{"id":242,"date":"2011-03-08T07:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=242"},"modified":"2011-03-08T09:56:04","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T17:56:04","slug":"mark-reads-mockingjay-epilogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/03\/mark-reads-mockingjay-epilogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Mockingjay’: Epilogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the epilogue of Mockingjay<\/em>, sadness until THE ABSOLUTE END OF TIME. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to finish Mockingjay<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very weird to be at the end of this all. I started The Hunger Games<\/em> trilogy for a new project and a new experience when I created Mark Reads. I was unsure whether I could continue to keep an audience for a new series (I did! Hello!), or that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be able to write in-depth reviews about something I knew nothing about. I think I started off with this series with a much more cynical view than I intended to. When I came into the Harry Potter<\/em> series, I was afraid of instantly liking it because of that atrocity of a series I came. So I was overly harsh in my first set of reviews. With The Hunger Games<\/em>, I feared liking<\/em> something instantly, so I was, again, a lot more negative than I probably wanted to be. In hindsight, though, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m okay with it. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust this series when I started it. Hell, I even feared that I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like it. It made the joy all that much more real to me when I realized I really was enjoying myself while reading these books.<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s odd to say you experience \u00e2\u20ac\u0153joy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while reading The Hunger Games<\/em> trilogy because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually little joy to be found in these books. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re deeply serious, painful, kind of traumatizing, and endlessly tragic. Maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because I gravitate to such dark and depressing themes, but the fact that this series told a story that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so easy to digest makes me appreciate them that much more.<\/p>\n

I actually enjoy the epilogue to Mockingjay<\/em> quite a bit because it seems natural. I feel that this very brief look into the future fits the tone and themes of the rest of the novel. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not often that epilogues actually work, for that matter, so much applause to Collins for that.<\/p>\n

Set fifteen years in the future, the epilogue serves the purpose of not only updating us about what sort of life Peeta and Katniss have lived, but to remind us of what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just read.<\/p>\n

They play in the Meadow. The dancing girl with the dark hair and blue eyes. The boy with the blond curls and gray eyes, struggling to keep up with her on his chubby toddler legs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I love that their children have physical features opposite of their parents. Nice touch.<\/p>\n
It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree. But Peeta wanted them so badly. When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself. Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it. Carrying him was a little easier, but not much.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Collins has to be praised for what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done here: she has not given these characters a fairy-tale ending. She has not erased their experiences to wrap the story up in an easily-digestible package. She has not said that people cannot survive or love or raise a family if they suffer from a mental illness or trauma.<\/p>\n
They live, just like any one of us, though the details are different.<\/p>\n
The questions are just beginning. The arenas have been completely destroyed, the memorials built, there are no more Hunger Games. But they teach about them at school, and the girl knows we played a role in them. The boy will know in a few years. How can I tell them about that world without frightening them to death?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have no answer to this and I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even pretend that I do. But it is the reality of what Katniss has to deal with. How do you explain these horrors? How can you describe lived experience to people who will never experience it for itself? Katniss even points out that her children take the concept of waking up for granted, a fear she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll always live with.<\/p>\n
My children, who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know they play on a graveyard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, how do you explain that<\/em> to them?<\/p>\n
Peeta says it will be okay. We have each other. And the book. We can make them understand in a way that will make them braver. But one day I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to explain about my nightmares. Why they came. Why they won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever really go away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even imagine this, having to explain those sort of horrors to your children.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell them how I survive it. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m afraid it could be taken away. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen someone do. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.<\/p>\n
But there are much worse games to play.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And so Mockingjay<\/em> comes to an end. For most of us, we will probably never live in a world or experience things so traumatic that we are haunted by them for the rest of our lives. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting, though, that people could<\/em> take so much away from this ending. As someone who was abused and still feels the effects of that every day, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very uplifting (strangely so) that this ending feels so real to me, despite that I have no experience with war.<\/p>\n
Looking back on the series, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d definitely say that Mockingjay<\/em> was my favorite of the three novels. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if I could necessarily pick a favorite character, as I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t naturally gravitate towards one over the others. Well, obviously Buttercup is the best, but besides that, I kind of like all of them, faults and all, fairly equally. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m quite satisfied with the ending as well, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really have any desire for the loose ends to be tied up. I imagine there are people who are mad that they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find out full stories for people like Haymitch, Gale, or Katniss\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mom, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that important in the end.<\/p>\n
For me, though, this series will have a few things I latch on to. It was my first book series on my new site. It was immensely entertaining, and it surprised me time and time again. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll always love that I got to discuss so many of the intricacies of that this book inspired us to talk about: from war to revolution, from ableism to heroism, and from love triangles to every SHIT JUST GOT REAL moment that Suzanne Collins sent our way.<\/p>\n
Sure, there are flaws. All the summary portions still grate me the wrong way. Sometimes the first-person present narrative is irritating. I still think that, even in hindsight, the first book is a tad reminiscent of Battle Royale<\/em>, despite that it has nothing to do with it. But in the end, I would recommend The Hunger Games<\/em> trilogy in a heartbeat. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d add one qualifier to it before sending someone on their way:<\/p>\n
You are not prepared.<\/p>\n
We will begin The Book Thief<\/em> by Markus Zusak on Friday. Expect a couple Infinite Jest<\/em> reviews before then since I now have the time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the epilogue of Mockingjay, sadness until THE ABSOLUTE END OF TIME. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to finish Mockingjay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5],"tags":[28,23,39,24,27],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mockingjay","category-hunger-games","tag-katniss-everdeen","tag-mark-reads","tag-mark-reads-mockingjay","tag-mark-reads-the-hunger-games","tag-suzanne-collins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}