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).
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?
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Great insight on the possible Cinna suicide; it’s very strange to find myself hoping that’s what happened to a fictional character. The probable death of Lyme is also something that hadn’t occurred to me. It does make you think about the brutality of it all. How many of those Victors were elderly, like Mags and therefore unlikely to have been active soldiers on either side.
As for Bonnie and Twill, I’m thinking they probably simply died in the wilderness. District 13 had no issue taking in 900 refugees from 12; I doubt there would be an issue with two from 8. Assisting Bonnie and Twill would be a way of forging a stronger alliance with another District, something they needed. I remember thinking at that scene that B and T were not in great shape to make a trek through the woods; I would not expect a couple of factory workers to have the wilderness skills to survive.
It would, of course, be nice to know if Gale and Annie ever found new loves. Or if Mrs. Everdeen stayed strong enough to continue her work as a healer. I thought it was interesting that she relocated to District 4; a costal environment doesn’t seem to be the most logical choice for the born and bred mountain woman. But, maybe she was there to deliver Annie’s baby.
Of course, one way JK Rowling chose to communicate about the future was by telling us, in the books and out, what the characters named their children. The most significant reveal of course, was Harry honoring Snape along with this parents, Sirius, Dumbledore and Luna (though I still think the daughter should have been Lily Minerva, I love McGonagall!) But there were others: Bill and Fleur’s daughter Victoroire, born on the anniversary of the battle, and the formerly estranged Percy naming his daughter Molly.
So, what would Katniss and Peeta have named their children? There seem to be no candidates from Peeta’s family worth of that honor. The obvious choices for the boy are after Cinna and Katniss’s father, assuming he had a first name other than “Mr.” For the girl, Prim (could Katniss have stomached tacking the “rose” part on?) and Rue. Or would the have picked entirely new names, in the interest of moving on? As I’ve said before, “Daisy” continues with the wildflower theme, and has the advantage of being a nickname for “Margaret” or “Pearl.”
Oh, one thing I forgot. I think making us hope against hope that certain characters had survived (Cinna, Madge, Portia) only to have them turn up most sincerely dead was meant to make us feel like the miner’s families after the accidents: trying to stay optimistic but knowing deep down it’s a near-hopeless situation and becoming ever more despairing with the passage of time. Interesting that the only “family” (aka fans) that got good news was Effie’s.
Pardoning the pun, but another loose thread is the fate of the other District 12 Peacekeepers. Was Cray killed or Avoxed? Did the Capitol bother to evacuate their people before the bombing, or did they consider them expendable, especially considering they could have been from District 2? Did any of the “friendly” Peacekeepers (aka Purnia) escape and ally with the survivors? Or, for that matter, was dear old Romulus put in the awkward position of owing Gale his life? (Now that would have been a great scene, and give us a whole other area of debate regard Gale and how much the attack changed him.
I wondered what happened to Johanna at the end, too. I got really attached to her in this book. All of the other victors get at least a brief mention after Katniss’s trial, except for Johanna and Enobaria.
Thread’s the one I wonder about. If the power was cut and the planes came in fifteen minutes after the end of the QQ, it seems like the Capitol bombed its own most devoted Peacekeepers.
As for Bonnie and Twill, it’s apparent to me that they were killed by those wild dogs that Katniss always seems to worry about yet never seem to bother her or Gale in the story whenever they’re in the woods. I know one of them is a bit older, but the other is about Katniss’ age so she’d make a good breeder, at a time when there was no guarantee that the genetic pool would be expanded anytime soon.
The Victors’ Vote was especially telling. At the beginning of CF there were 59 living victors. At the end of the QQ there were still 41 alive. 34 were killed in the war. The only ones that survived were the four specifically granted immunity by the Mockingjay Agreement, the two key rebel leaders in District 13, and Katniss, who everyone tried to kill but failed.
I want to know what happened to Purnia and the other friendly Peacekeepers. It’s unlikely they were all Avoxed or executed; they were probably transferred to other districts. Did they fight on the side of the Capitol during the war? Or did they defect and get killed?
I don’t think Enobaria even knew that Lyme was a commander in the resistance in D2. I think it’s been clearly established that D2 is the king of the Hunger Games, even amongst the Career districts, so there must have been at least a dozen victors still living at the start of the QQ. No reason for Enobaria to single out Lyme with any significance when she’s told everyone else was killed.
Cinna is most perplexing to me. We find out in chapter 1 that he’s “believed to be dead”, which is the exact same wording used in the chapter for Peeta. One chapter later we see that Peeta is very much alive, so I spent the rest of the book waiting for Cinna to turn up, only to be disappointed when I reached the epilogue with no resolution on his fate.
Sorry to be out of the loop… but where did J.K. Rowling reveal that Percy had a daughter named Molly? Did she tie up loose ends on her webpage or in a book? I would love to read these!
I would like to know more about what happened to Gale, and his special job in D2. I’d also like to know how Plutarch fit into the new regime, as he wasn’t as close to the new leadership as he was to Coin.
The names of most Weasley grandchildren are not given in the book, but confirmed by Rowling in a family tree she drew. It can be seen here: http://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizards/weasley.html It also tells us George married Angelina Johnson and named his son, of course, Fred.
As for Plutarch, the fact that he was specified as holding an office under Paylor may have meant he was not especially high ranking in Coin’s post revolution government. Could it be he was another inconvenient body she would want out of the picture, once she was President?
Louise,
I wondered about Mrs. E’s choice of District 4, too. D 11 seems like a more logical choice for the herb-woman (though I imagine she had some influence in the new pharmaceutical company in 12). Annie is a very logical reason for her re-location. In addition to helping with little Finnick, Jr., imagine how she could help Annie with the loss of a husband, the very loss that was so devastating to her, and poor Annie already is a few fish shy of an aquarium. Perhaps Mrs. E will go to different districts. Wouldn’t it be lovely if she set up a string of hospitals? Primrose Everdeen Memorial has quite ring, eh?
Considering the fact that the Undersees don’t get any warning, I imagine the Capitol thought little of bombing the district with the Peacekeepers still on the ground, but I like to think Purnia made it.
Purnia wasn’t in D12. Katniss mentioned that she didn’t recognize any of the Peacemakers after the Gale incident, so it appears all of the old ones were transferred somewhere (or worse).
I think it’s that “or worse” bit that we fear for Purnia. She didn’t seem to be making any waves with her official attitude, but when all the PKs are moved, it might have been to combat zones or to other areas that might be otherwise unappealing. Though Darius was clearly moved to be punished, the other Peacekeepers seem to be changed simply to throw off the population with a new set of authority figures. Purnia does seem the type to join the rebellion, though, from the little we see of her.
I also had similar suspicions about Bonnie and Twill after seeing what happened to the prep team. I thought it was possible that they could have crossed some line and ended up imprisoned or dead as well. This isn’t as likely since the Prep team represented the much hated Capitol, and it’s very possible Bonnie and Twill simply did die. With one of them injured, there are numerous difficulties they could have run into, and traveling in the dead of winter, it would be very easy for them to freeze to death.
I also hoped against hope that Cinna would resurface. When Katniss is in the hospital and mentions seeing him, I was so excited until a second late when it became clear that she was hallucinating or dreaming. Cinna felt like a mentor character and thinking about how he died, and we never learned exactly what happened to him, and Katniss never gets to talk to him or learn more about him really feels like a loss. Even after Dumbledore died, we still got 2 “Dumbledore Denuemonts” (I may have massacred that spelling)! I think the feeling of loss and uncertainly regarding him was exactly what Collins wanted us to feel though, and very in line with the universe she created. I think the idea of his having a nightlock pill of his own makes sense. I always assumed someone in the Capitol just got sloppy with their “interrogation techniques” or killed him because they weren’t able to get him to talk, but given how they used Peeta, the second option seems doubtful.
I also wonder what happened to Johanna, where she went and what she did, and what Flavius, Octavia and Venia do?
I don’t have my book in front of me, but didn’t Katniss remember a moment when she saw Boggs with a little boy in his arms? What happened to Boggs’ family?
Does anyone else think that maybe Johanna may have followed Gale to D2? Maybe she had flirted with him early on to get a reaction from Katniss. Oh well.
I hope Katniss’ prep team were put to work for the new broadcast company doing what they were trained to do: prepping people for television appearances. Guess that would locate them back in the Capitol.
As for Plutarch being the director of communications under Paylor–I don’t think that’s telling of much other than there was really no one else to fill the role. I’d imagine he would be appointed to a similar position even if Coin had lived. It’s not like the people in the Districts were allowed to develop TV programming.
It is insinuated that Bonnie and Twill died on their trip to D13, but the book is specific that their fate is unknown. Let’s remember that they were running around in Peacekeeper uniforms with Peacekeeper guns. If they came within sight of District 13 I think it’s a safe bet they would’ve been taken out before they could get too close. The D13 guards simply wouldn’t have known any better.
As for Cinna. While it doesn’t specify that he was in fact killed (or how) it isn’t possible in my mind for him to have survived. He was a major character in the story, if he were still alive he would most certainly have made an appearance at the end when all of the other loose ends started showing up.
First off, I want to say that I love reading how other people saw things or the outcomes for these characters that their minds have created.
I think that Cinna probably pulled a Nightlock. He already had that set up for Katniss for after her escape from the arena, so he had to be expecting backlash from his burning mockingjay wedding dress. It’s sad to think of him having to make an exit like that, but I doubt he’d let them get the satisfaction of toturing him.
I thought poor Bonnie and Twill just died in the woods, but I think Tim maybe right with them ending up at District 13 with Peacekeeper uniforms on. I doubt that 13 would have just killed them for being starving, useless refugees. If they had gotten the chance to explain theirselves and their story they would have given good insight to Coin and the leaders of 13.
I totally had forgotten Lyme until you mentioned it, but that woman was a warrior! The only way she would have gone out would have been in a blaze of gunfire!
As for there only being Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Johanna, BeeTee, Annie and Enobaria as the reamiang tributes, how is that possible? I think they were the most remembered and that is why they were conulted. I mean there were 75 years worth of victors! I know 18 died in CF, but there must be more that are staying behind in the districts. I just think Suzanne Collins thought that it wasn’t a good place to start introducing new characters.
And I woud love to know what the future held for the others, especially Annie, Gale and Johanna. And why Mrs. E went to district 4 and if she was there for Annie to help her deal with her pain rather than going home and dealing with her own. And I want to know what Peeta and Katniss would hae named their kids. I think Prim and Rue are good choices for the girl, and then maybe something for Katniss’ dad and maybe even Haymitch for the boy. Afterall, Haymitch turned into someone Katniss could turn to for guidance.
Great point about the uniforms, Tim! And it brings in another aspect of the horrors of war: mistaken identity (I hate the phrase “friendly fire”). Stonewall Jackson is probably one of the most famous casualities of being in the wrong place at the wrong time looking like the wrong side. Bonnie and Twill wouldn’t have known any better and might have been shot on sight. But anyone checking the bodies would know they weren’t Peacekeepers, so I imagine the whole thing would then have been hushed up. There is also the possibility that there are perimeter defenses that could have killed Bonnie and Twill.
While Cinna ia undoubtedly dead, Tim (of course, we all hope otherwise, but the rumor must be true or he would have shown up!), I think it’s the method of death that is troubling. Oddly, I find it comforting that he could have died quickly on his own terms, taking his information with him, rather than dying by inches.
I don’t think D13 would have shot them even if they were in the Peacekeeper uniforms. The rebels need defectors of all sorts, even Peacekeepers. Even if they couldn’t be trusted, they could provide potentially useful information. As long as they didn’t go charging into the gate pointing their gun at the guards.
I have to agree with pretty much everyone on here about who I wish we had more info on, Johanna, Gale, her mother, Bonnie and Twill…..I like the thought that someone posted above that maybe Johanna followed Gale to D2! For whatever reason it makes me feel a bit better about not really knowing what became of them.
One of my real questions is about Annie though. I want to know what happned to her and her son, and how she magaged on her own, or if she had support? Mrs. Everdeen maybe? In CF, Peeta tells Katniss that in Annies games, she went off the deepend after her district partner was beheaded. Isn’t that basically how Finnick dies? If she lost it after her partner dies in the games, someone she knows must die in order for her to survive, I can’t imagine how she would react to the death of her husband in a similiar fashion. But during the meeting with the surviving victors, she seems pretty together. The only other time she seems remotely “normal” is when Finnick is by her side. The only thing I can figure is, she either was not told the manner of his death, or her pregnancy with his child gave her the strength she needed to keep it together and hold on. Perhaps its both.
This change in Annie makes me even more heartbroken for Katniss though. Granted, I don’t know the degree of change in Annie, and by no means do I think she’s “cured” or made a full recovery, but she seems stronger in the knowledge that Finnick’s legacy will be carried on. Katniss on the other hand seems so detatched, even from her own children, that she only calls them the girl and the boy. And like someone mentioned elsewhere, she says her only reason for having them was because “Peeta wanted them so badly”. The only glimpse of love towards them is when she tells us the joy she felt of holding her newborn daughter in her arms.
I guess I’m just left wanting to know more about the children of Peeta and Katniss (Im curious about what they named them as well). If they got enough love/affection/attention from their mother, (something Katniss resented her own mother for because of her inability to pull it together and provide these things and more)
I’d like to know what happened to President Snow’s granddaughter. She seemed like an excellent missed opportunity to demonstrate some hope in the epilogue. Wasn’t she close to Prim’s age?
I don’t think we are told the granddaughter’s age. We know Snow has been in power for at least 25 years and Finnick tells us he was “young” when he became President, so I picture him in his mid-sixties at the most, though he could be much older depending on how long he has been President. Given that people in urban, materialistc environments tend to delay having children (e.g be closer to 30 when they become parents rather than in the late teens or 20′s) I would guess, if he has a granddaughter, she would be young by Games standards. That’s why I immediately thought of someone Prim/Rue’s age, rather than a Johanna or Enobaria or even a Katniss.
I really wanted some sort of closure between Katniss and her mom at the end of the book. For the mother and daughter to have nothing to do with each other after everything that they had been through was just too sad for me. Only the occasional phone call to say “Hi”? That conclusion was way less than satisfactory
Also I really wanted to know what happened to Gale’s mom and his brothers and sisters. They were briefly mentioned at the beginning of MJ and then never again. Katniss was very close to the entire family. I don’t think she would write them all off just because she had some kind of emotional baggage with Gale that she didn’t want to deal with. Had they all stayed in 13 or gone with Gale to where he was? I wish Collins had explained a little more on that.
What happened to the Pearl? What happened to the Pearl that Katniss held so dear for so long? It would have been a great symbol is Peeta presented it to Katniss back in 12 and had that pearl set in a ring for a proposal.
I thought Cinna’s Last Gift was the rip-away pocket for the nightlock that could be opened with one’s mouth. Since they were all issued pills, I doubt the pill itself was his last gift.
Happy New Year all! I was revisiting several discussions and caught MaryL’s posting.
Very interesting observations here, especially the discussion surrounding Cinna’s storyline and probable demise. Seeing how he was bloody and unconscious when the Games goons hauled him out of the launch room, I doubt very much that Cinna had the opportunity to use the Nightlock pocket post-beating by his attackers. Cinna’s reputation for deceptive clothing design would have guaranteed stripsearch at the earliest opportunity.
2011 must have been the “year of the frustrating endings”. Check out Paolini’s “Inheritance”…loose-ends had me screaming in my head!