If you’ll forgive my slipping into Appalachian Culture teaching mode, ballads (which are narrative, with characters and a plot, not just slow songs; that misconception gives us the mistaken term “power ballad” for any slow rock song) fall into three main categories:

1. Literary, which have authors and are written as intentional artistic works (“Ode to Billie Joe,” “Ballad of the Green Berets, ” “Copperhead Road,”  etc.)
2. Broadside, based on actual local scandals, though with plenty of elaboration (“Tom Dooley,” “Little Omie Wise”)
3. Folk, or popular ballads, ancient songs that have no identifiable author, have morphed over time, include figures like knights, ladies, gypsy lovers, and highwaymen, and revolve around the themes of love and death.

The Hanging Tree, of course, to Katniss, is a folk ballad. The real folk ballad it echoes most strongly is probably “The Hangman’s Tree,” in which the speaker, a woman, interestingly enough, stands at the gallows asking each friend and family member who rides up if that person is there to pay her debt and get her pardoned or to see her “hanging from the gallows tree.” After running through all her relations, finally, her true love is there to save her, not to watch her die. It’s a particularly old song with complex origins and variations. This one was recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary, and was on my parents’ LP, which I loved listening to when I was a kid. So, like Katniss, I went around singing songs about a hanging. It’s not that odd, really. Many of the lullabies I’ve sung my own children are ballads of death, ghosts, and love affairs. The pediatrician has assured me this will not turn either of them into serial killers. In fact, it may warn them out of trouble(see this amusing website for just that idea). Demon lovers who return from Hell to lure their old girlfriends away from home, hearth, and husband (and kids) also figure prominently, so a hanged man crooning to his girl to join him fits right in.

“The Hanging Tree” also strongly resembles a broadside, and not just because broadsides are often narrated by the convicted murderer shortly before he gets a short rope and sudden drop. Obviously, they weren’t written by the actual individuals. “The Ballad of Frankie Silver” a local (for me) song based on the very real case of the first woman hanged by the state of NC (1833), makes her give a powerful gallows speech, though eyewitnesses and court records aver that Frankie went to her death silently. Hanging is a big theme in Appalachian ballads, with Tom Dula (Dooley) being one of the better known ballad characters to end up on the end of a rope, and broadsides are often tabloid reports of murder, rape, adultery, and other unsavory events (Dula was convicted of murder, but he and most everyone else in the story also had syphilis from their tangled sex lives with one another. Yuck.) Though based on true events, the broadsides often bring in the supernatural, like dead people talking. Also, broadsides would be altered with a few name changes or other location switches to make them fit shocking crimes in other communities. Thus, the poor “Knoxville Girl” has been throttled, stabbed, and drowned all over the continental US and parts of Europe.

 However, our so-called murderer is never identified or placed in the context of real events, so that makes the song a District 12 folk ballad. Broadsides sometimes evolve into folk ballads (“Pretty Polly” started out based on a real murder, but has long since transformed into a folk ballad). 

The possible political connotations of the song tie it in with rebellion songs like “By the Risin’ O’ The Moon,” too.

Even though it’s a folk ballad in the context of the story, the fact that Collins wrote it for her book makes it a literary ballad. She could have used a real ballad, but she would not be the first author to instead create the song she needs. In her wonderful novel Songcatcher (no relation at all to the movie of the same name), Sharyn McCrumb traces the journey of a song through a family, using a song she and Shelley Stevens created: “The Rowan Stave.”  It’s a dead ringer for an actual folk ballad.

It really would be interesting to know Collins’s process in shaping “The Hanging Tree”; if, as I suspect, she has roots in Appalachia, she may be drawing from those. Or maybe she just had a really good class in Appalachian Culture or music history!

(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!

Cinna: There’s really no point in taking a poll of “who is sad we didn’t actually see Cinna in Mockingjay?”; I think that’s pretty much everyone. Though his assumed death in interrogation gives us hope he might re-surface, he doesn’t, and Katniss preserves her memories of him in the precious book of faces. A few folks have expressed their distress at visualizing Cinna dying by torture, much in the manner of Darius, per Peeta’s gruesome description. However, the Capitol folks seem to be pretty good at this torture business. If they’d wanted to keep the fashion genius for long-term interrogation (and they could have used him against Katniss; next to Peeta, he’s the person in their clutches she cares about most), they would not have killed him by torture, and it seems unlikely they would have killed him by accident.

Instead, I think it’s a safe bet that Cinna had one of those little purple nightlock pills himself. He had to know that it was only a matter a time of for him after the fiery wedding dress. My bet is that his tastefully low-key outfit had one of those tear-away shoulder pockets just like Katniss’s Mockingjay outfit and that Cinna removed himself from the stage before he could be tortured or drugged into revealing anything that could hurt his Girl on Fire or the cause she represents.  He has clearly made certain his plans and costumes for her will be in Plutarch’s hands before the Quarter Quell begins. When Peeta prevents her taking her own pill, Katniss refers to it as “Cinna’s last gift,” but perhaps his last conscious gift to her was to take his own life before he could be used against her.

Bonnie and Twill: Like any large, sweeping series, this one has plenty of “walk-ons”– characters who fulfill a certain task, then vanish from the stage. Bonnie and Twill, from Catching Fire, at first seem to be just such characters, especially as they are presumed by Katniss to have died shortly after their meeting with her in the woods. They have done their job narratively: to tell Katniss about the uprising in 8 and to show her the wafer with her emblem, the mockingjay, while keeping her out late enough that she returns to an electrified fence. It doesn’t seem surprising that Collins just adds them to the very long list of “presumed dead,” and Katniss seems ready enough to make that assumption, too, but that’s before she knows much about District 13.

Even though it was winter, the two District 8 refugees only had a week’s journey to 13, and Katniss had given them skills and tools to assist them. Her assumption that they died of natural causes in the woods may prevent her from considering the alternative: that they arrived in District 13 and were disposed of as unnecessary. After all, rather than a large population of potential soldiers, they were two hungry, damaged women who expected 13 to come to the rescue of the rebels right away. Were they killed for voicing these expectations or disappointment in the District’s 13 attitude? No way to know, of course, but I imagine Katniss wonders the same thing after she has learned the truth, and I bet Bonnie and Twill are in her book, too.

Lyme: Okay, not a major character, but I noticed District 2’s former victor primarily because I thought the name was great. After all, she lives in the Rockies, home of the tick-borne illness Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and she has the same name as another tick illness—Lyme disease. Well, I thought it was funny.

Anyway, she does make an impression on Katniss, too, but she is not included among the victors for the big vote meeting at the end. Is she dead? It seems so, but how? Was she killed in combat? Perhaps. Was she offed by the new Coin regime as a threat? Is her death, like the murder of the stylists and prep teams, one that is not clearly laid at the feet of either side? Even Enobaria, from her district, doesn’t mention her. I think it unlikely Collins just forgot to invite her to the Victor con-fab, so maybe her absence is more loaded than it seems.

What other characters vanish from the story, leaving you to wonder of their fates? To what degree are they left out simply because Collins didn’t have a job for them to do? Is this just another message about war –sometimes you never know what happened to people (I see this story repeatedly in American Civil War accounts)? Or, is there more to these absences that adds to the layers of Mockingjay?

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!”).

Though she’d like to remain anonymous, it’s not because her thoughts are anything of which she should be ashamed (far, far from it). I’ve left out my replies, as I like her thoughts and questions as stand-alones. They are wonderful examples of how a good book makes us think, and comfort to the teacher concerned her students may be going on a trip whose destination may not be what they want or expect. A book, like other tools for our learning and edification, does not always have to make us happy, especially if it can make us feel and think.

Here, with little editing, are the engaging thoughts and provoking questions of She-Who-Does-Not-Want-To-Be-Named:

My First Written Reaction to Mockingjay:

(A series of notes on Mrs. Hardy’s facebook wall on August 26, 2010)

Mrs. Hardy….. I don’t think I’ve ever been so….. shocked; devastated…completely ravaged by a book like I have been by Mockingjay. I finally got to finish it today, after beginning it last night, and I’m still reeling. I know I need to just let my brain absorb the shockwaves and overcome its overload and confusion. I’m not confused about why Collins wrote it the way she did, not at all, it’s just that it’s…so much to take in, you know? And very different than what I expected. Did you feel like that? Again, I know that this is most certainly a major ironic point on Collins’ part, and I’ll give her full credit, it’s certainly working.

I AM confused about the ending…. whether there is really hope and healing, or is there…. really not? Peeta and Katniss did not seem at all like they should have been at the end…. again, I know that’s the point, but still…. where is the “characters being realistic but also demonstrating we can overcome-type thing?” Or is the whole point that they and we don’t/can’t/won’t, or that they are, it’s just not rainbow colored, because she does say that Peeta gives her the hope of life and healing, but doesn’t really seem to convince me?

I’m sorry, I know this doesn’t make any sense–I can’t believe I’m writing this to my English professor when I KNOW I’m not making any sense, but you know how much I love these stories and characters, and it’s…. devastating to feel so uncertain about them. Is that what Katniss meant when she saw Finnick and Annie together? (insert a million more questions). The point is….. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?

And what is WITH these characters?? Peeta seems to really be giving a rather fair sizing-up of Katniss when he’s still mad from the torture–she doesn’t seem like a “heroine”–but then he learns to really see her and love her unconditionally again (or just be freed from his mind to do so). But are any of the characters, at their core, the same? Are they really our heroes? Or do we have the wrong idea of a hero, & that’s the point? & are K & P sincere in whatever it is they have, or is it a “game” too, at the end? How wretched is THAT?? Or is it just the fallen world we live in? The whole “survival” thing with Katniss….is she really just intent on that, even with Peeta at the end??

Or did I get that completely wrong and it’s really that Katniss DOES conquer—that she does FINALLY admit she loves Peeta, does answer for herself alone when he asks the question “real or not real” (I couldn’t help but think of Jesus making Peter say it for himself, too: “Who do YOU say I am?”), does give herself over to who she really is, there at the end, to the true light, life, and love that is only in Peeta and that she not only needs and even desires but chooses and commits to, even though they don’t get a “fairy-tale” end?

And does that mean that “’mere’ survival” isn’t the worst thing that can be, the worst ending we can have, even though it’s definitely not the best? Even if we have to still play some sort of game as mortals, as long as we’re in as much command of them, of ourselves, of our destinies/choices as possible? But what does THAT mean? To give yourself over to love and realize there is liberty, but on this earth it’s not complete? Or do we sense that Katniss does not have that security? Or is she just being honest and acknowledging her weaknesses, along with Peeta, while they seek to be as strong as they can in each other’s strength and live for each other, and mostly for their children? And in that, she is absolutely free. But really only in principle, right? Her children will live in uncertainty……But is that hopeless, too? I think all parents must feel that way to a degree…

Notes on Mockingjay, written after my brief notes to Mrs. Hardy

26 August 2010

With the extreme, brutal bleakness of this book, I thought maybe after all the characters did not mean what they should anymore. And I’m still not positive….but Katniss does succeed, you know. She and she alone took out Coin and Snow, so that there would be true freedom. All the hell everyone suffered through would have been utterly worthless without her saving them from the dictators. She does save Peeta—from his utter physical, mental, and emotional desolation and unutterable, inhuman agony—just as he saves her. Just as they always have. And just as they always will. Not the same as before; they have suffered far, far too much for that. But they do choose life. They do choose light. They do choose love. Together, as one. “Peeta and I grew together again;” I think this means they not only grew close again, but that they moved forward, they grew beyond all the horror, together—and together is always how they “grew.” And then there’s the beautiful passage with Katniss recognizing that no matter what had happened, the only right choice was Peeta—she finally sees Gale for who and what he is, and Peeta for who and what he is. And gives herself to him entirely, finally saying—and I believe absolutely meaning—that what is truly real—actual, authentic, existent, pure, right, good, desirable, enduring—is their love; that it is indeed their love, because she does love him back entirely at last, choosing to commit to and cherish him; that love is the only real thing for anyone, for herself and Peeta. Even though the agonies and suffering will never completely leave them, even though they cannot be utterly free in this world…Katniss finally chose to love Peeta, finally actually said it for herself and him—not for the Capitol, not for the Rebels, not for anyone but themselves, and it had to come from her and only her at Peeta’s asking. And that liberty and strength and comfort and beauty is enough to sustain and fulfill them and enable them to hopefully equip their children to handle whatever comes their way, too.

But was Gale right? Katniss says “what I need to survive,” just like Gale said she would. But is it selfishness and coldness, calculation, or just complete honesty and freedom? She has truly loved Peeta since the first games, and has deepened and strengthened and expanded that love since. Except that you wonder after poor Peeta is tortured if she really does—is she really turning him off, or in “selfish” grief acting out? Does she save Peeta in the Capitol because she wants to keep him alive to spite Snow more than anything, or because he means more than anything? Is she with him at home at the end simply because she’s lonely and he’s the one and only reason, support, comfort to stay alive, who alone understands what she’s been through, and loves her unconditionally? Does she love him like this for real? I’d wonder, but for her saying that (eventually) what she feels with him is what she felt that night in the Quarter Quell…that was before any Mockingjay mess, and symbolized her true love, not at all mere physical desire (even Gale, whom she snogs in desperation, acknowledges their experience can’t remotely hold a candle to her kiss (and relationship) with Peeta…). She says she realizes she would be with him even if all that happened in Mockingjay hadn’t happened. But it did. Is she the same? Enough to be the genuine article, like they used to be? Less so? Or perhaps MORE so? And Peeta surely asks “real or not real” to allow Katniss to really decide, not because he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s better when he comes back, and will continue to have “flashbacks” that make him grip the chair, but otherwise he’s…back to his old self? They all go back to their former activities, resume their former relationships, slowly, but surely….in theory, in practice, or in genuine actuality?…as it used to be, except so much more “matured” because of what they’ve been through. Are they at the core themselves, still? And back to how I began. Katniss does overcome. She saves everyone. She grieves. She revives when Peeta comes back to her. And slowly but surely, heals and is complete—as complete as she’s going to be—in his arms. Not because she’s desperate or lonely or thinking only of survival. Frankly, why would she merely want to survive, when reality is so wretched? Surely life and healing and hope DOES beckon, and not in a selfish way. She loves her Peeta, and he loves his Katniss, and they love their children….whom I pray never have to endure the hell their parents did. But it is a hellish world…..and life can feel like games. But if you win them by conquering yourself if nothing else…..if you’ve done so through selfless, undying, unifying love, as Katniss and Peeta do……then that is true victory.

So for us….what is real. What is not. How can we change our world. How can we not. What should we do. What should we not do. What makes it worthwhile……

Just checked the book again, and I missed how important it is that when Peeta returns, she is revived. She bathes, she combs her hair, and most of all, burns her clothes from the Capitol….she casts off that self. Faces the truth about Gale, about the District, Madge and her family, and then when Buttercup comes, about her precious sister. And who is there but Peeta, with a loaf of warm bread. Who is right there as she “slowly comes back to life,” when she generates her idea about the book—and who helps her seal it with tears and “promises to live well to make their deaths count.” Surely as they return to life—and to love—it is a true return, and not some fake or superficial or selfish or meaningless or even tragic thing. It is the opposite of all the above: it is true and deep and selfless and meaningful and victorious. And enduring, everlasting, even in their shared suffering and fear for their children. “They have each other.” And means to guide their children to victory as well. Which they will surely do: because they ARE our heroes.

Further thoughts on above paragraph on 08/27/10:

She also dresses in clean, “new” clothes—she puts on a ‘new self.’ And who moved her after she lost consciousness from her weeping so that she comes to in her bed? I doubt it was Granny Sae. He watches over her as witnesses the effects his return has had. And he brings her warm bread—that means everything from their story; that’s how he first reached out to her, how she always regards him, and here at what she thought was the end of all things, as Katniss did when she was a starving, hopeless child in the rain, here there is offered life and warmth and goodness and strength and hope and love. Straight from his heart to hers. And then notice how naturally Peeta is included in the “coming back to life” process. She says Granny Sae made “us” breakfast—not sure if that’s Katniss and Buttercup, but it might very well mean Katniss and Peeta. “Us.” From there, he’s simply naturally, seamlessly included, with the Book, and as Haymitch joins them in recovery and renewal, and then of course as Katniss relates that they grew together again. I wonder when he and Katniss started ‘sleeping together’ again; that very night when Katniss begins to heal, or a while, maybe even a long while, later? Regardless, they do slowly but surely grow back together in every sense, and then at last, at last are ‘entirely’ freed from the darkness and severance and doubt and fear, and come together completely, utterly, absolutely in that love. In its truth. And in full confidence thereof.

Continued notes from 08/26/10

Peeta and Katniss not only save and then sustain and heal each other, they do this for others, too. For Haymitch, for all of Panem. THEY are the ones who truly inspired and won the rebellion, and they are the ones who document—because it would be a “crime to forget”—all the precious people and memories that make them who they are, that made the Rebellion possible and then actual. They refuse to forget, they honor, they love, and they vow to live well so that their beloveds did not die in vain. And this process is acutely personal and painful, but necessary and healing, for Katniss and Peeta, and they selflessly allow Haymitch to enter this and benefit from it as well. And then later, when their precious children are ready, they too will gain from this memorial, so that they might truly understand, and never forget…but always cherish, and LIVE well themselves, in the footsteps of their parents.

Ending—can be seen as a less than happily-ever-after, indicative that our characters aren’t our heroes, or that they are even more than we could have dreamed possible. And the reason it ends somberly is because it IS somber—their situation, all they’ve lived through, and perhaps most importantly for us….our OWN situation, too. It, too, is dire. It is sad. It is not ‘colorful.’ But love is real, and we have the choice to become givers and receivers of it, to succeed as much as we possibly can to change things and make them better—but perhaps most of all, to never forget what is REAL, what is worthy, what is good…and to claim and live and share it to the utmost we possibly can.

If you take a piece of paper — I take two sheets and tape them so I have a 22″ long single page — draw a line on it lengthwise, and then divide the line into 27 pieces so you have spaces for each chapter, you can chart this for yourself. Graphing the action and plot points of each chapter and then comparing it with other chapter events reveals two distinct patterns, namely, an overlap of beginning-middle-and-end with especially sharp echoes in the first and last chapters and a point to point reflection in chapters after the mid-point with chapters from the start.

The beginning, middle, and end chapters — 1, 14, and 27 — take place in Panem’s mining districts, the Capitol-destroyed District 12 and the about to be destroyed by the Rebels District 2. The specific points of echo in Chapters 1 and 27 are hard to miss. Katniss lands in the Meadow and kicks a skull in Chapter 1 and the Epilogue to Chapter 27 is all about the Meadow as graveyard and playground. She finds Buttercup in Chapter 1; Buttercup finds Katniss in Chapter 27. Katniss finds the white rose from President Snow in Chapter 1; Katniss finds the same rose and burns it in Chapter 27.

Chapter 2 has echoes in the ending chapter one ring in from the finish, Chapter 26, as well as in Chapter 15, the first chapter after the midpoint. Chapter 2 features Peeta’s interview with Flickerman calling for a cease-fire and Katniss’ refusal to obey President Coin; Chapter 15 has Katniss broadcasting to Panem about the need for an inter-District cease fire and Chapter 26, of course, has the Mockingjay assassinating President Coin.

Chapter 3, too, reflects both the next ring in from the end, Chapter 25, and the next chapter after the center, 16. Chapter 3 has Cinna’s costume and notebook as a major ‘reveal’ and chapter 16, with its Finnick-Annie wedding, is the only other place with Cinna designs in the book. We learn in Chapter 3 that District 13 is torturing Katniss’ stylists and in Chapter 25 we learn from President Snow that District 13 bombed the Capitol children and killed Prim, Katniss’ beloved sister.

Chapter 4 follows the same pattern. Katniss goes hunting with Gale in 4 and the two race together to the City Center until separated at the Seam pod in Chapter 24. We learn the deatails of the Stylists’ torture in 4 and Katniss’ deal with Coin is made official and in 17 Katniss makes a deal with Coin in order to be allowed to join the attack on the Capitol. Johanna shocks the Victors table in the cafeteria with details of Peeta’s torture in the Capitol.

Chapter 5 echoes Chapter 18, its reflection after the divide, in being failed attempts to stage propos with Katniss. In 5, it is a solo failure as the studio-packaged Mockingjay; in Chapter 18, Katniss passes her training test to enter Squad 451 (yes, a pointed reference to the Bradbury classic about gov’t control of ideas and disinformation). the television team of the invading rebel army. They also produce disappointing videos.

Chapters 6 and 19 are segue moments to gather our breath before battle sequences. In 6, Katniss armors up and picks up weaponry from Beetee in anticipation of her trip to District 8. Chapter 19 features Boggs’ tutorial with Katniss about President Coin and Real-Not Real conversations with Peeta which set-up the Star Squad fiasco on a Capitol side street that leaves Katniss in charge.

In Chapter 7, the Mockingjay unexpectedly takes flight; she shoots down a few planes with her high tech bow and arrow and gives a flaming ‘Girl on Fire’ speech to the Capitol. In Chapter 20, Katniss takes command, assesses the Star Squad’s situation after Boggs’ demise, and leads them successfully into hiding. Both chapters feature the valiant embedded film crew. Mockingjay goes to war!

Chapters 8 and 9 find reflections in Chapter 21 with Peeta begging Katniss to end the war in 8 and begging her to kill him in 21. Chapters 9 and 21 each have a President Snow broadcast with him wearing the white rose, ‘The Hanging Tree’ receives an important place, and Peeta takes steps toward suicide in hope of protecting Katniss (“Dead by morning!”).

Chapters 10 and 22 find Katniss deep underground, safe in District 13′s lowest bunkers during the Capitol’s attacks and leading a Squad taking casualties in the Caitol’s sewers.

We see Katniss suffer something of a breakdown or crisis in confidence in both chapters 11 and 23. Gale helps pull her out of her funk in 11 by volunteering for the mission to rescue Peeta from the Capitol. In 23, Gale and Peeta say just the right things to bring her back into play as the team leader.

Chapters 12 and 24 are the Mockingjay attacks on the Capitol’s City Center. Finnick and Katniss provide distracting video while Gale and crew rescue Annie and Peeta in 12. Chapter 24 is the blood-bath rubedo attack Gale and Katniss make to get to the President’a Mansion. Katniss is surprised in each chapter by the appearance of a loved one only to be nearly destroyed consequent to seeing them; Peeta nearly kills her and Prim becomes a fire ball that turns our Mockingjay into a Phoenix.

Chapter 13′s vignette with Beetee and Gale planning weapons along the lines of President Snow’s “rulebook” is echoed in Chapter 15, immediately after the center pivot, when Gale argues forcefully with Volts’ support that they destroy the District 2 mountain fortress with everyone inside. Gale discusses with Katniss in chapter 26 the exact weapon under development in Chapter 13 and the likelihood of whether it was the delayed fuse bomb that killed Prim.

If you think that was accidental on the author’s part or wonder if I’m not ‘forcing the pieces,’ please listen again to the 5 Questions Interview with Ms. Collins that Scholastic posted the week before Mockingjay was published. In answer to the third question (1:20 into the clip), “How do you typically plot or plan your books?” she said,

“It helps me to work out key structural points before I begin a story: the inciting incident, act breaks, mid-story reversal, crisis, climax, those sorts of things. I know a lot of what fills in the spaces between them as well, but I leave some uncharted room for the characters to develop, and, if a door opens along the way and I’m intrigued by where it leads, I’ll definitely go through it.”

Note first that Ms. Collins, by including this in her five question preview, wants her readers to be thinking about how she structures her stories. Then pay attention to her saying explicitly that, while she allows that she doesn’t begin work in a formulaic straight jacket, that she works with specific traditional three-act “key structural points,” to include a “mid-point reversal.”

I hope her pointing to her story structure as important and the evident ring and mirror composition of the finale together are sufficient argument that this is intentional artistry on her part. The question now is “why would she bother?”

The Point of Ring and Mirror Composition

This is much too long a discussion for me to do more than begin here. For the full discussion of the symbolism of the circle, read chapter four of Spotlight, and for the meaning of mirrors in fantasy fiction, please see chapter five of The Deathly Hallows Lectures. Here is the very short course:

The involved artistry of a book whose beginning and end meet in a circle and whose first and second halves reflect one another produces an effect on the reader that makes the effort to produce it more than worthwhile. The effect is one of completeness and satisfaction, of resolving all contraries as a mirror does subject and object, and, having completed the circular journey, of arriving at the defining center and origin of that circle. In a single word, the effect of ring and mirror composition is “transcendence.”

It’s not something that Ms. Collins invented, of course. It is the structure of Homer’s Iliad, for a classical example, the structure of much of the Bible’s poetry and speech, most traditional story telling, and such modern novels as Tristam Shandy and C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. Ms. Collins learned about it, no doubt, in her MFA work at NYU in dramatic writing or just in reflecting on the chiastic structure of the seven Harry Potter novels. See Mary Douglas’ Thinking In Circles: An Essay in Ring Composition if you’d like to learn more about the biblical and anthropological traditions.

Is it important for understanding the artistry and meaning of Mockingjay and The Hunger Games as a whole? It certainly is. We’ve already discussed the importance of the Meadow that is such a big part of Katniss’ journey; tomorrow, time allowing, I’ll unwrap the loaded symbolism of the white rose and its central place in grasping the alchemical and allegorical meaning of these books.

I covet, as always, your comments and corrections.

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?

Why the vote? Like burn unit-bound Katniss, we are missing a lot of details over how the transition to Coin’s administration occurred. But we can assume she reneged on the promised republic, with free elections. We are told later that a hasty election was held to elect Paylor as her replacement; since no election is mentioned for Coin, it probably didn’t happen and was not going to.

Coin takes full credit for the idea of the Capitol Children Hunger Games. But she has to admit that her newly formed government cannot reach consensus on whether to implement her plan, suggesting her Presidency is off to a shaky start.  Knowing Coin, there must have been quite a bit of opposition for her to risk handing off the decision to the Victors. Who was the opposition?  My guess is that much came from Plutarch; he was the one who told first explained the unfamiliar concept of “republic” to our heroes and, when asked what would happen if the revolution failed, quipped that next year’s Hunger Games would be “quite unforgettable.”  The implication is that there would be no Hunger Games under a rebel government. He seemed tickled pick that Coin was dead on the ride to District 12. Paylor, if consulted, would also presumably have opposed the plan since there is no indication the Hunger Games continues under her leadership.

So, why did the Victors cast their votes?  For the unequivocal No’s: Peeta, Beetee and Annie, we can take their reasoning at face value. They recognize the Games as an atrocity, unjustifiable under any circumstances and counterproductive to future stability. Peeta, who has always been the voice of virtue, reacts with pure moral outrage. Beetee,* master weapons designer, echoes that and provides a second, more practical reason; it’s more important to reconcile with the Capitol citizens than to continue to be enemies. This shows us that even those willing to create horrendous and “dirty-trick” weapons for the sake of winning a war will draw the line at intentionally targeting children as revenge.  I think we are meant to hear Gale’s voice in Beetee’s, given their partnership. Annie also speaks for someone else: her dead husband, Finnick.  I’ll admit this was one of the most touching lines in the book for me, to see the fragile Annie speak with such moral strength and clarity. We might have expected her to fall apart after Finnick’s death, or at the very least retreat into a Mrs. Everdeen-style depression. But instead, she speaks for the war widow, heartbroken but moving on to face the future with courage. Is there anyone who wasn’t delighted to learn that she and Finnick managed to conceive a child?

The unequivocal Yes voters, Johanna and Enobaria, seem to have different reasons for their votes, not surprising considering they are sworn enemies who have just promised to kill each other. Johanna, I’m afraid, has retreated to a state of near sociopathy, unable to empathize with anyone. Whether it was her loveless life before the Quell, her torture afterward or her drug addition, not even Katniss’s overtures of friendship and attempt to comfort with the scent of life-giving evergreens can restore a sense of compassion in her.  She is now the voice of pure vengeance. Significantly, she’s the one who delights in the prospect of tossing Snow’s granddaughter into the arena, an image that evokes little Rue and Prim. Short of her own hijacking, Katniss could never support that.

Enobaria we don’t know much about, given that this is her first appearance since the arena, but our fanged, Career tribute is the classic opportunist: a sell-out like the District she represented. She looks out for herself with no care for whose side she is on.  She had escaped torture after her capture, undoubtedly giving whatever information she had to be used against her fellow tributes. She lucked into immunity only as a result of Katniss’s deal even though she wasn’t the intended beneficiary. She changed sides and joined the revolution only when her own privileged District fell and it seemed the rebels could win. Now that Coin’s in charge, she’s on Coin’s side.

So, Katniss and Haymitch decide the vote. I’m of the school that another Hunger Games was as repugnant to Katniss as it was to Peeta. But Katniss had the stronger reaction. Peeta may have loudly voiced his opposition to the plan**, but Katniss knew immediately that she had to put a stop to it, even at the cost of her own life. Nothing had changed, Coin was the flip side of Snow, and she’s now certain that Coin, not Snow, deliberately killed Prim.  There had never been any doubt in Katniss’s mind that War Criminal Snow must be executed: apparently Nuremgard-style prisons are as foreign to Panem as democracy. So now Coin, like Snow, must die, and a Yes vote is the way to make that happen.  Does anyone think that Coin would have let Katniss into the square to fire the arrow had she voted against her?

Haymitch, as we might expect, understands what Katniss is planning. As others have noted, he answers, “I’m with the Mockingjay,” not  “I agree with Katniss.”  He recognizes that Katniss is again playing a role, presenting herself as something she isn’t and doesn’t want to be for the sake of her own revolution, but this time it’s her own, a revolt not just against Snow but against the tyranny he stood for, a tyranny now equally personified in Coin. Just as Snow tried to break Katniss via Peeta, Coin tried to break Katniss through Prim. Ironically, she came closer to succeeding than Snow but, even more ironically, with her Yes vote, Katniss fights back. And, with her trusty arrow and the skills taught to her by her long-departed father (skills she hardly needed for the 10 yard Snow target), she wins.

*Of all the Victors, Beetee had the best chance of being in Coin’s cabinet. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “leave it to the Victors” idea was his, assuming he, Annie, Katniss and Haymitch would be majority No votes.

**Notice that he launches his final verbal attack against Haymitch in an effort to seal the vote.  Though Katniss’s Yes probably outraged him more than anything else she’s ever done, he does not revert to his “Must kill Katniss” mode, or even respond to her. In case we had any doubt about it when he stopped her from swallowing the Nightlock, the man is cured.

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? 

I began reading the series after my 12-year old daughter discovered it. She just turned 14 and made Hunger Games the theme of her birthday party. A few months ago, my 10 year old son, after hearing us discuss Hunger Games, asked to read the first book.  I was uncomfortable enough with the violence and nudity of the first two that I told him he needed to wait to age 12.  Now, I’m thinking of raising that.  I’ve been wondering how an authentic Hunger Games film could avoid an R-rating; now, I’m thinking Mockingjay could be pushing NC-17.  It’s going to be hard to market Happy Meal toys for something like that.

I know HogPro has both adult and young readers, so I’d like to hear from both. What age is appropriate for this series?

Team Peeta, Team Edward

You’ve been in a coma the last six months or your internet access has been cut off if you haven’t been hearing about the Team Peeta- Team Gale wars that are an all-but-direct reference to the Team Edward-Team Jacob battles in Twilight fandom (both ultimately derive from the bizarre ‘shipping conflicts among Harry Potter readers, but that’s another issue). It’s more than a superficial point or coincidence. Twilight and Hunger Games each feature two gorgeous hunks that are in love with the same young woman.

One of these guys is other-worldly handsome, intelligent, sensitive, artistic, sacrificial, and devoted. And chaste! The guy is a virgin and has never loved anyone the way he loves our heroine. He’s given to phrases like “always” and “forever” in statements of his love.

The other guy is a mensch, the out-doorsy type. No rocket scientist or saint, he can be a bore sometimes and say off-the-wall unkind things but you know he has your back in a fight and he lives for family and community.

Bella With Arrows?

Forget the boy friends; the heroines of Twilight and Hunger Games are near clones.

• They’re sixteen to seventeen year old North Americans without social status or significant achievement.
• They tell us the story as first-person narrative, meaning if you don’t like Bella or Katniss, you’re not going to like the books.
• They’re the daughters of clueless parents that they have been taking care of for years.
• They’re difficult, not-especially-beautiful young women who inexplicably have become hunk-boy magnets, inspiring absolute devotion in the Chippendale men they attract.
• Their lives are turned upside down by a choice they make to put their lives at stake, really choosing almost certain death, because of a loved one.
• Incredibly, this choice, made again and again over several novels, transforms our heroine into a world-savior and near goddess.
• She chooses the God-man Christ-figure who loves her over Paul Bunyan, and, despite her misgivings about marriage and child birth, she has a family.

Read this book before? I have. And that’s not even exploring the allegorical meaning of these young women.

Meadows Are A Big Deal

In Twilight, every book’s big reveal and confrontation take place in a meadow — Edward as vampire and Jacob as werewolf in the perfect circle meadow, the baseball game, the Newborn attack, and the Last Battle (um, near battle) with the Volturi in the larger field higher in the mountains. Carlisle even has a painting of a meadow hanging on the wall of his office, the lone picture that tells us nothing about his past. (You can read about what caused Mrs. Meyer’s original meadow dream and why they play such a huge part in her books in Spotlight).

In Hunger Games, Katniss is asked by a dying Rue to sing her a song as she expires. Our heroine obliges with ‘The Meadow Song’ (listen to a fan’s rendition at YouTube). She comes back to this Meadow after devoting herself to the Boy with the Bread and the Pearl of Great Price in Fire. In Mockingjay, too, Katniss returns to the Meadow in District 12 and the ‘Meadow Song’ to describe her life with Peeta and their children, how a graveyard has become a playground and even a hint of paradise. (See Katniss’ Meadow Song for a full review of meadow scenes in Hunger Games.)

X-Men Graphic Novels

Mrs. Meyer is obviously a big comic book fan. Her latest novella, Bree Tanner, opens with two newborn vampires ripping up Seattle as they play-act as Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk. The author told Entertainment Weekly that, along with Anne of Green Gables and Jane Eyre, the Saturday morning cartoon version of Marvel Comics’ Uncanny X-Men was a big influence in her writing of Twilight. The Men from Krypton super hero qualities of the Cullen Coven certainly reflect that, as do Bella’s combination Jean Grey/Phoenix and Sue Storm/Invisible Girl powers that she gets at her apotheosis consequent to child-birth. The confrontation with the Volturi is almost indistinguishable from a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants with Magneto stand-off with Profesor Xavier and his X-Men.

In Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins goes down the same road with Katniss at least twice, first in the District 8 “archer takes down aircraft Wonder Woman” scene and then in the assault on the Capitol with ‘The Star Squad,’ who, forgive me, seemed like a throwback to Marvel’s Defenders or DC’s All-Star Squadron. In both cases, the Mockingjay super-powered alter-ego performs miraculous feats of strength and ‘daring do’ against impossible odds, not to mention the speech making on camera, while frail Katniss Everdeen can do little more when out of Cinna’s uniform, as Clark Kent and Peter Parker, but curl up in a ball and repeat mantras to keep her scrambled eggs thinking together.

Don’t get me wrong; I love both series. Maybe it’s only because I know them both so well and admire the artistry and meaning of each so much that the parallels strike me as strongly as they do. Can you think of other similarities?

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:

Looks Different but Isn’t Different

In Deathly Hallows, the series finale, Harry, Ron, and Hermione do not go back to Hogwarts, but, as alien as the environment of their extra-curricular adventures was, they managed to satisfy every part of the Rowling hero’s journey formula she established in the first six books (see Deathly Hallows Lectures for that discussion).

In Mockingjay, Peeta and Katniss are not chosen in a Reaping and sent to the Capitol for a conventional Hunger Games or Quell in a static arena. Ms. Collins, however, as we discussed in ‘The Hunger Games Formula,’ manages nonetheless to follow every point in her trilogy story formula, from Cinna ‘girl on fire’ costume to Peeta and Katniss together sticking-it-to-the Capitol live on television.

Not a Great Time to Get Married

In Deathly Hallows, the marriage of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks is announced in the opening chapter by the Dark Lord at a meeting of Death Eaters. Weddings in the rubedo or red, final stage of the alchemical work are usually not a great idea because traditionally the Alchemical Wedding at this point means the “resolution of contraries” or death of the couple. Their union produces the “philosophical orphan,” the anthropomorphic Philosopher’s Stone. Think Romeo and Juliet and what happens at the Hallows actual wedding ceremony. Marriage in a work of literary alchemy usually is a preface to death and a funeral (again, see Deathly Hallows Lectures). Tonks and Lupin die in the Battle of Hogwarts and leave Teddy Lupin as orphan.

In Mockingjay, we get a Finnick-Annie wedding, which, along with his playing with rope necklaces (and humming the ‘Hanging Tree’?) throughout the book, pretty much signaled the incipient repose of Panem’s Aquaman. His death at the hands of the lizard-men mutt-ations was especially poetic, nonetheless, because of the thousand deaths he endured as a Victor in the moral sewer of the Capitol.

District 13 and The Ministry of Magic

In Deathly Hallows, the Death Eaters have taken over the Ministry and what is supposed to be the good-guy center of resistance turns into a nightmare of evil done in the name of good government. Think of Dolores Umbridge’s ‘Muggle-Born Registration Commission.’ In the final battle, there is no moral difference between the villains and the government, a government largely staffed by the villain’s chief servants.

In Mockingjay, Katniss and the survivors of District 12 take refuge in District 13, a quasi police state, that is supporting the revolt of the districts against the Capitol. By story’s end, Katniss has learned that District 13 and the Capitol not only feature the same cast (most notably the Gamesmaker, Plutarch Heavensbee), but work from the same play-book, which is to say, as moral nihilists and war criminals.

The Seeming Death, Resurrection, and Surprise Victory of the Hero/ine

In Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter is vanquished by the Dark Lord in the Forbidden Forest, he visits the inside-bigger-than-the-outside at King’s Cross, and rises from the seeming dead to defeat Lord Voldemort in an ex machina appearance that clearly the villain was unprepared for. He thought the Boy Who Lived was finally dead.

In Mockingjay, Katniss is turned into a literal ‘Girl on Fire’ by the time-delay napalm blast orchestrated by President Coin. She rises from the dead transformed, too, like the Mockingjay-Phoenix she is, to shoot down the unsuspecting evil-doer in her moment of triumph.

Those are the shades of the Potter finale in Mockingjay that come immediately to mind. Which ones do you see that I haven’t listed here?

“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.

However, in Harry Potter, the target of the critique is the printed word:  the Daily “Profit”, the “whatever sells” writings of Skeeter and Lockhart; in Hunger Games, it’s all about television. There is little evidence that print media even exists; for all their electronic expertise, Panem society seems forgotten that the printing press or moveable type were ever invented. The only books we hear about are homemade, handwritten works.

But it is in those books where truth can be found. They are not just useful but beautiful, with painted pictures, photos and hand-lettering. In contrast to the staged, violent, no-thought-required TV clips, the books inspire mental reflection, spur action and build strength. Katniss’s father’s book of plants gives life to the family and contributes to healing of both the community and eventually all of Panem by forming the basis for District 12’s new industry of manufacturing medicines. Cinna’s sketchbook allows him to continue to clothe and coach Katniss from beyond the grave and show him as one of the true pure-hearted revolutionaries. And, Peeta and Katniss find their first solace in the creation of their own memorial book to those who gave their lives.

The trilogy clearly wound up being more of war story and a sociopolitical commentary than a religious one, to be sure.  But finding truth, strength and inspiration through a Book is not exactly insignificant to Christians, is it?