Thursday, August 26, 2010

Mockingjay, with Spoilers

Well, Mockingjay over rode sleep and I was up until 3 this morning finishing the book. This was a bad idea for a few reasons:
1) My sleep minimum is 8 hours. I got 4. My emotions are really close to the surface. And the emotion I'm feeling right now is depression.
2) Did I miss something? A few somethings? There were a lot of plot points in this book that didn't make sense to me. But I was half asleep. Was that why? Or did they not make sense to anyone else? Just two main things that I'm confused about:
  • Boggs' last advice to Katniss, as he's laying there with his legs blown off. 1) Don't trust them. Okay, so his legs are blown off, he's about to die. But this is KATNISS. Couldn't he be a little more obvious? The reader knows who he's talking about, but this is KATNISS. She needs things spelled out. Yet even if it had been spelled out, what could Katniss have done about it? Nothing more than what she ended up doing to Coin at the end. But it couldn't have stopped the bombs. It wouldn't have saved Prim. 2) Don't go back. Why not? Because they would've been captured and caught or killed? Guess what, most of them are anyway and it would've been a quicker way to go. But she follows this advice and goes forward. And adds 5 more people to her growing list of deaths she feels responsible for. 3) Kill Peeta. Well, she doesn't follow this one and it ends up okay. Better than okay since Katniss kind of needs him to survive. 3) Do what you came to do. Katniss doesn't do this one either. They get chased by mutts, peacekeepers, most of their numbers die and the rest are all wounded. What was the point of going forward? What was the point of this pointless advice? Besides making her way through her 3rd Hunger Games with Peeta, I felt like this was a waste of words. Especially at 2 am.
  • Why does Katniss agree to the Capitol Hunger Games? Doesn't she say somewhere during the book that it's stupid to take war out on children? So why is she agreeing to this? I DON'T GET IT. And I would actually like to know, so comment if you have any suggestions.
I found this book extremely depressing, without hope. The torture, the death and destruction, the abuse and manipulation of the hunger games champions through the years. Peeta. Prim. Finnick--he finally gets some happiness and then isn't around long enough to enjoy it. I get it, this is all out war. But what were they fighting for? I'm not sure. Both sides are evil in their own way. They might not have the hunger games, but is the government any better? Well, without Coin I'm sure it is. I hated that lady, and that was way before she killed Prim.

Not even the end was hopeful. The crux of it being Peeta. Collins broke Peeta. And though he does recover, he's not the same. Katniss is broken, she has been this whole epic adventure, but not Peeta. Peeta was perfect. And the Capitol damaged him. I was a little disappointed in Katniss at the end, too. She recognizes Gale's truth in saying she would pick the one that she needed to survive. I'm sure Katniss loved Peeta in her own way. But she needed him to be able to live and the way Collins wrote those last two paragraphs before the epilogue made it sound like Katniss' own survival was upper most in Katniss' mind.

So I came into work this morning and started talking to my coworkers, Jaye and Elly. Jaye tried the first book but couldn't read it because of the violence. Elly has read the first and had plans to read the next two, but now isn't because of what I said. I just started talking about Mockingjay and telling them all the horrible things that happened to everyone. I felt better afterward. I needed a therapy session after this book. When I mentioned depression before, I wasn't joking. I started to cry when talking about Peeta. CRYING. Tears running down my cheeks. I was really embarrassed about it, too. Still kind of am. Can I just say again that I'm REALLY TIRED. And DEPRESSED about this book.

Strangely enough, I had the same response to this one as I did the first two: I will never read this book again. Or maybe not so strangely. But at the same time, I feel confused about what happened in this book--probably because of the early hours I read it in. And rereading might bring me closure. But it's hard to get through. Do I really want to go through it all again? Prolong the pain? I'm not sure.

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