So, I just read all of the Hunger Games Books.

I never really had an interest in the series at first. Honestly, I fell in with the old trope of "This is Battle Royalle" without really giving the books a chance. Scarce Wikipedia summaries and vague conjecture from my little brother notwithstanding, when I finally saw the movie I was actually fairly impressed. It approached the subject of something like Battle Royalle from a different angle. While BR focused on the loss of humanity to savage instinct, HG was the reverse. It's about kids who are FORCED to live on their savage impulses, but attempt to find the humanity within themselves to challenge them.

I sped through the rest of the series. I guess it was something to do, to take my mind off a stressed production or college apps or whatever the fuck I do these days. I finished Mockingjay about an hour ago and it's still sticking with me. There's a lot to these books that's hard to grasp at first. Yes, it's easy to label them as silly teen fiction, but at the same time we know the books tend to deal with the effects on the human psyche from dictated violence. Like war. And it is war.

There were a lot of times in Mockingjay(particularly the end) where I felt upset. Not at the writing, or at the character, or at the prose-- but at the situation. Katniss isn't a happy person in this book. She's not supposed to be. She's a veteran, pure and simple, forced into the cogs of war. And the majority of the book is her trying to embody the symbol she is supposed to represent at the start of it all... the mockingjay.

The more she pulls away from the orders given to her, and the more she follows her own instinct-- she becomes a more instrumental piece on the chess board. Yes, we have the love triangle to consider as well, but is it really that?

I remember reading the resolution to the whole plotline. It's a paragraph. A PARAGRAPH! I think to myself "Why resolve something built up so much THAT quickly!" It's like taking Chekhovs Gun and making pretend "bang bang" pistol noises with it. But then I think back and it makes sense. The characters pretty obviously represent something about Katniss' psyche. She reveals it at the end of the book, but we're all to wrapped up in both these characters' personalities to really see it as this giant metaphor.

The entirety of these novels has been, again, the ability to find your humanity in a savage world. That the impulses of violence, vanity, anger, or even depression can be overcome in the end. Gale is a character who gives into anger. He downright represents impulse. Yes he has a similar "fire" or whatever, but at the same time he represents Katniss' impulse. Savagery. You see him earlier in the novel doom the "nut" in District 2 to hell. And then we have Peeta, who is of course the humanitarian. No, he's not just "the nice guy", although I will say he's a lot more rational than his competition. But I think he represents the hesitation to give in. To give in to death, to anger, to selfishness. Katniss' struggle in this book is more intense the both the prior due to the deaths that ensue as well as her psyche. She gets DANGEROUSLY close to becoming all that she wanted to avoid, and yet she finds her way back. She finds her ability to persevere past the "easy choice".

And I don't think she settles. It's just the logical progression of her character. She's chosen to become someone who does not give into her nightmares, and Peeta is that choice. It's the less didactic way of saying "Hey, you gotta move on from your horrible past and find something worthy to live for in life." Which I think makes the transition to the whole relationship much less abrupt.

I think the HG trilogy is about war, and humanities constant struggle to battle it's own lust for both power and brutality. In the end, we move on from our barbarism, just like Katniss did.

So yeah. Just wanted to say that.