The Girl Who Was on Fire Read online

  The major issue between Katniss and Gale in Mockingjay is precisely that Gale really does mean what he says. The reality of Gale—that he is so capable of hate and violence, that he is ultimately unable to protect Katniss’ family—is the major problem between the two. Katniss’ illusions about Gale—her thinking that he does not mean what he says—helps Gale’s cause romantically. Likewise with the audience. Gale has very limited page time in the first two books, but he is a literary archetype. The tall, dark, and handsome, aloof and mysterious boy who really connects with you even though all the ladies want him is a very appealing type. The figure of the “baker,” blond, sweet Peeta, is much less intrinsically alluring than the figure of the “hunter.” Gale’s surface makes him extremely popular with readers, but the whole point of the Hunger Games is all the things going on beneath the surface.

  It is an interesting juxtaposition, because if the problem between Katniss and Gale is reality, the problem between Katniss and Peeta is always illusion. Peeta is deceived by Katniss’ feigned love in The Hunger Games, both are forced into play-acting in Catching Fire, and in Mockingjay Peeta’s mental torture has had such an effect on him that he can no longer tell the difference between reality and illusion, between Katniss who he loves and his most deadly enemy. The other characters have to supply answers to Peeta’s constant refrain of “Real or not real?” throughout Mockingjay. He cannot entirely trust their answers, and yet he has to because he cannot rely on his own perception. His position is horrifying, and yet it is just a magnified version of everyone’s position in the Hunger Games—of our own positions as consumers of entertainment that pretends to reflect reality. The refrain “Real or not real?” is a simply a vocalization of the ultimate question of the Hunger Games, and it is a question without any definite answer.

  War ends up having the same layers of deceit as the Hunger Games does. Early in Mockingjay the characters all come to the conclusion that Katniss is only convincing as a spokesperson when she herself is convinced by the situation: when it is real to her. So the rebellion has to set evocative scenes for Katniss, just as Snow and the Capitol do in the previous two books. Propaganda in war is even more important than in entertainment, and so the war we have known must happen from the start of the Hunger Games—a war to change this unbearable society—is portrayed as manufactured killing, as just another Hunger Games, and not much more real.

  We never really do get a face for the antagonist: the closest we come is Snow, and not only does Katniss explicitly reject the chance to kill him, but his death is quite flippantly accomplished and dismissed by the narrative: “Opinions differ on whether he choked to death by laughing or was crushed by the crowd. No one really cares” (Mockingjay). There is no easy way to defeat the evil in the world of the Hunger Games. It is the evil inherent in all of us, and even at the end it is by no means certain that all the evil we have been shown will not spring up again. After all, as Plutarch tells Katniss, “We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction” (Mockingjay).

  Katniss has a gift for destruction of both herself and others, which she realizes in Mockingjay makes her very like Gale. And yet she makes the decision not to be like Gale—not to kill Snow but to take out Coin, to eliminate the threat of violence in the future, rather than take revenge for violence in the past.

  She also realizes that what she needs is someone who helps her be her better self, rather than someone who reflects her worst self: the guy less like her is actually the guy who’s best for her. To a degree, Gale decides the issue for her: not that he doesn’t love her, but that his actions in the war mean she will never be able to disassociate him from her sister’s death. Fans of both boys can be happy, in that Gale is never actually rejected by Katniss. He recognizes her feelings, which have to do with Prim rather than Peeta, and bows out. Last we hear, he has a “fancy job” and Katniss speculates about his possible other romances. Gale seems to be doing just fine for himself, and indeed one has pictures of the rebellion reunions in which Gale shows up in a flashy sports car and says, “Katniss, baby, you could have got with all this.” We, like Katniss, may feel a certain amount of regret at how things turned out, but we also see how feeding the fire of hate plays out with Gale, so we sympathize with Katniss both in her realization that she is similar to Gale and in how it informs her ultimate decision that Peeta is a better mate for her, which we see when their love is both verbally confirmed and physically consummated.

  “Wait, what was that you just said?” I hear you cry. Don’t worry, dear reader, I am not the lucky recipient of the Secret Naughty Edition of the Hunger Games. But Katniss wakes screaming in Peeta’s arms, and then his lips are there to comfort her, and then “on the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach ... So after ... ” (Mockingjay). After what, Katniss? Don’t think we didn’t notice the adroit dropping of the word “hunger” either. After the Games of Amore end, after the conclusion of the Hunger for Loooove, after their ardent quest to catch fire in the flames of passion, after—I’m sure nobody wants to hear me make a sexy joke involving Mockingjay’s title. Perhaps Katniss only refers to a truly excellent make-out session. Perhaps I am a filthy-minded creature from the gutter (perhaps there is no perhaps about that one). Anyway, they eventually have two kids, so I rest assured in the knowledge it’s going to happen sometime.

  Katniss and Peeta’s romance has a very definite conclusion. In fact, overall the Hunger Games has a very final ending, in the manner of Harry Potter, which wound up the seven-book series nineteen years later, with the hero and several other characters established as married with children. Katniss and Peeta have aged at least fifteen years and have children, and their society has been successfully readjusted, the Hunger Games seemingly permanently eliminated, though their psyches remain scarred by war. The book is definitively closed, perhaps to remove any possibility of being tempted to write sequels that might spoil the arc of the books. Many of the most beloved series have very final endings and give their readers a resounding sense of closure, though this may be more cause than effect—because of their popularity, the author may feel he or she has to close the book on the series with no possibility of return. I feel C.S. Lewis still takes the cake with his ending for the Chronicles of Narnia, which is “the world ends, and everyone who isn’t currently in that world dies in a train crash anyway—oh, except for that one chick”—but well played on a decisive finish, Ms. Collins!

  The Hunger Games trilogy has an unsettling premise that combines action adventure with a social conscience, the wishfulfillment of having two guys desperately in love with you, and a resoundingly conclusive ending. It also has a writer who selected her subject material carefully, and who by choosing a subject that fascinated her chose a subject that resonated with a great many other people. We sympathize with the characters, able to doubt them just enough to add to the suspense, as we fear Peeta is betraying Katniss in The Hunger Games and Katniss is supporting a new Hunger Games in Mockingjay, and yet we are able to trust them in extremis. Katniss never considers killing the young girl Rue in The Hunger Games; the worst lines are never crossed by our hero and heroine, which allows us to continue to care for them despite their violent actions. Suzanne Collins even provides us, through the romantic subplot, with an answer for the overlap between reality and illusion. Katniss’ many deceptions do eventually accomplish good: the Hunger Games are over, and despite all Katniss’ losses society is at least improved. When Peeta asks Katniss at the end of Mockingjay, “You love me, real or not real?” and she answers, “Real,” we know this was not always true. Illusion can become reality. Love is real now.

  Even though the audience knows Katniss, Peeta, and the Hunger Games are all not real, we still believe that answer is true.

  SARAH REES BRENNAN was born in Ireland by the sea, where she spent her schooldays secretly reading books rather than learning Irish. That paid off, as she is now the author of the Demon’s Lexicon trilogy, a serie
s about attractive troubled brothers and all the fierce ladies and evil magicians they know, the first book of which received three starred reviews and was a Top Ten ALA book. Her next book, cowritten with Justine Larbalestier, comes out in 2012.

  TEAM KATNISS

  JENNIFER LYNN BARNES

  Who doesn’t love a good love triangle—especially one involving guys like Peeta and Gale? Finding out which boy Katniss would end up with was an important moment—and for some readers the most important moment—in the series. But, as Jennifer Lynn Barnes reminds us, amid all the talk of who Katniss would choose, we sometimes forgot to think about who Katniss actually is. Barnes looks at Katniss independent of potential love interests and provides a convincing alternative to Team Peeta and Team Gale: Team Katniss.

  These days, it seems like you can’t throw a fish in a bookstore without hitting a high-stakes love triangle—not that I recommend the throwing of fish in bookstores, mind you (it annoys the booksellers—not to mention the fish), but it certainly seems like more and more YA heroines are being faced with a problem of abundance when it comes to the opposite sex. While I am a total sucker for romance (not to mention quite fond of a variety of fictional boys myself), I still can’t help but wonder if, as readers, we’re becoming so used to romantic conflict taking center stage that we focus in on that aspect of fiction even when there are much larger issues at play.

  No book has ever made me ponder this question as much as Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy—in part because it seems like everyone I know has very strong feelings about which boy is the best fit for Katniss, but also because the books themselves contain a commentary on the way audiences latch onto romance, even (and maybe especially) when lives are at stake. To survive her first Hunger Games, Katniss has to give the privileged viewers in the Capitol exactly what they want—a high-stakes romance featuring star-crossed lovers and unthinkable choices. Given that readers of the Hunger Games trilogy are granted insider access to Katniss’ mind, life, and obligations, it seems somewhat ironic that in the days leading up to the release of Mockingjay, the series was often viewed the same way—with readers on “Team Peeta” and “Team Gale” focusing on Katniss’ love life, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else.

  But Katniss Everdeen—like a variety of her literary predecessors—is far more than a vertex on some love triangle. She is interesting and flawed and completely three-dimensional all on her own. She’s a sister, a daughter, a friend, a hero, and—above all—a survivor. She’s defined by her compassion, her loyalty, and her perseverance, and those are all traits she has independent of the boys.

  I’m not Team Gale or Team Peeta. I’m Team Katniss, and in the next few pages, we’re going to take a closer look at her character and explore the idea that the core story in the Hunger Games trilogy has less to do with who Katniss ends up with and more to do with who she is—because sometimes, in books and in life, it’s not about the romance.

  Sometimes, it’s about the girl.

  Meet Katniss Everdeen

  Ask anyone who’s ever met her—Katniss Everdeen is a hard person to know. She has one of the most recognizable faces in her entire world, but the vast majority of Panem knows very little about the real Katniss. To the viewers of the Games, she’s the object of Peeta’s affection and then a star-crossed lover herself. Later, she’s the Mockingjay, the face of the rebellion, and ultimately, as far as the outside world is concerned, a broken shell of a girl pushed to the edge of insanity and beyond. Sometimes Katniss dons these masks willingly; sometimes they are thrust upon her. But one thing is certain—unlike the Careers, the flighty members of her prep team, or many of the Capitol’s citizens, Katniss has no desire to be famous.

  She has no desire to be known.

  Whether it’s with the viewers of the Games, the revolutionaries, or the townspeople in District 12, Katniss is the type to keep her distance, a fact she readily admits to in the first chapter of book one, saying that over time, she has learned to “hold [her] tongue and to turn [her] features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read [her] thoughts.” Katniss keeps her private thoughts private and keeps most of the world at least an arm’s length away. Next to Gale, Katniss’ closest friend before the reaping is a girl she barely speaks to. In fact, when describing her friendship with Madge, Katniss suggests that the two of them get along primarily because they both just keep to themselves.

  Clearly, this pre-reaping Katniss identifies as a loner, never getting too close to other people, never expecting too much of them so that she is never disappointed. Similarly, the people in District 12 seem content to let Katniss keep them at bay. Other than her family, Gale, and in his own adore-her-from-afar way, Peeta, there don’t appear to be people lining up to know Katniss Everdeen. Even the family cat keeps his distance when she feeds him—to the point that Katniss remarks that “entrails” and “no hissing” are the closest she and Buttercup can come to love. The same could be said of Katniss’ relationship with everyone from the baker to the Peacemakers who buy her contraband prey—right up until the moment she takes Prim’s place at the reaping.

  Standing up on the stage after she takes Prim’s place, Katniss notes that it is as if a switch has been flipped, and all of a sudden, she has “become someone precious” to people who have never seemed to care about her one way or another, people who don’t really know her, except through that one selfless act. As she realizes this, Katniss—in typical Katniss fashion—schools her face to be devoid of emotion, refusing to let the rest of the world see her tears, and this reluctance to give the Games’ viewers anything real continues throughout the series. Our heroine’s initial reaction to Haymitch telling her to make the audience feel like they know her is to explode, arguing that the Capitol has already taken away her future and that she doesn’t owe them anything else. When Katniss does eventually give viewers a tiny glimpse of her love for Prim during her first pre-Games interview with Caesar Flickerman, even this revelation lays our heroine as bare as if she’d been asked to undress on camera.

  Throughout the series, Katniss wears many masks—and a large part of the reason she slips into them so easily is that being the Mockingjay, or the giggling girl twirling around in her dress, or the lunatic who killed President Coin, is easier than letting people in and being herself. It’s occurred to me—more than once—that maybe Katniss isn’t just a hard person to know; maybe she’s a hard character to know, too, even for those of us who are inside her head. Maybe that’s why there’s a tendency for readers to fall into the same trap as the viewers in the Capitol and to look for an easy answer, a handy label like “girl in love” or some kind of either/or question that will tell us exactly who Katniss Everdeen is.

  Maybe, for a lot of readers, that question is Peeta or Gale?

  Who am I?

  I think there are two reasons that Katniss is a hard character for us, as readers, to wrap our minds around. The first is that Katniss isn’t the kind of hero we’re used to seeing in fiction. She reacts more than she acts, she doesn’t want to be a leader, and by the end of Mockingjay, she hasn’t come into her own or risen like a phoenix from the ashes for some triumphant moment that gives us a sense of satisfaction with how far our protagonist has come. She’s not a Buffy. She’s not a Bella. She limps across the finish line when we’re used to seeing heroes racing; she eases into a quiet, steady love instead of falling fast and hard.

  As much as Katniss holds herself apart from the people in her own world, she doesn’t fit easily in with the canon of literary heroines either. But in addition to not fitting the mold, Katniss can be even more difficult for readers to know because though the books are told in first person, Katniss has strikingly little self-awareness. We have to work to figure Katniss out, because as often as not, Katniss doesn’t know who she is, what she feels, or the kind of influence she wields over other people.

  Peeta points this cluelessness out to Haymitch after Katniss’ first interview in The Hunger Games, but even hearin
g him say that she has no idea what kind of effect she has on people, Katniss seems fully oblivious to what Peeta is talking about. She spends most of the trilogy completely unsure of her own romantic feelings, but she’s equally in the dark about everything from the kind of person she is and the kind of person she wants to be to the influence she wields as the Mockingjay. Consider a moment shortly after the reaping when Katniss is told that people admire her spirit. She seems perplexed, saying “I’m not exactly sure what it means, but it suggests I’m a fighter. In a sort of brave way.” The idea that a girl who volunteers for certain death to save a loved one might not know that she is brave is astounding, but somehow, Collins sells it absolutely.

  Given that Katniss knows so little of herself, is it any wonder that she can be difficult for us to wrap our heads around, too? It seems plausible to me that one of the reasons that so many readers seem entirely invested in whether Katniss ends up with Peeta or Gale is that this seems like a more manageable question than debating the kind of person Katniss is at her core. After all, firecracker Gale and dandelion Peeta are so different from each other that it’s easy to imagine that a girl who would choose Gale is a completely different person than one who would choose Peeta. When people sit around debating who Katniss should choose, maybe what they’re really debating actually is her identity—and the romance is just a proxy for that big, hard question about the ever-changing, unaware girl on fire.