“Mockingjay” Disappoints
If you have already read the first two books in the The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, you will still want to read Mockingjay to get answers to all of your questions. But don’t expect to love the book. Mockingjay is no The Hunger Games.
[Spoilers Below]
In short, I get the impression that the author, Suzanne Collins, decided to pull a little bait and switch on us. She set us up with a rewarding, happy ending to The Hunger Games. Collins set us up further with the massive cliffhanger at the end of Catching Fire. We then expect Mockingjay to reward us with a redemptive ending on an even bigger scale. But it doesn’t. Rather Collins lays some heavy handed anti-war message on us… or something. So in the end all of the heroes in the book lose.
If it is not a bait and switch then maybe Collins just ran out of ideas. The final section of the book is where everything falls apart for Mockingjay. The entire section is garbled and confusing and seems rushed. Was Collins on deadline? Was she just feeling angry and depressed when she wrote it? Who knows. But rather than delivering on a tremendous set up it fizzles in a big way. It is too bad too. As I was reading I held out hope until the bitter end that this book would really deliver for me. But then the book was over. Readers are left with a bunch of dead protagonists and a perma-victim of a hero who apparently remains severely damaged and tormented for the remainder of her days.
Oh well. I guess it makes me appreciate the skills of someone like J.K. Rowling all the more. Taking a series all the way to the finish line without petering out is apparently very difficult to pull off.
Posted on August 30, 2010, in Books. Bookmark the permalink. 19 Comments.
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I disagree; I found the ending to be very powerful and tragic. The heroine is broken both physically and mentally. She held up for as long as she could against the constant stresses put upon her (or that she put upon herself) throughout the series but in the end, while heroic, even Katniss has a breaking point. The end of the book, due to its first-person-present point of view, somewhat demands a detached air, I think. Katniss has given up fighting and, as such, what does she care for the politics anymore? The weight of the deaths has become too much for her and she can’t continue trying to be a force for anything anymore. She’s like Frodo where some pains will never heal, but the last few pages, to me, offer some hope of a partial redemption. The sad part is that Katniss has no Valinor to retreat to, but such is real life. As for the war view, war is hell and always brings out some of the best and much of the worst in humanity and is it a bad thing to present that to readers? It’s a tragic story about children forced to kill children and about the horrifying ability of us humans to be detached from the realities of other peoples’ experiences and suffering. My two cents. Yes, it would have been wonderful to have stood in triumph with Katniss as her twisted world finally slid into victory, but I found the tragedy cathartic and powerful.
I don’t think it could have ended any other way. It was tragic and human and REAL. I loved that there was no wrap up in a pretty bow…It was from Katniss’ POV, so I thought it SHOULD be frazzled and worn, just as she was.
War isn’t pretty. Sometimes people don’t recover fully. It wasn’t a redemption story, I don’t think. It was a war is hell story. One that doesn’t end happily, and that was the perfect way to end it.
Tom,
If only this series had a touch of LotR in it. That series was about war and change but had an unmistakable redemptive strain to it. The best of humanity (Aragorn) uniting the tribes of the earth to defeat oppressive evil. While it is true that Frodo was damaged beyond repair, his sacrifices allowed his friends and loved ones to be happy and prosperous after the war.
Was there a single protagonist in The Hunger Games series that had a happy ending?
Tolkien at least saw good in humanity and hope in the our best impulses. Collins seems to find humanity hopeless and irredeemable.
Why is the fact that no one had a happy ending (which, actually, could be argued…Katniss and Peeta kids didn’t have to face the trouble and hardship they did) a bad thing? Why do people shy away from the real or the bad? Sometimes…people’s stories suck and they aren’t redeemed.
I explained why that is a bad thing in the review gabby. I think it is bad because it is a massive bait and switch by the author. Collins gave us a startlingly happy ending to The Hunger Games. It was hopeful and joyful. That is why we fell in love with her series. But after setting us up with that bait she switches the hope and joy out with despair and unending misery in the final two books. Calling it “disappointing” probably doesn’t really do that trick of hers justice.
I have no problem with tragedies. They can be great art too. My problem is with promising an audience one thing only to give them the opposite (after they invest many hours into the story). That is more practical joke than art.
It was a bigger “why is that a bad thing” not just singularly for you. Sorry.
However, to you specifically, maybe I disagree because I don’t think the end of The Hunger Games was all full of sunshine and puppies, either.
What The Hunger Games did was give us a better ending than we thought was possible. We were set up to believe that either Katniss or Peeta must die (probably Peeta since Katniss was the star). Then through a nice twist Collins delivered both Katniss and Peeta alive. Maybe that is not “puppy dogs and sunshine” but it is an unexpectedly happy ending.
But we were also left KNOWING something bigger (and probably worse than the games) was brewing…
Geoff, I agree with your assessment of the book. I have read a lot of people’s reviews, and almost all of them say “Well, the ending was a downer, but hey, war is a downer, so this is actually a good portrayal of reality”. Some have even compared Katniss to a PTSD sufferer. Ok, well that’s all well and good, but you hit the problem right on the head: the first two books were not about reality. Almost all of the antics of the book’s main characters were fantasy like in nature. But then, all of a sudden, in Mockingjay, the fantasy ends and Katniss, for whatever reason, seems unable to cope anymore. The problem isn’t that the ending is a downer. The problem is that the structure of the first two books didn’t set us up for a downer ending, and it makes the books seem incongruous.
I was EXTREMELY unsatisfied with the ending and found myself in tears. Personally, I’m a sucker for happy endings.
The part I found most unsettling was Gale. First of all, I am Team Gale (hard core-Go Gale!) and second of all, he never visits. Never calls. I would have chosen Gale for Katniss because they were childhood friends; she evens says a few times about how well they know each other, each others minds. I was extremely distraught how Gale just disappears; he never even shows up to see if she’s okay, to hunt with her. Like he’s forgotten her. And it’s almost like she no longer feels attached to him
Altogether very odd and unhappy for me.
I will never read Mockingjay again.
Geoff, I agree completely about your review of the book. I LOVED the first 2 so much and have been recommending them to anyone who will listen. And the saddest part about Mockingjay was that I now no longer want to recommend any of the books anymore. The 3rd book seemed so completely different.
I didn’t like the “preachy†anti-war tone that the book had. I agree that war is bad but sometimes it is necessary. Let’s take what we know happened to Finnick and Haymitch and re-write the book so that the rebellion NEVER happens. Katniss comes home, Snow turns her into a prostitute and kills all her family and friends (including Gale). Is this a future that Katniss would have been happier with? Would she have been less damaged? It really bothered me that the idea of fighting evil for the hope of a better future was never addressed. I don’t think the future Katniss had coming would have been any better for her or the rest of the world if the war had never happened. She helped make the world a better place and Finnick and all the others thought it was worth fighting for. The way the book ended made it seem like they just wasted their lives for nothing.
I definitely agree!
The Hunger Games was imaginative and exciting. It made me laugh and cry and all the things a really good book should. I recommended the series to everyone! Then I read Catching Fire, which was interesting for the first part, but the love triangle idea has been mutilated in recent media and it seemed really tired. No matter how much they stressed the relationship between Gale and Katniss I could never seem to buy into it. I simply knew Peeta more. Gale had only been mentioned in the very beginning of the first book and the romance seemed really forced. The Quarter Quell was a dumb excuse to re-do the first book, as it seemed Collins was just kind of feeding off the success of the first book. I think it would’ve been really interesting to see Katniss and Peeta mentoring some new kids, seeing the effects of that responsibility for the lives of others and meeting the other victors and learning their stories in this way, during the planning of the quickly approaching rebellion.
If this would have been how the second book went, with the new kids being pulled out of the arena instead of the old victors, the transition into this new rebellion would have been more smooth instead of a drastic change from fighting to survive to battling for freedom and against oppression. There’s a big difference between the two so I felt like the previous books did nothing to prepare us.
Besides that, a lot of the characters were nearly mindlessly killed off, and although I realize this is the reality of war this isn’t actually war. It’s a book. The killing of several of the main characters contributed nothing to the story line except for chapters on end with Katniss in some sort of dream-like, depressed state, which is extremely boring to read. If Finnick or Prim would’ve survived Collins could’ve had the same exact ending, Gale and Katniss could have just realized on their own that they weren’t meant to be together and Gale could have moved to 2 simply because he was needed there. Then Peeta and Katniss could be together anyway.
This book was extremely disappointing and left me feeling like I could have written a better book. And I’m sixteen. What a waste of time.
My wife gave me the trilogy for Christmas and I’m about halfway through the third book. I have to agree it feels quite inferior to the other two (which I loved). Here’s hoping I’m not as disappointed as the rest of you.
So I finished the book and I think a few of the criticism are a bit overstated. Don’t get me wrong. It is vastly inferior to the first two volumes. I think the biggest problem is really the world she created in the first volume. It just doesn’t make any sense. You can ignore this in the first two volumes because frankly it doesn’t matter. Ultimately they are about a small community and the hunger games. Once you move beyond that though then suddenly that world is put center stage and it’s frankly an unbelievable one.
The second problem is the central conceit of the series. The hunger games. It makes sense to follow the same structure in the books. It’s sort of like when you go see a Mad Max movie you expect a climatic car chase with cars made out of spare parts and with axes and crossbows. That’s the point. However in the third volume she has to keep this only in terms of an invading army. And it just comes across as completely unbelievable. Civil defense as designed by Rube Goldberg.
If you are doing an anti-war book it’s fine to be metaphorical (which is ultimately what the hunger games were). However when she moves from the metaphoric to the real you have to present something real. Unfortunately added to a frankly unbelievable world is an completely unbelievable military scenario.
All that said (and here come the spoilers) I think things are still overstated. There are only two major characters who die. Prim’s death makes sense in terms of the storyline. Why it fails it because the death makes no sense in terms of the events. I mean you have all these soldier fighting their way through unbelievable odds. Katniss barely makes it to the mansion and then out of no where her sister appears as a nurse? WTH? How did she get there? There’s no way to believe the sister (only 13 or 14 as I recall) would be there. None.
I’ll agree Finnick’s death was just poorly written. In the context of the hunger games it would have worked. In this particular context it didn’t. I realize it was supposed to be a repeat of the hunger games (and the author unnecessarily states this in bold in case you couldn’t pick up the nuance of the parallels). But it just didn’t work. And not just because of the Rube Goldberg silliness. But rather teh way it was written. I think you could have killed him off and written it well.
That said I kind of like the ending all things considered. But the writing just failed in this one. I will disagree that the third volume comes out of left field. I think most in it was telegraphed pretty heavily. The failure wasn’t the structural issues she wanted in the book. The failure was simply that it was not that well written. Still while it wasn’t a book I couldn’t put down like the first two, it wasn’t a bad read. I didn’t feel like I’d wasted my time or was cheated. I’m more disappointed because it should have been so much more. (Reminds me of how I felt with the latter Bean books in the Ender’s Game series — except those really did feel like I was forcing myself to read them)
I have to say I was COMPLETELY disappointd with Mockingjay. Collins came out with the book fairly quickly too, maybe she should have slowed down. Katniss remained a whiney and annoying throughout the whole book giving it such a pathetic, not tragic, ending. I mean really, the whole book was just about a girl who is emotionally unstable being used as a figure of power and it’s more annoying then interesting. I get that she’s depressed but SUCK IT UP!
I agree with the review above, although I think it should have addressed some other problems with Mockingjay. In this book we see the real horrible effect of the hunger games. Everyone is severely traumatized and I think that the author should have given the characters a break. There needed to be a healing process before the rebels go galabanding out into war again. So many gruesome deaths were unecessary to get the point across. I feel like the plot was lost in the extreme violence of the last quarter of the book. The whole issue of Peeta being hijacked was disturbing because the reader has come to trust his character’s consistency. Same with Katniss. We know her as our fiercely brave heroin who would do anything for the people she cares about. In Mockingjay, she is completely cut off from other characters. She is distraught after seeing how Peeta is being treated by the capitol but she gives up on him too quickly after the rebels rescue him in his hijacked state. I felt like her relationship with Gale wasn’t believable enough and the author should not have even attempted a love triangle in the second book. Since nothing was ever resolved or decided between the pair of them, I was confused by their relationship in Mockingjay. We know that Katniss loves Prim more than anything but there has never been enough dialogue between the two of them to support their relationship. Very disappointing.
I totally agree! What was wonderful about the first 2 books was that I loved reading about a female character who was an actor. Katniss was the heart of those first 2 books, she made choices and had agency. Then, in this book she just falls apart?
I always felt the strength if these books was in writing a character that was strong, that people liked to read about, that people believed in. That’s why the whole Mockingjay thing worked for me. But in this book Katniss is just so passive. I could have been ok with that, except for the ending. Gale just disappears and she stays with Peeta because it is easier? Has kids because it is easier? That makes no sense knowing her character. For me, her choosing Peeta was a sign that Snow and the Capitol has still won.. After all, the Capitol threw she and Peeta together and interupted her and Gale. I was just so disappointed that the strong heroine I knew from the first 2 cooks completely disappeared in this one, and that I got a predictable, tired romance instead.
Makes me wonder how they’ll adapt the third book now that they are all being made into movies. As I said the first two were excellent but the third one definitely didn’t work on numerous levels.
I didn’t like how Peeta was hijacked at all. I know, it sounds wimpy, but I was already starting to dislike Katniss and when Peeta is suddenly crazy, it feels like you’ve lost the two main characters. I would have felt better if Peeta willingly didn’t love Katniss anymore and was fully aware of his actions, but for him to be completely out of control made me want to put the book down. I also thought that the violence was too constant. I kept reading, hoping it would get better, but the storyline became harder to understand. Half the time I didn’t even know what was going on in all the fighting. Even the deaths became tiring. So many people died that it didn’t have the same affect on me anymore.
The romance in the story never worked out for me either. I never was able to see the chemistry between Katniss and Gale. In the end, I was disappointed because it still seemed that Katniss’s love for Peeta was still an act. Almost like she settled for him. It was also like Peeta was cut off from the reader because it seems like he never fully recovers from the hijack and it leaves you wondering if he ever loved Katniss the same after what they did to him.
Katniss still seems unstable at the end of the book, which is hard to stomach for the reader after seeing her so strong in the last two books. I think Collins made a mistake there. When the main character suddenly takes a turn for the worst, you expect her to get better. When she doesn’t, she becomes less likeable. It’s not only her instability that makes you dislike her, but also her bad decisions. Her need for revenge when it won’t solve anything. It was hard for me to like the book when the smart, strong character from the first two books was gone. I was very disappointed.