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shadowkatA bit edgy about this storm that is coming in - not where I'm at, but where I hope to be going on Monday. Really don't want to deal with the plane being cancelled. Also aggravated by the fact that once again I managed to acquire more stuff than I have the room to pack - which either means getting it shipped (dicey, since getting deliveries at my home in NYC is a nightmare) or checking a bag (dicey for a whole other set of reasons). And the antiboitics I'm taking appear to have the side-effect of making me a bit wired.
Finished Mockingjay - the final book in The Hunger Games this morning. While there are many things I love about these novels, including the fact that they are impossible to put down once you start them - my difficulty with them is that Collins does not provide enough depth to her characters or develop them enough to make me "really" care. Granted I just finished reading George RR Martin's Storm of Swords which tells us everything we ever wanted to know about each and every single character and a few things we really didn't. But I didn't cry during his novels either.
Collins focus is more on theme than on character, a flaw that I've been noticing in Whedon's work of late as well. At times she's almost dictative about it, much like Whedon is. Although, I prefer Collins to Whedon mostly because she's a much better plotter and her use and exploration of her themes is a tad more digestible not to mention clear, (a gross understatement if there ever was one), she doesn't develop her characters to quite the same degree nor as fully as Whedon. The reason, I find myself compelled to compare the two writers is that their themes are fairly similar and well, both have critical flaws that I'm trying to figure out - there's something off in both stories that cut me off emotionally from them.
Collins' themes regarding war, violence, the ends justify the means, use of power, and the cult of celebrity are not all that different than the themes identified in Whedon's work. In some respects they are done far better and are far clearer here. Whedon's story feels cluttered and confusing, to the degree that his themes can be read more than one way and not necessarily in a way that is, shall we say, at all complimentary of the writer. (That's also a gross understatement). Let's face it some writers are better at writing thematic/plot driven stories while others are better at character/emotional driven stories. Collins tale is a thematic/plot driven one - her characters set up and created for the sole purpose of exploring a theme. While Whedon's stories tend to be character driven, with the plot made up as he goes and the theme coming from the characters. When he attempts to switch to plot/theme driven it's a complete mess. But this review is about Collins not Whedon, so let's neatly kick him out of it now, shall we?
There's nothing wrong with thematic/plot driven tales. Often they feel like allegories, and tend to end tragically - a moral reminder of what not to do. Examples of these sorts of stories clutter the sci-fi literary bookshelves of many a university or high school english lit or poli-sci teacher's shelves (well those who like the genre at any rate) - George Orwell's classic - Animal Farm, Adulus Huxley's Brave New World, Arthur C. Clark's Childhood's End, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Shirely Jackson's The Lottery, Roger Cormier's The Chocloat War, William Fielding's Lord of the Flies...
Collin's work, to give her credit, is not an allegory. Nor does it necessarily end tragically.
And she does what she sets out do. Her examination of the cult of celebrity - of how destructive this is to those turned into celebrities - how their personal value is reduced
to entertainment for the masses - is rather adept and clever. It is also at times sharp.
Unfortunately, she loses me a little with it - makes it difficult for me to care about her central relationship Peeta and Katniss, whose romance as many characters state at different points feels staged - a star-cross lovers cliche for the masses. Collins is careful about poking fun at it - she does it indirectly, since we are in Katniss' pov and Katniss does not have a sense of humor about it. Katniss actually is quite horrified and hates herself for playing along. Being in Katniss pov, the pov of the individual who is being manipulated into this star-crossed romance against her will, places the reader at a disadvantage. You can't quite roote for a romance that feels like a weapon. Katniss when she first meets Peeta is clearly enamored of Gale, her best-friend and hunting partner, who is taking care of her family back home - who she does trust with her life. Peeta is an unknown quantity, and he makes her his romantic partner in the public eye - without her permission, painting her in an ill light if she doesn't play along. To survive, for both of them to survive, Katniss is permitted no choice but to pretend to fall in love with Peeta.
The Peeta and Katniss romance at times feels like a satirical twist on the trope - which was started long before Buffy and Angel, and seemed to culminate to a sickeningly saccrine height with Bella and Edward in Meyer's insanely popular Twilight series. Here, the guy, Peeta, with his blond curls, and blue eyes, and gentle demeanor, filled with romance and love of beauty takes on the Bella role or the Juliet or the Buffy. He's sociable. Friendly. Great on screen.
Loves music and painting. Makes bread. And comes from a family that is, within Katniss's world,
well-to-do (ie. not starving and with food on the table every night). He's not an outsider, like she is. Even his name suggests girly things. While Katniss' name is harder. He shows his emotions, while she rarely does, holding everything in. She's John Connor or the rebel fighter, filled with rage and fire, while he's sunsets, and dandlions.
Gale in sharp contrast, is the hunter, the rebel fighter. Usually in film, Gale would be the tough female fighter - often played by Michelle Rodriquez, except with better luck. And I like Gale better than Peeta, but that's largely because Gale isn't shoved down Katniss' throat. Katniss picked Gale, she asked Gale to help her learn to hunt. And Gale stands stoically by her no matter what. Dealing with hers and Peeta's televised star-crossed romance in technocolor. Hating it, yet somehow not quite holding it against Katniss or Peeta. Instead he directs his rage and fury at the Capital. But Gale is no more developed than Peeta is. At times he feels like a cliche, if you think too hard about it. I figured out early on what Collins was doing with the two men, and by Mockingjay it started to become clear which relationship she was pushing.
Gale represents Katniss' rage and fire at the Capitol, at the world that deprived her of her father, that put her in a violent game, and taught her to kill. Early on in The Hunger Games - the distinction between Peeta and Gale is highlighted - when Gale tells Katniss to find a bow and instructs her to kill to stay alive. Stating somewhat coldly that there isn't really that much difference between killing animals and humans, if you think about it. And even before she volunteers to take her sister's place, he rants about the Capitol and his wishes to take it down. While Peeta in marked contrast worries about what the Hunger Games will do to them.
How it will change them. Worries that he'll become a monster, filled with nothing but rage and hate, a killer.
Katniss herself defines it later in Mockinjay, in case we don't figure it out - Peeta she associates with providing her a piece of bread, and the hope of survival - a dandilion. (Making me realize by Mockinjay that perhaps Collins doesn't quite get it after all.) While Gale is her rage and her fire.
Gale loses his chance with Katniss - when she discovers him with Beetee another victor of the Games, creating bombs to take out innocent lives in order to win. Then in practice, when she fights with him over his plan to destroy a mountain munitions factory - including all the workers inside it. Then finally, when she realizes that the rebels dropped the bombs on the children in the Capitol which killed her sister as well. Gale doesn't know if it was their bomb that did it. But as he notes, it doesn't matter - since she'll always wonder and the one thing he had going for him was the fact that he kept saving those she loved.
At the beginning of the series - we're told that the one thing Katniss loves above all else is her little sister Prim. She would do anything for Prim. All the things she does are ultimately for Prim. And Prim is her opposite, Prim is in some respects a lot like Peeta. Soft edges.
Girlish. Damsel. Yet a doctor and a healer. Kind. Compassionate. Peeta isn't a healer - yet he sees it in Katniss.
Collins sets up the mislead - we aren't supposed to root for Katniss and Peeta because of the cult of celebrity, we are supposed to root for Gale and Katniss - for that is what Katniss thinks, yet as time wears on...and the cult of celebrity almost destroys Peeta and well everyone caught up in it - Peeta in effect becomes a dead ringer for the captured boy in the fairy tale The Snow Queen, with President Snow - the evil ruler who has captured him and twisted his innocence and his pure love for Katniss into something dark. Showing him that real and not real are hard to distinguish beneath the shiny bright lights. And Katniss unlike the heroine in that tale, is not quite sure how or if she wants to bring him back again. Consumed with guilt and self-loathing she fights to end Snow...only to discover that there's another Snow to take his place. She's but a pawn caught between Coin (with her snow-white hair) and Snow (with his white roses) - two Snow Queens with hearts of ice who obtain power with the blood of innocence. And it is through this...that she begins to realize her love for Peeta and why. He is her innocence that she wishes to reclaim.
As she states: "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 dandlion 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."
[The only problem with this statement - is the writer doesn't clearly paint Gale that way. I found myself thinking - but Gale saved your family, got them out. He was by your side every step of the way. So, he may have been involved in making bombs, and may have been furious...but hello, he had to stand numbly by and watch you in not one but two Hunger Games. You never really gave him a chance. Instead you held on to him and Peeta...instead of letting him go. So I was left with a feeling of ambivalence. I wanted her with Gale, because in my mind Gale stood by her no matter what - even when he felt she loved someone else, and seemed to care about the others in the village, saving their lives. His fury is fueled by his town's pain. And his love unlike Peeta's feels more real and less scripted, less a weapon weilded against her by two Snow Queens. While I adore the whole trick of taking the lover and twisting him into a weapon, I think it would have worked better if Gale weren't part of the mix. I shouldn't be rooting for Gale to shoot Peeta...in Mockinjay. And as much as I hate to admit it? I was. Peeta got on my nerves.]
That said, I don't think the love triangel is that important to the writer - it's used more as a means of depicting how violence changes us. And she states her theme neatly here, at the very end of her novel:
"I won't do it. If I can't kill myself in this room, I will take the first opportunity outside of it to finish the job. They can fatten me up. They can give me a full body polish, dress me up, and make me beautiful again. 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. I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself. I think Peeta was onto something about us destroying one another and letting some decent species take over. Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children's lives to settle its differences. You can spin it any way you like. Snow thought the Hunger Games were an efficient means of control. Coin thought the parachutes (which exploded and killed the Capitol's kids and appeared to come from Snow, as a result turning his people completely against him) would expedite the war. [Great metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagosaki by the way] But in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen."
It's funny, I was discussing children's programming with my brother yesterday on the phone. He told me that my neice won't watch the current crop of kids shows or films - they are too aggressive, too violent, too mean, too snide for her. So they've gone back to the 1960s and 1970s Disney films such as The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat, etc...the violence, sexual and otherwise puts her off. I give her credit for not liking it. And I wonder at times about a society that appears to get off on it. What we are willing to justify ...Collins explores this in the Hunger Games series - the atrocities that we justify. Bombs. Landmines. Biological Weapons. Torture. When human life starts meaning less than religious doctrine or land.
That humans if placed in certain circumstances, in say an arena fighting for their lives, are capable of horrible things.
Borrowing heavily from decadent Rome and from our own increasingly decadent celebrity worshipping culture - with our increasingly cringeworthy reality tv shows....Collins combines both and depicts a future nightmare. There's a happy ending, but...she leaves it open too, as Plutarch, the rebel Gamesmaster states..."But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction."
In Collins world ...Hope lies in the dandlion, the boy with bread, and the songs the mockinjay's sing - even their name..mocking the human voice and the human frality.
I recommend these novels but with a caveat...the love triangel can be grating at times, but it is endurable and if you view it as metaphor, workable. Also what she does with Peeta in Mockingjay is quite interesting on multiple levels, thematically, characterwise, and plotwise. While the Hunger Games did not tug at my emotions in quite the way I hoped, it held my interest and was impossible to put down. And the plot supports the theme.
My quibble is I wish it was better written, the characters colored in a bit more, evolved more, given more time to develop...Finnick, Johanna, Prim...and Gale, I feel I barely know. And there's so much I want to know about Haymitch. It feels at times more like a script than a book, waiting for a good actor and actress to give it life, and a good turn of phrase.
In that regard at least, Jim Butcher, JK Rowling and Whedon have one up on Collins - for their characters voices hum in your mind long after they are done, but this in part is due to the fact that they put character before theme.
So, yes, it's a good series of books, with quite a bit that haunts long afterwards. The type of books that you ache to discuss after finishing them and are somewhat annoyed that you can't.
Finished Mockingjay - the final book in The Hunger Games this morning. While there are many things I love about these novels, including the fact that they are impossible to put down once you start them - my difficulty with them is that Collins does not provide enough depth to her characters or develop them enough to make me "really" care. Granted I just finished reading George RR Martin's Storm of Swords which tells us everything we ever wanted to know about each and every single character and a few things we really didn't. But I didn't cry during his novels either.
Collins focus is more on theme than on character, a flaw that I've been noticing in Whedon's work of late as well. At times she's almost dictative about it, much like Whedon is. Although, I prefer Collins to Whedon mostly because she's a much better plotter and her use and exploration of her themes is a tad more digestible not to mention clear, (a gross understatement if there ever was one), she doesn't develop her characters to quite the same degree nor as fully as Whedon. The reason, I find myself compelled to compare the two writers is that their themes are fairly similar and well, both have critical flaws that I'm trying to figure out - there's something off in both stories that cut me off emotionally from them.
Collins' themes regarding war, violence, the ends justify the means, use of power, and the cult of celebrity are not all that different than the themes identified in Whedon's work. In some respects they are done far better and are far clearer here. Whedon's story feels cluttered and confusing, to the degree that his themes can be read more than one way and not necessarily in a way that is, shall we say, at all complimentary of the writer. (That's also a gross understatement). Let's face it some writers are better at writing thematic/plot driven stories while others are better at character/emotional driven stories. Collins tale is a thematic/plot driven one - her characters set up and created for the sole purpose of exploring a theme. While Whedon's stories tend to be character driven, with the plot made up as he goes and the theme coming from the characters. When he attempts to switch to plot/theme driven it's a complete mess. But this review is about Collins not Whedon, so let's neatly kick him out of it now, shall we?
There's nothing wrong with thematic/plot driven tales. Often they feel like allegories, and tend to end tragically - a moral reminder of what not to do. Examples of these sorts of stories clutter the sci-fi literary bookshelves of many a university or high school english lit or poli-sci teacher's shelves (well those who like the genre at any rate) - George Orwell's classic - Animal Farm, Adulus Huxley's Brave New World, Arthur C. Clark's Childhood's End, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Shirely Jackson's The Lottery, Roger Cormier's The Chocloat War, William Fielding's Lord of the Flies...
Collin's work, to give her credit, is not an allegory. Nor does it necessarily end tragically.
And she does what she sets out do. Her examination of the cult of celebrity - of how destructive this is to those turned into celebrities - how their personal value is reduced
to entertainment for the masses - is rather adept and clever. It is also at times sharp.
Unfortunately, she loses me a little with it - makes it difficult for me to care about her central relationship Peeta and Katniss, whose romance as many characters state at different points feels staged - a star-cross lovers cliche for the masses. Collins is careful about poking fun at it - she does it indirectly, since we are in Katniss' pov and Katniss does not have a sense of humor about it. Katniss actually is quite horrified and hates herself for playing along. Being in Katniss pov, the pov of the individual who is being manipulated into this star-crossed romance against her will, places the reader at a disadvantage. You can't quite roote for a romance that feels like a weapon. Katniss when she first meets Peeta is clearly enamored of Gale, her best-friend and hunting partner, who is taking care of her family back home - who she does trust with her life. Peeta is an unknown quantity, and he makes her his romantic partner in the public eye - without her permission, painting her in an ill light if she doesn't play along. To survive, for both of them to survive, Katniss is permitted no choice but to pretend to fall in love with Peeta.
The Peeta and Katniss romance at times feels like a satirical twist on the trope - which was started long before Buffy and Angel, and seemed to culminate to a sickeningly saccrine height with Bella and Edward in Meyer's insanely popular Twilight series. Here, the guy, Peeta, with his blond curls, and blue eyes, and gentle demeanor, filled with romance and love of beauty takes on the Bella role or the Juliet or the Buffy. He's sociable. Friendly. Great on screen.
Loves music and painting. Makes bread. And comes from a family that is, within Katniss's world,
well-to-do (ie. not starving and with food on the table every night). He's not an outsider, like she is. Even his name suggests girly things. While Katniss' name is harder. He shows his emotions, while she rarely does, holding everything in. She's John Connor or the rebel fighter, filled with rage and fire, while he's sunsets, and dandlions.
Gale in sharp contrast, is the hunter, the rebel fighter. Usually in film, Gale would be the tough female fighter - often played by Michelle Rodriquez, except with better luck. And I like Gale better than Peeta, but that's largely because Gale isn't shoved down Katniss' throat. Katniss picked Gale, she asked Gale to help her learn to hunt. And Gale stands stoically by her no matter what. Dealing with hers and Peeta's televised star-crossed romance in technocolor. Hating it, yet somehow not quite holding it against Katniss or Peeta. Instead he directs his rage and fury at the Capital. But Gale is no more developed than Peeta is. At times he feels like a cliche, if you think too hard about it. I figured out early on what Collins was doing with the two men, and by Mockingjay it started to become clear which relationship she was pushing.
Gale represents Katniss' rage and fire at the Capitol, at the world that deprived her of her father, that put her in a violent game, and taught her to kill. Early on in The Hunger Games - the distinction between Peeta and Gale is highlighted - when Gale tells Katniss to find a bow and instructs her to kill to stay alive. Stating somewhat coldly that there isn't really that much difference between killing animals and humans, if you think about it. And even before she volunteers to take her sister's place, he rants about the Capitol and his wishes to take it down. While Peeta in marked contrast worries about what the Hunger Games will do to them.
How it will change them. Worries that he'll become a monster, filled with nothing but rage and hate, a killer.
Katniss herself defines it later in Mockinjay, in case we don't figure it out - Peeta she associates with providing her a piece of bread, and the hope of survival - a dandilion. (Making me realize by Mockinjay that perhaps Collins doesn't quite get it after all.) While Gale is her rage and her fire.
Gale loses his chance with Katniss - when she discovers him with Beetee another victor of the Games, creating bombs to take out innocent lives in order to win. Then in practice, when she fights with him over his plan to destroy a mountain munitions factory - including all the workers inside it. Then finally, when she realizes that the rebels dropped the bombs on the children in the Capitol which killed her sister as well. Gale doesn't know if it was their bomb that did it. But as he notes, it doesn't matter - since she'll always wonder and the one thing he had going for him was the fact that he kept saving those she loved.
At the beginning of the series - we're told that the one thing Katniss loves above all else is her little sister Prim. She would do anything for Prim. All the things she does are ultimately for Prim. And Prim is her opposite, Prim is in some respects a lot like Peeta. Soft edges.
Girlish. Damsel. Yet a doctor and a healer. Kind. Compassionate. Peeta isn't a healer - yet he sees it in Katniss.
Collins sets up the mislead - we aren't supposed to root for Katniss and Peeta because of the cult of celebrity, we are supposed to root for Gale and Katniss - for that is what Katniss thinks, yet as time wears on...and the cult of celebrity almost destroys Peeta and well everyone caught up in it - Peeta in effect becomes a dead ringer for the captured boy in the fairy tale The Snow Queen, with President Snow - the evil ruler who has captured him and twisted his innocence and his pure love for Katniss into something dark. Showing him that real and not real are hard to distinguish beneath the shiny bright lights. And Katniss unlike the heroine in that tale, is not quite sure how or if she wants to bring him back again. Consumed with guilt and self-loathing she fights to end Snow...only to discover that there's another Snow to take his place. She's but a pawn caught between Coin (with her snow-white hair) and Snow (with his white roses) - two Snow Queens with hearts of ice who obtain power with the blood of innocence. And it is through this...that she begins to realize her love for Peeta and why. He is her innocence that she wishes to reclaim.
As she states: "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 dandlion 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."
[The only problem with this statement - is the writer doesn't clearly paint Gale that way. I found myself thinking - but Gale saved your family, got them out. He was by your side every step of the way. So, he may have been involved in making bombs, and may have been furious...but hello, he had to stand numbly by and watch you in not one but two Hunger Games. You never really gave him a chance. Instead you held on to him and Peeta...instead of letting him go. So I was left with a feeling of ambivalence. I wanted her with Gale, because in my mind Gale stood by her no matter what - even when he felt she loved someone else, and seemed to care about the others in the village, saving their lives. His fury is fueled by his town's pain. And his love unlike Peeta's feels more real and less scripted, less a weapon weilded against her by two Snow Queens. While I adore the whole trick of taking the lover and twisting him into a weapon, I think it would have worked better if Gale weren't part of the mix. I shouldn't be rooting for Gale to shoot Peeta...in Mockinjay. And as much as I hate to admit it? I was. Peeta got on my nerves.]
That said, I don't think the love triangel is that important to the writer - it's used more as a means of depicting how violence changes us. And she states her theme neatly here, at the very end of her novel:
"I won't do it. If I can't kill myself in this room, I will take the first opportunity outside of it to finish the job. They can fatten me up. They can give me a full body polish, dress me up, and make me beautiful again. 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. I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself. I think Peeta was onto something about us destroying one another and letting some decent species take over. Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children's lives to settle its differences. You can spin it any way you like. Snow thought the Hunger Games were an efficient means of control. Coin thought the parachutes (which exploded and killed the Capitol's kids and appeared to come from Snow, as a result turning his people completely against him) would expedite the war. [Great metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagosaki by the way] But in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen."
It's funny, I was discussing children's programming with my brother yesterday on the phone. He told me that my neice won't watch the current crop of kids shows or films - they are too aggressive, too violent, too mean, too snide for her. So they've gone back to the 1960s and 1970s Disney films such as The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat, etc...the violence, sexual and otherwise puts her off. I give her credit for not liking it. And I wonder at times about a society that appears to get off on it. What we are willing to justify ...Collins explores this in the Hunger Games series - the atrocities that we justify. Bombs. Landmines. Biological Weapons. Torture. When human life starts meaning less than religious doctrine or land.
That humans if placed in certain circumstances, in say an arena fighting for their lives, are capable of horrible things.
Borrowing heavily from decadent Rome and from our own increasingly decadent celebrity worshipping culture - with our increasingly cringeworthy reality tv shows....Collins combines both and depicts a future nightmare. There's a happy ending, but...she leaves it open too, as Plutarch, the rebel Gamesmaster states..."But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction."
In Collins world ...Hope lies in the dandlion, the boy with bread, and the songs the mockinjay's sing - even their name..mocking the human voice and the human frality.
I recommend these novels but with a caveat...the love triangel can be grating at times, but it is endurable and if you view it as metaphor, workable. Also what she does with Peeta in Mockingjay is quite interesting on multiple levels, thematically, characterwise, and plotwise. While the Hunger Games did not tug at my emotions in quite the way I hoped, it held my interest and was impossible to put down. And the plot supports the theme.
My quibble is I wish it was better written, the characters colored in a bit more, evolved more, given more time to develop...Finnick, Johanna, Prim...and Gale, I feel I barely know. And there's so much I want to know about Haymitch. It feels at times more like a script than a book, waiting for a good actor and actress to give it life, and a good turn of phrase.
In that regard at least, Jim Butcher, JK Rowling and Whedon have one up on Collins - for their characters voices hum in your mind long after they are done, but this in part is due to the fact that they put character before theme.
So, yes, it's a good series of books, with quite a bit that haunts long afterwards. The type of books that you ache to discuss after finishing them and are somewhat annoyed that you can't.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-27 12:46 am (UTC)that is EXACTLY how I felt after reading them (while I was reading I was too intently involved in finishing them to want to discuss them), which is why I found that Mark Read's site so satisfying... he has completed the first book of Hunger Games (posting his reactions and inviting comments after each chapter) and he has just now started Catching Fire:
http://markreads.net/reviews/
I went ahead and read Suzanne Collin's 'Gregor' books: they are much more geared for younger kids, but they have a lively adventurous fun tone to them... . I hadn't expected to like them but I did.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-28 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-27 02:34 am (UTC)On the other hand, I dearly loved Katniss becoming the assassin. I loved her figuring out about Coin and deciding she had to take her out. So the end worked best for me in that regard.
That said, I was never particularly enaoured of Gale. I could see his appeal, but I always found him to be a bit too willing to be jealous considering that Peeta had no control of having been placed in the games and that being in the game was certainly no prize. So although it was the experience of the games that brought Katniss and Peeta together, it wasn't like Peeta had an option. They were drawn together through mutual experience of adversity. Had Katniss never been in the games, she would have been with Gale. But life intervened and that's what developed with Peeta.
And, of course, it's entirely thematically driven with Peeta being humanity and Gale being the soldier so I do think you're right that it was all outgrowth of theme. But, I was okay with it (just wish that the more human elements of it had been better developed. I do think it suffered from having Peeta's struggles take place so much off screen which was partially a result of it being a Katniss POV form of storytelling and partly... I don't know what. Lack of time? It was hard to have programmed Peeta in it more... but I think it still would have been better had programmed Peeta been in it more. They managed it with Johanna after all. And I loved Johanna. I sort of like to think that Johanna and Gale met again after the book was over.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-28 04:17 am (UTC)I could see his appeal, but I always found him to be a bit too willing to be jealous considering that Peeta had no control of having been placed in the games and that being in the game was certainly no prize. So although it was the experience of the games that brought Katniss and Peeta together, it wasn't like Peeta had an option. They were drawn together through mutual experience of adversity. Had Katniss never been in the games, she would have been with Gale. But life intervened and that's what developed with Peeta.
Except Peeta comes into the games with an agenda - he announces publicly that he's madly in love with Katniss. Plays it to the hilt. And in the process paints her into a corner.
It's not like they gradually fell in love, so much as it is - Peeta saying "I'm madly in love with you", then he appears to betray her, then she realizes he's protecting her, etc. Which is quite different than two people being thrust into something by circumstance and falling for one another. That actually explains Gale and Katniss better - who by circumstance ended up hunting together, who gradually became friends and gradually became enamored. Here in the Hunger Games - circumstances are manipulated for them to be together - by Peeta (who enters the games not just as a tribute which he doesn't have control over, or merely an ally, but as a love-struck boy) and Haymitch (who pushes Katniss into Peeta's arms awarding her whenever she kisses him with gifts) and finally the Gamesmasters who announce that there can be two victors if from the same district. If these people had not conspired together, Katniss may have killed Peeta or he may have died.
We don't know. But I don't think anything about their romance was natural or by circumstance - it was clearly manipulated to happen. Granted Peeta's motives are pure, more or less, but...Peeta's decision to make it public instead of private and to use it in the Games is far from pure.
If he hadn't done that? Who knows.
And you can't fault Gale for being jealous of a guy who announces in public his intention to use the games to get the girl. And accomplishes it.
Gale never seemed that jealous though, he's sort of reasonable about it actually. Tries to distance himself. And stoically goes on. Which makes sense, since he has no way of knowing that Katniss isn't head over heels in love with Peeta.
The problem with the Peeta/Katniss romance is the writer wants her cake and eat it too - she wants to critique the star-crossed lovers and the fan obsession with celebrity romance, how that is played, yet at the same time make the romance emotionally compelling and sympathetic. While she succeeds with point one, I'm not so sure she pulls off point two all that well, if at all. But mileage varies (shrugs).
Truthfully? I was ambivalent about both Gale and Peeta. Gale I liked better, because he was painted as less self-serving and weak. Peeta is such a damsel, which in a way is rather fun. In some respects I liked their romance better at the end of Mockingjay...when Katniss is trying to kill Snow. It felt less
manipulative and more real at that point for both characters.
It also works better on a metaphorical level.
That said, you're correct - I think we needed a little more Peeta in Mockingjay - at the very least more on their attempts to pull him back or figuring out what was wrong with him. The first person close present tense pov is problematic, and you really see why in Mockingjay.
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Date: 2010-12-28 05:09 am (UTC)It's not like they gradually fell in love, so much as it is - Peeta saying "I'm madly in love with you", then he appears to betray her, then she realizes he's protecting her, etc. Which is quite different than two people being thrust into something by circumstance and falling for one another. That actually explains Gale and Katniss better - who by circumstance ended up hunting together, who gradually became friends and gradually became enamored. Here in the Hunger Games - circumstances are manipulated for them to be together - by Peeta (who enters the games not just as a tribute which he doesn't have control over, or merely an ally, but as a love-struck boy) and Haymitch (who pushes Katniss into Peeta's arms awarding her whenever she kisses him with gifts) and finally the Gamesmasters who announce that there can be two victors if from the same district. If these people had not conspired together, Katniss may have killed Peeta or he may have died.
I think it's partially an outgrowth of the POV being so closely wedded to Katniss. It's all through her eyes that we see it and we really have Peeta and Gale functioning as aspects of her. So I think a lot of it is locked in because of that fact.
On the other hand, Peeta is being sentenced to his own death as well. he's been stripped of his own family as well. And the only thing he has left in the games is himself and his love of Katniss, so I can sort of see how he employs that as his own raison d'etre for the games. He says he doesn't want to become a monster and in that direction he wants to both love Katniss and to protect her, and being focused on that is his being true to himself and actually employing a strategy to protect her because she does need sponsors. I htink that peeta is right that Haymitch chose Katniss, which makes perfect sense for Haymitch because Katniss was the one with a chance to win. I don't think Peeta ever thought he stood a chance to win so just like Katniss chose to partner with Rue, Peeta chose to be trut to his humanity by loving Katniss.
And I can understand why Peeta is away and tortured and twisted in Mockingjay. I just wish there had been more interaction and thus struggle between them. In a lot of ways Gale was almost too easy of a choice for me. He already fit her life. And is pretty much the standard trope alpha male, who in most books is the guy that has to get the girl.
But... it's really not about the love triangle for me. And I don't focus on it all that much. I pretty much read it from fairly early on as Peeta representing Katniss's humanity and Gale representing the hunter. She needs both in the games and the war. It's all about Katniss. And in that respect I think I decided way early on that it was either her retaining her humanity or becoming a tragedy. She could easily have become a tragedy, and I'm glad that it's more bittersweet than out and out tragedy in the end.
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Date: 2010-12-28 02:36 pm (UTC)on it all that much. I pretty much read it from fairly early on as Peeta
representing Katniss's humanity and Gale representing the hunter. She
needs both in the games and the war. It's all about Katniss. And in that
respect I think I decided way early on that it was either her retaining
her humanity or becoming a tragedy. She could easily have become a
tragedy, and I'm glad that it's more bittersweet than out and out tragedy
in the end.
Agreed. It's really not a character driven story so much as a thematic one. And it is all in one character's pov - first person close present tense. So it's not just first person pov, but first person myopic or literally we are inside Katniss' head at the time she's experiencing these things.
One of the drawbacks is that the other characters can be reduced to stereotypical tropes or archetype or stock.
And I don't disagree with your analysis of Peeta or that Gale is to a degree the typical guy that we see in these novels. Except - oddly, he's not really the alpha male - Katniss is shown to be the better hunter, Gale is Katniss' sidekick, not the other way around.
Both men are given traditionally female roles. (I've read similar stories and seen them, except the role of Katniss is played by a boy, and the roles of Gale and Peeta are female.) Gale is the gal who stays at home and protects the homebase, the family, and can't go into battle. Peeta is the princess that loves the hero and tries to help him, but must be saved - the hero's heart. What was brilliant to me - was the gender reversal.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-27 07:42 am (UTC)I had a similar experience with not getting really into the characters so I was pretty indifferent to her choosing Gale or Peeta and in the end she had made it clear that it was more a choice between concepts than actual people.
I think another aspect to it was that with Gale she has the kind of romance she pretends to have with Peeta, but in the end star crossed lovers means nothing and she makes a rational choice, which is a nice change to other books containing romance.
But in general I agree with you that the triangle is not really the main event. The plotting and the metaphors are far more interesting.
I liked it a lot that you never got any good side, that district 13 was not so different from the capitol in the end and that they build up their own propaganda show.
I had the impression that sometimes the changing from small to large scope was a bit muddled, but hoe Katniss is used in the propaganda war is still the most interesting part of the book.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-27 10:14 pm (UTC)But here's the thing - in a way the choice is taken out of her hands. Gale makes the decision after the bombs go off - to move on. He tells her that he knows she is unlikely to forgive him for her sister's death. He doesn't appear to know if she'll end up with Peeta at that point, nor care. And Peeta for his part, chooses to go back to District 12 and to her. She doesn't ask for him, he's there. And he works to be with her again.
In a way, the choice is as much circumstantial as it is individual. Circumstance drove her and Gale apart, and circumstance brings her and Peeta together. (In contrast to Whedon - Collins love triangle takes a realistic and logical course...the resolution makes sense.)
So it works metaphor and thematic wise.
I had the impression that sometimes the changing from small to large scope was a bit muddled, but hoe Katniss is used in the propaganda war is still the most interesting part of the book.
Agree. I think part of the problem was the first person present tense close pov that the author is using. It just does not work in a large scope - or war/propganda scenario. She was trying to do too much I think. Focus on too many things...and a few character threads got lost in the shuffle.
But...you are correct - Collins depiction of how Katniss is used in the propaganda war - as shown throughout the series is by far the best part of the series. I've read several books, including Whedon's Buffy comics, depiction of the cult of celebrity and how that can be damaging...but so far Collins is the only one whose take on it haunts me. Possibly because unlike the others that I've read, she makes it a central theme, but at the same time does not allow it to diminish or turn her characters into cartoons. (Lolita Files - attempted it in a book I read called Sex Murder Fame - but her characters became cartoonish and hard to care about.)