Book Review - Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins-Review

“It’s better to have loved and lost than have never loved at all”

In the book Mockingjay Katniss Everdeen misses Peeta. He is still in the Capitol and now the people of district thirteen want her to be the Mockingjay (or leader in their rebellion). But even though Katniss is with her family, she cannot concentrate in transmitting messages to the people of Panem. She wants Peeta. Gale realizes this and goes to the Capitol in a secret mission to bring Peeta back. He succeeds but Peeta is not the same person Katniss fell in love with. Will happiness with Katniss’s family last? Will the Capitol leave Katniss unpunished for what she has done against them?

After reading the book, I as the reader thought that there were two very important themes:
• War brings more pain than glory.
• Government is what people turn it into.

The themes are portrayed when the rebels turn against the Capitol, since they have been oppressed for so many years. This rebellion brings pain to the protagonist Katniss (since the story is told from her point of view: first person narrative) but also to the people around her. With the rebellion Katniss and all the people of Panem change the government to something that benefits all interests of the oppressed people.

The author came across this idea based on the story from the Greek mythology Theseus and the Minotaur. Where every nine years fourteen children, seven Athenian boys and seven Athenian girls, were given as tributes to the King of Crete, Mino and were thrown into a labyrinth to be devoured by King Mino’s Minotaur. It was one of her childhood favorite stories and she always thought it was unfair for kids to have to pay for what their parents had done. Also, since her father was in the Vietnam War she was found herself flipping through T.V. channels and all of those channels referred it, adding to her fears of her father’s possible death and therefore she used the idea in her book that the people of that community had to watch with anxiety the suffering of their own children. Lastly, her father new a lot about plants and different fruits that could be found in the wild, an idea which she used for the character of Katniss.

I thought that Suzanne Collins was trying to reach out or connect with teenagers and at the same time, she was trying to get the two main themes across, because teenagers will be future adults and if they think they can make a change like the one recently done in Egypt our collective future will be better.