountain.
Of course, I also think it could possible be my headcanon that the whole ending is "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" type of situation; Katniss never got home, she never married, she simply let herself waste away in the Capitol until they brought her out and executed her for assassinating the president, and the whole end of the book happened only in her head. It was all a dream of all the happiness she could imagine, after the horrors she had been through, at the end of her life.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 03:59 pm (UTC)And after she killed Coin all knowledge of the outside world kind of vanished. There was a vote about putting all the gamemakers' kids into the new Hunger Games and only Peeta voted against it, and maybe the idea was cancelled after Coin's assassination, and maybe not. We don't really know if the uprising really brought about a positive change in Panem.
I liked that it didn't magically come up with a happy ending too, because that would have been completely out of nowhere. But I think that with all the cycles in the book (especially with them going back to the arena time and again) I kind of expected the series to circle around to an echo of the beginning, not with happiness, but with Katniss choosing to be on her own again (because she WAS a loner, even with her devotion to Prim and her friendship with Gale), just her bow and the woods, and escaping under the fence from all reminders of every time she was someone's pawn.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 06:33 pm (UTC)The shipping in the book was probably the point of least interest for me. I mean, I could see why she was confused - she's got something with both Gale and Peeta that's very different from the other - but I wasn't too strongly bothered either way.
I know a few people who have issues with the way the books are written - first person with a very particular style of prose - but I think once I got used to it that really made them work for me. Sure, there's a lot I'd've liked to have seen outside of Katniss's head (the movie was pretty good at that for the first book) but it really got the horror of it all down perfectly.
What was interesting to me was in the first book you get a real sense of agency from Katniss. Like, apart from getting shoved into the arena, it seems like everything she does is her decision. Whereas in the next two books you really see that stripped away more and more, despite her actually being able to take part in the fight for freedom.
The idea of a Hunger Games for the Capitol kids was pretty horrific. Idk if it's because I'm terrible at picking up on foreshadowing, but while I knew Coin was not a particularly nice person, I was not expecting that at all.
Something about the ending really did feel sort of false to me. Like it was trying to be happy but couldn't be. I wasn't sure how much of that was intentional and how much was my own aversion to kids-and-settling-down, but I guess it can't just be me. It was just too hard to jump from a completely broken Katniss to someone all healed and having babies etc. So I think your version works, if being a little too bleak for my liking!
LIKE I SAID: LOTS OF FEELINGS.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-02 01:24 am (UTC)Yeah, the shipping was only a deal to me in that I was confused why it was being set up as a triangle.
Like, in the first book, it was really cool how even though Katniss had no say in how she lived, she still fought to exert her own agency; the twist at the end of the book is that using that agency gets her into more things she can't control. And that theme keeps continuing- the more she learns about her world and the more decisions she tries to make for herself, the more she sees there is no agency in her world, no matter whose side she's on.
Yeah, I totally didn't see Coin suggesting that. I was expecting everyone to be way too horrified at the Hunger Games themselves, since several people on the decision board had been IN the Hunger Games, and then... it was just there.
I think you summed it up well, it's the huge jump that is so jarring. She is so completely broken; she knows that trust is a luxury she'll never be able to imagine again; she knows she was right all along about not giving birth to children who could become tools and weapons just as she was. I need some sort of transition to explain why, if she's still alive, she's not a hundred miles into the mountains past the District 12 fence where she'll never see anyone but curious deer.
Katniss at her cabin?
(Doris Ullman photograph, I think a lot of her photos could double as District 12, really)
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Date: 2012-08-02 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-02 01:34 am (UTC)They dive really deep into who Katniss is and is becoming as a person, and probe how much agency someone can have in a fundamentally not-free world. The more she stands up and makes her own decisions, the more attention she gets, which becomes a trap of its own as she becomes the figurehead of a movement she never set out to lead. It's very thought-provoking, and extremely moving.
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Date: 2012-08-05 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-02 05:10 am (UTC)I have so many feelings about my homegirl.
But he and Katniss have experiences they can't share with anyone else, and emotions and fears that no one else will understand.
*nods* I really feel like this is pivotal to their relationship. And I feel that one of the reasons that she and Gale didn't work (but would have in another life time) is that because of their personalities and different experiences, they have a TOTALLY different view of things. If I want to wibble about Gale, I think about how his best friend both survived and died in the Games, live on tv, while he watched.
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Date: 2012-08-05 06:17 pm (UTC)Oh, definitely, about Gale. Gale and Katniss are such PARTNERS from their start that, had things not changed, they would have had a really solid relationship and grown old together. But that's because they're so much alike, and it's even mentioned in Mockingjay how they're both people on fire. With the world in change, instead of being together, they just burn each other up. Whereas Peeta is the one who doesn't need to talk, but he is there through all the nightmares.
(Which I think is also interesting: Peeta and Katniss had an utterly different experience in their first Hunger Games. Peeta had to use the defenses of someone dependent/weak, almost, by being devious and getting with the Careers, and then he was in hiding and defended by Katniss for the rest. Katniss, on the other hand, struck out on her own from the beginning, and her changes came from choices stemming from choosing mercy or solitude. And I think that in that change, of losing her old self but also expanding her circle of caring from herself, Prim, and Gale to Rue and Peeta and her district and eventually all of Panem, Katniss was alone, and it was not the same journey that Peeta or Gale or anybody else faced.)
Oh, god, Gale. Watching that. I had thought about that but not thought about it. No wonder he went from just talking to being such a fighter. After awhile, he didn't have anything to lose anymore, not even Katniss, because the girl in the woods was gone.
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Date: 2012-08-22 06:02 am (UTC)It's also the EXACT opposite emotional effect that the Gamemakers intended. The Games, as well as showing how powerful the Capitol is, also cause dissension between the districts (only one winner, only one district) but Katniss, by reaching out to Rue and treating her with respect, works against that emotional intent.