I predicted last week that Mockingjay would deliver three things without fail unless Ms. Collins decided to leave the rails entirely for the series finale. Those three things were:
- We get the same 27 chapter, 3 part book structure in Mockingjay that we’ve read in Games and Fire.
- Not only that, we also get the same basic story sequence of Katniss going to the Capitol and enduring a deadly maze. They defeat the arena they’re put in and Katniss leaves the Capitol. And –
- Following character story arcs, Katniss will become the playwright of the Mockingjay rebellion script to “speak truth to power,” both the rebellion leaders and the Capitol President, and she will put her life at risk, not to mention the rebellion, in order to save Peeta. Peeta will do what Christ figures do in stories of this kind.
Pulling out the score-card, number one was right, number two was correct in essentials, and number three had a big hit and a big miss. The “truth to power” arrow-to-Coin and death of Snow confirmed the last but, except for Haymitch’s complaints, it seems that Katniss would have let the shattered Peeta remain broken, bitter, and forgotten.
And Christ figure? He does die and rise from the mental and spiritual death he experiences in Capitol torture, offer himself sacrificially for death (repeatedly), and ultimately work for Katniss’ redemption and life as a mother.
How did you score this? Three of three? Two out of three?
Honestly, I kept remembering your prediction that Katniss, Gale and Peeta would end up buried in a mine when they were headed underground in the capitol. I thought they were going to end up buried there because the book started felling eerily close to your predictions. It almost surprised me when they surfaced again.
When I cracked open the book for the first time and started reading Chapter 1, this was seriously my reaction:
“HOLY CRAP, JOHN WAS RIGHT. HE DIDN’T EVEN BELIEVE IT WAS POSSIBLE, BUT SOMEHOW COLLINS STARTED THE STORY OFF IN DISTRICT 12. MAYBE EVERYTHING HE PREDICTED WILL BE TRUE!”
And then of course you nailed the part about there being an arena. I was actually surprised that my half-serious prediction that the arena would be the Capitol came true. The “Let the seventy sixth Hunger Games begin” line was over the top.
BTW I totally agree that Peeta “died” and “rose again” for the 3rd time in this series. The hijacked Peeta was a living, breathing human being but the essence of that being that was Peeta was dead. But by the end of the book, that essence had returned, so it was definitely a figurative rebirth.
Building on what Pk9 said, although Peeta seemed pretty dangerous and UN Christlike in some ways in this book, there was definitely the resurrection element with the highjacking. He had to fight off his own demons on what was real or not, just as Jesus is said to have died to fight the demons for our right to life. If the demons had won he would have had to kill Katniss, as Snow’s rules dictated, similar to the original conception of Hell before Jesus, but with the pain in his wrists from the shackles (not quite nails, but hey), he managed to finally pull through and because of this, Snow didn’t win. Katniss and Peeta overturned him. The only thing is how much of a role Katniss had in it, but I suppose you could say that was jsut her learning to accept and trust Peeta. And psychologically he did save her at the end. Tricky, but plausible.