Last week, in Mockingjay Discussion 15: The Hanging Tree, we covered some of the fascinating symbolic possibilities for the haunting song Katniss sings to Pollux, primarily to distract the mockingjays from singing Rue’s four-note tune, but which echoes throughout the novel. “The Hanging Tree” also connects to real ballad types and actual ballads. Understanding the different types of ballads and where “The Hanging Tree” fits can add to our understanding of the way Collins uses music in general and this evocative piece in particular.
Three quick questions for serious readers of Mockingjay, the finale of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, a week after its publication:
(1) How many times have you re-read or re-visited this story after your first reading?
(2) Has your thinking about the book or series changed in major ways in that time? minor ways?
(3) Mockingjay was clearly meant to be a knock-out blow kind of reading experience. Did you find it a powerful or painful blow? A painfully powerful head shot?
Thank you in advance for sharing your answers to these questions — and for joining us here for our discussion of the Panem Saga’s closer (Here is a collection of the 25 HogPro Mockingjay posts). I hope to post tomorrow on the literary alchemy of Mockingjay; see you then for the allegorical and anagogical artistry of the book with some thoughts on how it did and didn’t work!
In some of our recent flurry of fabulous conversation, someone mentioned that Collins ought to do a follow-up “whatever happened to…” book rather than a prequel. I know many readers were thrilled when J.K. Rowling filled in gaps about characters, such as Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom both getting married, just not to one another. Of course, Collins may be in no way inclined to do any such thing, but it might be interesting to speculate on the fates of a few characters, based on what we do see in the text, and I’d love to see what everyone thinks of these theories (or chime in with some of your own).
Several months ago, when I first read The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I decided to assign The Hunger Games to my ENG 111 (Expository Writing) students at my college. I was also singing the praises of the book to friends, colleagues, and former students. The ENG 111 folks started reading and writing about The Hunger Games last week, before Mockingjay’s release, and I already have students emailing me to tell me how much they love the book, as well as engaging in thoughtful, insightful conversations, more of which I’ll share in coming weeks.
As I began Mockingjay, though, I found myself thinking, “What have I gotten these people into?” If some readers are unhappy with Collins for not concluding the series as they expected her to, what will these students think of the teacher who took them to Panem and set them up for this finale? My concerns have been assuaged greatly by the wonderful insights of a former student and current friend, whom I set on The Hunger Games a while back and who actually finished Mockingjay before I did. Her comments here are from the notes she sent me on Facebook (until I said “Wait! I’m not finished!”). Read the rest of this entry »
We have already noted that the plot point sequence of Mockingjay is consistent with Hunger Games story formula down to the chapter. What I missed my first hurried read through the book was the story structure of the 27 chapters in Mockingjay specifically. In a nut shell, the series finale is a book whose last 13 chapters mirror the first thirteen chapters and whose beginning, middle, and end points echo one another. Let’s look at exactly how this works with chapter line-ups and then discuss why Ms. Collins would bother with such artistry. Read the rest of this entry »
From Hogwarts Professor Louise Freeman in Virginia:
The assembly of the Council of Victors to vote on whether or not to punish the Capitol with a final (yeah, right!) Hunger Games is a pivotal scene of Mockingjay. The obvious question we are supposed to ask is “Why did Katniss vote yes?” Was she still so bitter over Prim’s death and convinced that the Capitol was responsible that she would go along with the act of vengeance? Or did she instantly have an “Animal Farm” style realization that Coin was no different than Snow and give the Yes vote as her best chance to kill her? I have my own idea, but I can see how there would be differing opinions. It might be more beneficial to ask two other questions: 1) Why did Coin call for the vote? 2) Why did the other Victors vote the way they did? Read the rest of this entry »
From Hogwarts Professor Louise Freeman in Virginia:
In case anyone’s forgotten, the New York Times gave Hunger Games a “Notable children’s book” award. Two years and two sequels later, we have Mockingjay, which I speculate will be deemed ineligible in that category. As Elizabeth put it, we have “the biggest body count since Gettysburg,” not to mention Finnick’s description of his sex slavery, brutal slaying of young children and descriptions of battles, killings, war crimes and torture that make even adults cringe, not all of which were committed by the Bad Guys. Can readers who were put off by Harry’s brief uses of Unforgivable curses stomach this? Especially in a series welcomed by teens and even pre-teens in midnight release celebrations? Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t think Suzanne Collins and Stephenie Meyer have that much in common besides being the authors of best-selling YA series. Mrs. Meyer is a stay-at-home mom, a Latter-day Saint, and didn’t study creative writing in school or work as a writer before taking the world by surprise with Twilight. Ms. Collins’ faith and political posture are unknown (if I had to guess, I’d say “Catholic” and ‘DLA’), but she has an MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University and she had a successful career as a television writer and novelist before Hunger Games made her a household name. If Collins has the equivalent of a PhD in creative writing, though, it still seems she has learned a lot from the soccer-Mormon-mom in Arizona. The Hunger Games novels and especially Mockingjay are loaded with Twilight echoes. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hunger Games trilogy is published by Scholastic Books which company, of course, is the publisher of the American editions of Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. When Suzanne Collins was asked recently about her favorite books, she listed a few books her readers would have expected, a few that were real surprises (the influence of which titles was more obvious in Mockingjay), and not a single Harry Potter novel.
I think it’s fair to assume, nonetheless, that she has read the best selling novels of our time and that the imaginative experience she had inside the Hogwarts Saga and especially Deathly Hallows shaped specific turns in Hunger Games. The Shared Text of our times will be evident in most everything for at least a decade or two. Here are a few of the more obvious echoes in Mockingjay: Read the rest of this entry »
From Hogwarts Professor Louise Freeman in Virginia, thoughts on ‘Mockingjay,’ media, books, and truth, not to mention a contrast with Harry Potter:
“Beauty is truth and truth, beauty–that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” John Keats.
The Hunger Games trilogy gave us the harshest skewering of the media since Rita Skeeter, and with much less comic relief. The first two books show the broadcast Games, “reality” TV twisted into a weapon of oppression and packaged as entertainment. Mockingjay shift gears into “informational” broadcasts twisted into weapons of war; they don’t even bother calling them “news broadcasts” but “propos,” a nickname for propaganda. In the end, there’s little difference between the two formats. Read the rest of this entry »
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