I liked the first book better than the third, and I don't think that opinion will change when I read the second book. There's something a little bit horrible about the way the author puts her characters through their paces into worse and worse dangers, piling loss upon loss. (I felt this way about Buffy the Vampire Slayer too - was it really necessary to destroy each character's chance for happiness over and over? But I recognize it is needed for serialization or something.)
But in this post, I'll focus solely on the love story aspects of the Hunger Games trilogy. What started me thinking about this was a review (probably in the NY Times if memory serves) which claimed that Peeta and Gale are too thinly drawn to be full-fledged love interests for Katniss, and that her choice of one of them at the end was arbitrary.
It's true that we see things only from Katniss' perspective, and she is not very aware of her own emotions, let alone those of those around her. She is emotionally stunted, which is understandable given her circumstances. She grew up in desperate circumstances, in the poorest section of the poorest of the 12 districts. [For those not familiar with the story, it takes place in the country of Panem (ironically, "bread"), in North America; there is an all-powerful, privileged Capitol near the Rockies, which controls 12 forcibly subjugated districts.] Once Katniss' father died, she essentially lost her mother to a deep depression, and she nearly lost her sister as well. So she is a child of 16 who has been bearing adult responsibilities - the survival of her sole remaining family (her mother and sister) - for 5 years. She grew up subject to the Capitol's whims, including the gloating cruelty of the Hunger Games. With all this, she came away with a sense that she could not count on anyone other than herself. And a deep skepticism about basic human kindness and affection, a sense that all human interactions can be explained away in transactional or economic terms. Although she herself obviously had a deep capacity for love, she could not acknowledge this softness, this weakness, for any human being (or even any living creature) other than her sister. Moreover, she did not dare to hope for a better life - given her experiences and world view, she was not a girl with romantic longings or a romantic interpretation of the world or those around her.
So of course, Katniss cannot give us a deep understanding of her two suitors. The only way to deepen their portrayals would be to write some chapters (or a sequel) from their perspective, or at least an omniscient third-person narrator.
And yet, even based on the information we receive from imperceptive Katniss, it is clear from the beginning who was the better match. The one whose heart is as generous as Katniss' - the one as ready to die for her as she was ready to die for her sister. The one who has somehow come up with a deep capacity for warmth, kindness, and compassion (probably due to his father's influence). The one who came back to Katniss after everything, after full rejection, knowing that she would probably never choose him, might never be able to choose at all. It is telling that only one of the two suitors did this. He really could not bear to live without her, while the other suitor gave up and went on to build his life elsewhere. This fact was in the DNA of their relationship from the beginning. Gale never had that - he liked Katniss, maybe loved her in his way, but he always had his own agenda. He was always, on some level, looking out for number 1.
Broken, broken children who nonetheless break the power of the evil Capitol and the evil Rebellion. And it's only then, after everything is broken and slowly, painfully heals and regrows, that this conversation can take place:
- You love me. Real or not real?And eventually - a decade later - to trust the future enough (now that the Hunger Games are history) to have kids of their own. Truly, an amazing story.
- Real.
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