#mockingjay meta

At the end of Mockingjay, Katniss tells us that Haymitch raises geese. I always thought that was an odd hobby. Why geese? I wondered if there was some kind of message Suzanne Collins was hinting at for readers.

Forgive me if someone else figured this out already and posted it, but I think I understand now what S.C. was telling us. It seems geese saved the day for Rome in 390 B.C.E. The Gauls planned a night attack of the city and the sacred geese that were kept at the Capitoline Temple raised a ruckus and woke everyone up.

There is quite a chunk of the fandom out there who compare Peeta to a jabberjay and I've always agreed with that. This whole passage jumped out at me in a completely different way this reread, I started noticing parallels to what happened with the jabberjays and what happened to Peeta. I'm going to try and go in order of this passage but know that we are time jumping a bit.

Peeta was turned against the districts by the Capitol and sent home loaded with lies in order to kill Katniss. When Coin figures this out, she essentially deems him a lost cause and decides that he will be left for dead, using him to kill Katniss which in any scenario will lead to his death.

Now the extinction in the wild is during squad 451's time infiltrating the Capitol, we see Peeta eventually overcome the mutt in him (with Katniss's help) and that's the real start of his recovery. It could include his time post war in the Capitol but I'm seeing the wild as a euphemism for war because we see him begin to protect her during that time and when she attempts suicide after assassinating Coin.

So how did Peeta turn Katniss from a mockingbird to a mockingjay? Let's break down that final paragraph. I used to associate that very last line (couldn't highlight, cropped too close) about not anticipating it's will to live with mockingjays but now I see it's meant in association with jabberjays as well. If you examine the sentence structures it's something within the jabberjay that they are passing on to the mockingjay. Peeta literally gives Katniss her will to live, over and over again by giving her hope, that's his genetic code. The very first time is with the bread. Katniss may have been a mockingbird initially but we see a rebirth of her as a mockingjay after Peeta gives her the bread. Katniss tells us she is giving up and ready to die right there against that apple tree (and how many times do we see this happen with Katniss only for Peeta to change that?). She becomes renewed and inspired to fight for her life by receiving the bread. She finds a way to carry on the very next day. The mockingjay symbol is fluid. I don't believe a symbol has to be fixed to one person and when talking about things we see that some symbols in the series often represent more than one thing or idea. Katniss is a mockingjay, Rue is a mockingjay, toastbabies are mockingjays, the people of panem are mockingjays. These are all people who were not intended to exist in the capacity we see them and that the Capitol believed they could stamp out their will to live or very existence.

So what's this about them mating and birthing a nation of mockingjays!? Well, what happened when Everlark pulled out those berries? What did they spend the whole Victory tour trying to do? Together Katniss and Peeta had sparked a nation of people determined to live. Peeta's genetic code is hope. He gives that to Katniss and in turn they produce a nation of mockingjays, ready to fight back. So even if you still don't believe Katniss is a mockingjay, she as a mockingbird and Peeta as a jabberjay still have the potential to create a nation of mockingjays.

The line about jabberjays having the brains to adapt to the wild had me thinking a lot. My interpretation is that Peeta grows up in not only an abusive society but an abusive home. He has one of the bleakest situations, the absence of parental love is mental starvation. We need love an affection to thrive. Physical harm inflicted by the person who is supposed to be your absolute safety warps your entire world view. Somehow Peeta is able to adapt to these things. We know he has struggles from it but it certainly didn't warp him the way Mr. Everdeens death and Mrs. Everdeens neglect warped Katniss.

Oh, good questions, Anon. 

I’ll start with Haymitch’s accusation. I assume you’re referring to this moment: 

I think of the snarling, cruel exchange back on the hovercraft. The bitterness that followed. But all I say is “I can’t believe you didn’t rescue Peeta.”

“I know,” he replies.

There’s a sense of incompleteness. And not because he hasn’t apologized. But because we were a team. We had a deal to keep Peeta safe. A drunken, unrealistic deal made in the dark of night, but a deal just the same. And in my heart of hearts, I know we both failed.

“Now you say it,” I tell him.

“I can’t believe you let him out of your sight that night,” says Haymitch.” 

I don’t think either of them are levying accusations that have much weight to them and they know it. It isn’t as if either of them could’ve necessarily prevented what happened. But I don’t think that’s the point of this exchange. The point is that these two people, for whom debts and owing and deals mean so much, lost a person they both love almost more than anything (alongside Prim in Katniss’s case and Katniss herself in Haymitch’s). They’re hurt, and frightened, and they’re playing the blame game, drowning in the “what ifs?”  But I appreciate that at least they’re honest about it, however bitter they both are. 

As for Effie’s comment, I don’t think that line is in the book (please correct me if I’m wrong) and it has never sat right with me that they added it to the films. I suppose, in her own well-meaning, misguided way, it’s the only frame of reference Effie has: for her, maybe, the life of a Victor means a life of hard-won peace. But with the way that the movies gave Effie a more sympathetic treatment, I can barely buy that either. I don’t think movie!Effie would be so oblivious to how that sounds. 

Like you say, it feels wrong to me. Katniss may have won the “seventy-sixth Hunger Games” as Finnick calls it, but at the cost of her sister and so many more. 

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s meant to feel wrong. Elizabeth Banks doesn’t play it like that, though … 

I actually meant for this to be a large image, lots of white space all around, portrait style. Overall I'm happy with how it came out other than the missing white space. I had several more but narrowed it down to these four and figured why not just share all four. Feel free to use/share with credit back to this post.

This is one of my favorite quotes from THG, it feels very representative of how Katniss becomes the Mockingjay and what her true role is within the series. It's very fitting coming from Rue as there seems to be intertwining of the Mockingjay, Katniss, + Rue. So,

For Rue