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That's "All My Thoughts On The Hunger Games Jumbled Together In One Post." Spoilers, or something.

It's 12:20 AM, and I've got fifty pages left in Mockingjay. A certain firebomb has just gone off in the Capitol (you who have read it know what that means). I have to get up at 6 AM. Do I push through, stay up an hour or two longer to finish, then just be a wreck the next day? Do I risk simply not being able to keep my eyes open and falling asleep with twenty pages left? I opt to save it for later, so I can plow through until the end in one big chunk.

The first thing I do when I get in to work the next morning, after answering the two or three emails waiting for me, is finish the book. This proves to be a mistake, as I can't concentrate on anything else for the rest of the day, and keep going over the ending in my head, trying to make sense of it.

I don't think I've ever read a book which changed tone so quickly. At 100 pages left, it's a war thriller; with 50, a shock; at 10, I have resigned myself to the fact that it's a deeply depressing book about the futility of struggle, mired in the inhuman morality which infects all the characters. Then, on the next to last page the tone of the book completely turns and it ends with one of the most hopeful, positive endings you could ask for.

(If you disagree on that last point, I'll explain myself at the end.)

* * *

Aside from being able to switch gears so quickly, Suzanne Collins writing doesn't particularly jump out at me as something amazing. It's very clean and quick, yes, and she knows how to end a chapter so that you have to keep reading. (Although I caught on to her tricks, and realized you just had to read two or three pages into the next chapter to find the scene break.) But it doesn't strike me as particularly outstanding or extraordinary, either in terms of cleverness, humor, or being evocative. Not like the last book I read, written by one of the members of my critique group from a few years back, where half the words are on the page, and the other half are in your head.

I guess this is probably because they're YA novels, so it's written for da yoots. But it does give me a great degree of hope and encouragement. There is that feeling of "hey, I can write like this!" In fact, the simplicity and style of writing is so much like my own that it continues to reinforce the notion that Jack Flint is YA, but for that part where I stupidly forgot to include a young adult in my YA novel. Oops.

"YA" can be the excuse for forgiving any number of transgressions in the book, such as why Katniss is so unfathomably idiotic at times. The wretched urchins can't be expected to be as smart and clever as me—in my blinding brilliance—and see the plot twists 300 pages before they happen.

Also, the books have a very, very high requirement for suspension of disbelief. A 17-year-old girl in a mixed-sex combat unit that includes two of her love interests? 13-year-old combat medics? Taking down an advanced-technology bomber with a bow and arrow? (Okay, she hand waves with "they don't have high-altitude bombers because of the damage to the atmosphere." Whatevs.) But the hardest part for me to swallow is the interviews with the tributes prior to the games. If you are going to offer someone as a human sacrifice to Moloch, or Tezcatlipoca, or the Almighty Orgasm, or District Unity, the last thing you're going to do is view that person as a human being. The scapegoating mechanism requires a dehumanized victim. Think of the "lump of tissue" or "untermensch" euphemisms used variously by various cultures when attempting to justify murder. Interviews are an attempt to do just the opposite; get to know a person as a person. To see them as who they are. But putting a human face on your sacrifice is the surest way to a guilty conscience. Scapegoating requires pushing someone outside of the monkeysphere, interviewing is an invitation to enter into it.

Although, I can't remember the last time I've devoured a book like this. I've been reading Chesterton recently, and while good, I don't exactly stay up until the wee hours of the morning with him. I think not since the last couple Harry Potter books have I planned my day around a reading schedule, where each time I put the book down, I plan ahead for the next time I'll have a free moment.

And now I have a burning desire to write something in first-person, present tense. I don't think I've read an entire novel—let alone three—in present tense. I've dabbled in first-person and short stories. I like the immediacy it gives. But present tense gives a nice urgency to the action. I come, I see, I conquer vs. I came, I saw, I conquered. Father Max will be my first first-person novel novel (extra "novel" added for symmetry), but it can't be present tense—the idea being it's a series of letters he's writing in his old age about his experiences as a young priest. So I need to come up with a story that will fit present tense. I guess this blog post will have to do for now.

* * *

I think that, unexpectedly, I actually like the first movie more than the book. Though, this is not unusual for me, to like a movie adaptation better than the book on which it's based. Jurassic Park is another case where I like the movie better when everyone else prefers the book.

With Hunger Games, the movie feels more refined, better paced. Some scenes are stronger and more urgent (like Foxface's death by berries), and the climax (Cato's death by mutt) is better paced. The Games themselves are more interesting. In the book, so much of them are just "Katniss wandering through the woods doing nothing in particular," that I can't help but feel it would be the most boring TV show ever. In the movie, it's condensed and pushed along. Particularly the end of the games. In the movie: Cato grabs Peeta; Katniss shoots him through the hand; Peeta pushes him off; eaten; dawn; Games over. In the book, he is slowly eaten alive by the mutts over the entire night, while Katniss and Peeta sleep on top of the cornucopia. Who, really, would stay awake all night to watch a forgone conclusion? As I said, boring TV.

Although the mutts were so much creepier in the book.

So it's with eager anticipation that I await Catching Fire. The first thing I do upon finishing the book is to watch all the trailers and TV spots twice, as I haven't previously seen anything about the movie. I am particularly excited for Katniss' transformation to the Mockingjay, seen in glimpses in the trailers.

Here they are, for your perusal:







TV Spots:
"Atlas"
"We Remain"
"Defy"
"Not Afraid"
"Chosen Skill"
"Phenomenon"

And: the official first clip.

While looking up the movies, I was intrigued to learn that there will be four (!) movies; they are breaking Mockingjay into two parts. (See what you started Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 & 2? First you, then Twilight, then a three-part Hobbit, and now everyone's doing it!) Also, Julianne Moore is playing President Coin, who I think is perfect for the part, and the actress who plays Johanna Mason looks exactly as I pictured her.

* * *

While I'm linking YouTube (second-lowest form of blogging), I might as well give you this fan film I wandered upon: the second Quarter Quell, the year Haymitch won the games.



Pretty good for a fan flick.

* * *

Continuing the theme of YouTube links:

Honest Trailers: The Hunger Games


How The Hunger Games Should Have Ended




And lastly, a bad lip reading of The Hunger Games

* * *

I think it's interesting how both HISHE and Honest Trailers poke fun at the movie because the Capitol has all this advanced technology, but doesn't use it to solve the Districts' problems. Then, Honest Trailers goes on to criticize the movie for not having any social or political commentary. Um....

Let's play a game. Do you have a smart phone? Not counting cell phones for now, but they'd also be applicable. Do you need your smart phone? I mean, would you be living in poverty, struggling to stay alive, without it? Yes, they're convenient, but we're not considering that for now. OK, now how many people do you think are in the same boat as you? How many people have smart phones and hey, these things sure are nice, and yes, the certainly can be helpful and time savers and, yes, that's just fine, but let's face it, you probably wouldn't die without one. Now let's take the money you, and everyone like you who would probably still be alive without their phone has spent on the phone. But not just the phone. There's the data plan, typically $15-$30 a month. Let's also throw in money spent in app stores and in-app purchases. On top of that, let's add in the all the advertising costs that Apple, Samsung, Google, HTC, Nokia, and all the rest have spent on TV commercials, print ads, and online marketing. For the hell of it, let's also include their R&D budgets, and—why not—the money that AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and the rest have spent on developing cellular infrastructure to be able to accommodate all these extra devices. And just to be extra thorough, let's also include the money spent making The Hunger Games movie and its three (!) sequels.

If you printed all that money as $100 bills and laid them end to end, they would disappear very quickly, because do you honestly believe you could leave a bunch of $100 bills laying around and people wouldn't take them?

It would also be a lot of money. Money that has saved exactly zero people's lives. Now, how much food for Africa could it buy? How much clean water for Guatemala? Electricity for Ethiopia? Houses for Haitians? (Alliterations for Algerians?)

And they say there isn't any political commentary in the movie.

I have written about this before, and it has dominated my thoughts ever since, so I really can't help but laugh when the folks at Honest Trailers bash the movie for not including the social commentary from the book.

In fact, this is one more reason I liked the movie better; subtlety. In the book, everything is spelled out and presented at face value. Katniss' inner monologues about the Capitol are the sledgehammer method of getting the point across (say it with me: "YA"). The movie? It exemplifies "show, don't tell." The conclusions are your own.

A day or two after finishing Mockingjay, I go to the store and fill a shopping cart with about $150 worth of food. I can't help but feel a little guilty, wondering how Katniss would react to seeing so much food. Then, I begin to wonder: why does fakely-fictional Katniss make me feel so much more guilty than, oh, the dozens of mailings and emails Food for the Poor sends me every day showing poor, starving children? I don't like the answer I come up with.

Katniss is white. And Pretty. And has an American accent. She weasels her way into the monkeysphere. Those poor starving third world children are The Other. "Yes, it's terrible that they're starving and Someone really ought to Do Something about it, and of course I send $50 now and again when I can spare it, when I have a little extra money after my cable TV and internet bill, smart phone bill, and making a payment on my brand new car which—did I mention?—has a power sliding moon-roof, integrated Blue Tooth™ audio, leather seats, and three-zone automatic climate control. Oh, look! A Steam sale!"

* * *

(This is the spoilerific part.)

Since finishing it, I've been trying to come up with the thesis of the series. What is it, ultimately, about? No, not the Hunger Games. That's just the setting.

I don't know what Mrs. Collins intended, but I would say the thesis is this: the devil hates children. You can probably judge the health of a society by the way it treats its children.

A society which sees children as a burden, as a drain on resources, as something which gets in the way, is one that has listened a bit too intently to the devil's whispers. When this view is adopted by the culture, it's something that affects even the "good guys". It becomes part of the cultural subconscious. (Mark Shea brings this to mind in our own culture with his acronym "SMACTHCAISYACTHC." (That's "show me a culture that hates chastity, and I'll show you a culture that hates children."))

And this is what we see in Katniss in the first book. She doesn't ever want to have children. Doesn't want even the possibility that they may be forced to fight in the Games. Children, to her, are an emotional burden. The devil has won.

But by the end, this has been flipped completely around. The epilogue shows her with her own children. She has defeated the Capitol. Her children, safe from the Games, are a sign of the totality of her victory. The devil has been defeated.