Up in Flames

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I didn’t think Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games was a great book, but I thought the world building was. The plot of that novel really drew me in. And, as I understood that it was just the first novel in a trilogy, I thought The Hunger Games was a fine lead-in to the tale Collins wanted to tell. Catching Fire undid a lot of that good feeling.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss is young and relatively inexperienced. My expectation was that going through the Hunger Games in the opening novel would age her beyond her years and give her a hardness similar to that developed by Sarah Connor between the first and second Terminator films. What Catching Fire shows, though, is that the experience of surviving the Hunger Games did not have any significant effect on Katniss’ psyche. All of her thoughts are still very young and naïve.

The only real development we see in Katniss is her—for lack of a better term—hormonal awakening. I understand this is a young adult series, but Collins would have been much better served leaving Katniss’ hormones out of the trilogy than by having this seventeen-year old who had already been through one Hunger Games, killed several people, publicly prepared to commit televised dual suidice, and was in the midst of sacrificing herself discuss her “hunger” for kissing a boy. It just came across as awkward. This is not a children’s book. There is too much murder and gore to pretend otherwise. The author did not have to create a sexual relationship, but she did her readers a disservice by introducing the topic of Katniss’ hormones while neither hinting at nor discussing sex or even thoughts of sex. This is emblematic of the entire series thus far. Collins has good ideas and good setup, but she pulls the reins and refuses to do what is necessary in order to get the most out of her ideas.

There is one paragraph in Chapter 17 that stood out to me for this reason:

The beauty of this idea is that my decision to keep Peeta alive at the expense of my own life is itself an act of defiance. A refusal to play the Hunger Games by the Capitol’s rules. My private agenda dovetails completely with my public one. And if I really could save Peeta…in terms of a revolution, this would be ideal. Because I will be more valuable dead. They can turn me into some kind of martyr for the cause and paint my face on banners, and it will do more to rally people than anything I could do if I was living. But Peeta would be more valuable alive, and tragic, because he will be able to turn his pain into words that will transform people.

Here we see Katniss’ potential. She could be that martyr, but we know that Suzanne Collins was not going to kill her. We see a glimpse of hardness, but Collins doesn’t commit to it. Instead, Catching Fire presents a more soft and sentimental Katniss than did The Hunger Games. In the first novel, the heroine directly killed two people—although one was in an immediate moment of emotional revenge and the other was essentially a mercy killing—and was responsible for a couple more. This time around, she neither directly nor indirectly kills anyone. There is much introspection regarding how hard it would be to kill this person or that person, consideration as to whether or not now is the time to take him or her out. But she never does it. She’s never close to doing it. Katniss Everdeen survived two Hunger Games, yet never made one true kill. Collins should have named her Mary Sue.

There is talk of empowerment, but I don’t understand it. There is no female positivity in this novel. If I ever have children, I wish for them to never read these books. I don’t want my daughter to see Katniss as a heroine. She is a naïve girl who, through two novels, does not grow up and remains self-absorbed and oblivious to the world around her. The plot of Catching Fire is driven by men who think they know what’s best for Katniss and make secret plans about her without her knowledge. I don’t want my son to think this a valid way to treat women. And I don’t want either of them to read about Katniss’ being a brat, see that the men in Catching Fire were actually right, and think that it’s OK. Because none of it was OK. These people are presented as heroes, but there is nothing heroic about them. Any of them.

And Katniss is dumber than a sack of potatoes. We get the stories through her eyes, so we know how she thinks and feels about what is presented to her. As I told my wife, it was as if we were told a new clue given every ten minutes for five hours, yet despite solving the mystery after the second clue, we’re forced to sit through the next four hours and forty minutes of receiving clue after clue after clue. But Katniss doesn’t see any of it. The events and experiences of The Hunger Games did nothing for her cognitive reasoning skills, her intuition, or her core being. We’re supposed to believe this young woman is a survivor, yet she displays none of the traits of a survivor. It’s just phony.

But I can say that about a lot of other aspects of the world Collins created. We get no mention of a pro-Capitol person in the Districts. In every oppressed group, there is at least one faction of people who aligns with the ruling class. Apparently Panem is the exception. We don’t even hear of a tribute, not even a Career, who supports the Capitol. In fact, we saw the opposite, a circle of solidarity the night before the Quarter Quell began.

I can’t believe the Capitol is as dumb as Collins portrays them. Every empire has chinks in the armor, but the Capitol could not be that dumb. Nobody picks up on the mockingjay? Please. Nothing was more absurd than Katniss’ Quarter Quell interview wedding dress. Had I not been reading on my Kindle, I would have thrown the book across the room after that part.

I don’t anticipate the final book of the trilogy, but I will read it because I try to finish series that I start. But I have next to zero interest in it.

The ideas of this trilogy are so good. There is so much potential. I loved the idea of previous victors returning to the arena for the Quarter Quell. I loved the idea of Katniss dedicating herself to making sure Peeta survives victorious. I just don’t like any of the execution. As I read, I can’t help but to think about what I or any number of people could have done with this story. It is only because of those good ideas that I rate Catching Fire as highly as I do.

In the end, what I say is that The Hunger Games got be to buy in for the idea and the potential. I couldn’t buy into Catching Fire.

C-