until the very end

Steve Harrington aka protective older brother and/or mama bear ↳ requested by anonymous + bonus

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

“I’m tired of love triangles” THE HUNGER GAMES IS LITERALLY AN ALLEGORICAL FICTION REFLECTING ON THE MERITS OF JUST-WAR THEORY.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/books/suzanne-collins-talks-about-the-hunger-games-the-books-and-the-movies.amp.html

This is a FASCINATING article where Suzanne Collins talks about this. Basically, just war theory - popularized by Thomas Aquinas, and I didn’t know she was Catholic, so that makes a TON of sense how she would know about that, anyways, just-war theory advocates for this idea that a war can be just based on certain conditions being met. In the Hunger Games, Katniss is a stand in for humanity generally, a sort of neutral figure whose going through this moral/philosophical battle. Gale represents a favorable view of just-war theory, whereas Peeta represents - if not pacifism, then certainly at the very least, a rejection of war.

THATS WHY ITS SO FUCKING PROFOUND that Katniss ends up with Peeta, like, can we just collectively admire for a moment, the final passage of Mockingjay, now that we get that what’s actually going on is a statement re: cycles of violence and the needs of humanity?

“Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I knew this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.”

I MEAN. GOD. GOD. WHAT POETRY THAT IS. Humanity cannot rely on war, and hatred, and violence, it does not need it to live, it cannot feast forever on bread and circuses gained from blood. This passage nearly makes me cry every time I read it, it’s SO lovely.

Anyways, the Hunger Games rocks.

Brazilian Folk Art Sand Bottle by Edgar Freitas