The name of the annual district ceremonies wherein two tributes, a male and a female. She is furious at Haymitch Abernathy. The Meaning of the Name Who is the Mockingjay? The Hidden Key to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy. A lot of discussion and theorizing has happened here since then — and I hope you’ll join that free- for- all where it is now rather than back here in February! Please check out this Round- Up post (and the Pearl Plot 2. Thanks for joining us at Hogwarts. Progessor, where serious readers discuss the meaning and artistry of The Hunger Games. Forgive me, but I doubt I would have purchased the books, Hunger Games and Catching Fire, as promptly as I did except that I ignored a similar question about Twilight for more than two years, much to my loss, and except for the facts that both these writers are very serious readers, both praised the books without qualification, and they both came up with the alchemical reading independently of the other. I bought and have read the two books in the trilogy now in print (the finale wil be published 2. August this year). I’ve even read them twice and made a lot of notes. The alchemy question is a good one, if the story scaffolding owe at least as much to television 3 act story templating and Dante as they might to Shakespearean drama. Now that I’ve read them and loved them, I hope you will read the Hunger Games books, too, and join me in conversation about them here. If you are a Harry Potter reader, I’m confident these books will challenge and delight you — and, in being a series- not- yet- finished, will draw you into speculation about what will happen in the next book based on patterns and events in the first two. Yesterday we learned that the title of the Hungers Games trilogy finale will be Mockingjay and saw the cover of the Scholastic edition (US). Today I want to discuss what I think will be the surprise revelation of the finale and a key to opening up the meaning of the series. If you haven’t read the first two books, of course, or if you don’t care for speculative writing about novels not yet published, this would be the best place for you to stop reading. She is furious at Haymitch Abernathy, her Games and Quell mentor, because she is convinced that he is the puppet master and alchemical dramatist who has written her into the script of his subversive story within the Capitol regime’s Hunger Games narrative. Bad enough, she thinks, to have her sister chosen as a tribute and to have been forced to sacrifice herself in her first trip into the arena, an experience where she warred with the narrative line of her “real enemy” to write a rebellious story that . He survived as a tribute because he played the game like a Game Maker or playwright; In the hovercraft scenes of the Catching Fire last chapter, Haymitch says (and Katniss repeats) the line that seems to peg him as the rebellion’s ? She attacks Haymitch with her fingernails in her agony and confusion on learning that “I am the mockingjay” (page 3. This is the set- up for the last novel of the series we now know is titled Mockingjay. Judging from a quick look at the Scholastic cover and this set- up, the finale may be the story of Katniss winning her freedom at last from playing parts in plays for which she is never shown a script to her self- actualization and free choices as a character “writing her own plans.”Maybe. Right now, though, I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong. Mockingjay will certainly be about the liberation of the story character who is the rebellion’s inspiration and the story will feature Katniss in a break out role. It’s just that I doubt that Haymitch is the story mastermind and that Katniss is the real mockingjay, as central as both these characters are. The real mockingjay and true author of the rebellion story told within the regime narrative, like Ms. Collins the rebellious television writer, doesn’t appear in the story as a named character. Donner- Undersee once and then only in film as a young woman when her mirror image self is taken into the Games as one of the second Quarter Quell’s four District 1. Fire, page 1. 96). I think that the rebellion’s mockingjay symbolism and counter- narrative starring Katniss and Haymitch are stories written by Mrs. Undersee for these reasons: the origin of the Mockingjay pin; the privileged station and situation of Mrs. Undersee; the meaning of the name . The Mockingjay Pin: We first see the pin in the opening chapter of Hunger Games. Madge Undersee is wearing it then on her “reaping clothes” finery. Katniss sees Gale noting its value before his unkind comments about the unlikelihood of Madge being selected as a District 1. Tribute (page 1. 2). Before it becomes the token of the rebellion that will eventually be stamped on something like communion wafers among refugees, not to mention its becoming fashionable in the Capitol, the mockingjay accessory has to be transferred from Madge to Katniss with a committment extracted from Katniss to wear it in the arena. It is an odd scene. Madge brings this pin to Katniss after the Reaping and very deliberately, even “urgently” gives it to her, exacting a promise that Katniss will wear it in the arena. My next guest is also unexpected. Madge walks straight to me. She is not weepy or evasive, instead there’s an urgency about her tone that surprises me. One thing to remind you of home. Will you wear this?” She holds out the circular gold pin that was on her dress earlier. I hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but now I see it had a small bird in flight.“Your pin?” I say. Wearing a token from my district is about the last thing on my mind.“Here, I’ll put it on your dress, all right?” Madge doesn’t wait for an answer, she just leans in and fixes the bird to my dress. I’m getting all kinds of gifts today. Madge gives me one more. Then she’s gone and I’m left thinking that maybe Madge really has been my friend all along (page 3. Katniss doesn’t understand the power or meaning of this pin’s symbolism until well into Catching Fire but it is clear from Madge’s urgency and insistence in how she gives the token to Katniss that Madge believes or has been instructed that it is critical to Katniss’s success and survival that she wear it. Madge’s instructions, of course, are correct both in the short and long term. Rue chooses to trust Katniss because of the pin, most obviously, and then the symbol becomes both spark and catalyst for the rebellion when Katniss humiliates the Games Makers by stepping outside their narrative at story’s end. Using the Red Hen model of literary speculation, namely, that implausibly unlikely events coming to pass are the marks of design, my assumption in coming to interpret the seemingly providential happenings of Hunger Games is that they were planned by someone within the story. For starters, Prim’s and Peeta’s names being chosen at the District 1. Reaping was too much of a dream match to have been arbitrary or random. Effie, I’m guessing, was told which names to pull or all the names in the bowl were the same. Given the love Peeta has for Katniss and Katniss’ singular qualifications for surviving, even thriving in the arena, skills she alone has among all District 1. Hunger Games. A key piece in this seditious narrative is the mockingjay token because it is the symbol of the counter- story the Capitol couldn’t anticipate or control. She has to be wearing it for the story to work as written. Who could have instructed Madge to get Katniss’ promise to wear it in the arena? I think the believable possibilities have to be restricted to Haymitch Abernathy or her mother — and the latter seems much more likely. Though the Maysilee- twin and Haymitch share a motivation to avenge Maysilee’s death (and would want the token to mark their taking revenge), Madge tells Katniss in Fire that the pin “was my Aunt’s” “but I think it’s been in my family a long time” (page 9. Madge and her family to Katniss. The Privileged Station and Situation of Mrs. Undersee: There is a curious scene during the post Games tour when Haymitch takes Peeta and Katniss through the labyrinth of the District 1. Justice building to find a place for them to talk without being monitored (Fire, chapter 5). We’re not supposed to believe that Haymitch is able to do this because he remembers so vividly his own visit as touring victor to that building in District 1. How then does he move with such surety, speed, and confidence through the maze of rooms and seemingly sealed doors? It’s not plausible unless he’s been there sometime, even many times, in the intervening years. Or if someone else has. We learn from Madge that even the Mayor’s wife, her mother, cannot travel to the Capitol for medical treatment and medicines without special permission. Obviously, though, Mrs. Undersee does get this kind of allowance. She “spends half her life in bed immobilized with terrible pain, shutting out the world” (Fire, page 1. She has enough pain killers on hand consequent to her medicinal trips to the Capitol that she is able to send a box to Katniss’ house in the Victor’s Village when Gale is whipped close to death by the new Head Peace Keeper, Thread. Knowing that she does get to the Capitol because of her illness means she gets around. I think it’s safe to assume that she goes to other Districts as Mayor Undersee’s escort. I would bet she knows the major political players in every district as the First Lady of District 1. Capitol to meet important people there. Even promising dress designers. Cinna repeatedly returns the mockingjay pin to Katniss and is an essential figure in creating the “girl on fire” phoenix imagery that is the heart of the token’s meaning. Someone has initiated him into the mockingjay conspiracy. Undersee, who? I bet she meets men like Games Maker Plutarch Heavensbee, too, with whom, because of her sister’s history in the Games, she could have conversations quite different than those he would have with magistrate’s wives. Who could enlist a Games Maker into a rebellion than another person from his caste, a person who understands the power of story?
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