The Girl Who Was on Fire (21 page)

Even though they are residents of the Capitol, ostensibly her enemy, and even though she has survived both the Hunger Games and the Quarter Quell by killing others, Katniss cannot bear to think of Venia, Flavius, and Octavia being subjected to such treatment. Later, while out hunting, Gale asks her why she cares so much about the members of her prep team when they basically spent the last year “prettying [her] up for slaughter.” Katniss struggles to explain, pointing out that none of them are evil or cruel, or even smart—she likens them to children.

Gale is completely unforgiving of their ignorance:

Katniss “should” hate them. But why? Is that not one of the cruelest fallacies of war? That everyone, just by the virtue of being “other,” is different and irredeemably bad? Katniss
should
have the most reasons to hate, having been sent into the arena not once, but twice. But despite everything she’s been through, she’s still capable of seeing the so-called “enemy” as individuals, rather than as a monolithic entity. She remembers that Octavia snuck her a roll rather than see her hungry and that Flavius had to quit during the Quarter Quell because he couldn’t stop crying.

Gale, on the other hand, is incapable of doing this. And in our own society, this inability to individuate within a religious or racial group is how we end up with the bizarre and painful irony of watching even Juan Williams, the same African-American journalist who wrote: “Racism is a lazy man’s substitute for using good judgment,” declaring on Fox News:
“When I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

Throughout the Hunger Games series, Katniss’ feelings swing between Gale and Peeta, and the differences between the two are crystallized in this final book by the polar opposite ways they deal with their grief over the destruction of District 12 and everything that has happened leading up to this point. Gale wants revenge at any cost, by any means necessary—and, if you believe the rebellion responsible for the bombs that explode outside Snow’s mansion, ultimately that cost is very dear, resulting in the death of Katniss’ beloved sister, Prim, along with many other people’s sisters and brothers. Thus the series comes full circle: the reason Katniss volunteered to be a tribute in the first volume was in order to save her sister’s life—an act of courage that ultimately proves in vain. The Capitol did horrible things to many, many people—but by choosing to play by the same horrific rules, the rebellion actually causes the same kind of tragedy it was intended to prevent.

I’ve been very angered by reviews in which Peeta is called a “wimp,” because I actually think he’s the braver of the two boys. Why? Because Peeta is the one who, despite everything he’s been through—the Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell, physical and psychological torture—is able to retain his essential humanity. Peeta is the one who, unlike Gale, recognizes there is a line that must never,
ever
be crossed. That is why he’s the one that Katniss must end up with in order to stay true to herself and be able to heal and find some measure of happiness—happiness that Gale, with his moral ambivalence and quest for vengeance, could never have provided.

Some of the people I admire most in the world are Marianne Pearl, the wife of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl (who was
beheaded in 2002 by Pakistani kidnappers while researching a story), and Judea Pearl, Danny’s father. Ms. Pearl, whom I was fortunate enough to meet last year, and her in-laws are people who could so easily have gone down the same path Gale did, and it would have been hard to blame them. But instead they have honored Daniel’s life work by continuing to work toward crosscultural understanding through the creation of the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

The results of a path of revenge, as Katniss observes to the mineworker in
Mockingjay
, is that “it just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol.”

Not just the Capitol. We’re meant to think that Snow and Coin are opposites, but as we learn by the end of
Mockingjay
, Coin’s name is no accident. The leaders are, as the old saying goes, two sides of the same coin.

In the summer of 2008, two letters from readers arrived at my paper. One, addressed to me, asked, “Can you name me an instance where you are on the United States’ side on an issue?” The other, addressed to my editor at the paper, complained: “If you’re going to continue to publish the far left ramblings of Sarah Darer Littman on your editorial page, you can at least try to balance things out by having somebody else on who actually wants to see our country win the war on terrorism.”

I found myself bemused by both, because as far as I’m concerned, I’m on the United States’ side on EVERY issue. It’s because I love my country so much, because I believe so passionately in the ideals upon which it was founded, that I’m so vocal when I feel that our government and our elected officials are taking us down paths that diverge from those principles.

So what does it mean to be patriotic? What does “being on America’s side” constitute? Does it make “my country”—or in
Katniss’ case, the rebellion—“right or wrong”? Personally, I don’t believe that is the case. One of the greatest minds of all time, Albert Einstein, said, “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

To me, it is about asking questions, fighting for what you believe in, and holding our leaders accountable. It’s about making sure that they don’t take us down a path that is antithetical to what we stand for. It’s about saying, “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values,” as President Bush declared in a speech on September 6, 2006, but really
meaning
it, not coming up with rationalizations for how and why we are allowed do so.

It’s about facing the real challenges ahead of us without losing who we are as a nation, without compromising the core values and beliefs that made America the shining beacon of democracy in the world.

I have a letter to the editor from a World War II veteran, Richard P. Petrizzi, that I keep pinned above my desk. It reads: “I have many friends who are veterans who have never worn a flag on their lapels or flown flags in front of their homes. Yet these same people went to war to fight the dictators who were trying to conquer the world. We fought at that time to preserve our freedoms, including freedom of speech. I urge Sarah Darer Littman to keep writing her column and standing up for what democracy is all about.”

Almost two thousand years ago, the poet Juvenal wrote the Satires, a series of poems highly critical of the mores and actions of his Roman contemporaries. In “Satire X,” he writes of the downfall of the head of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus, and the reaction of the citizens of Rome as he is dragged through the streets to his execution. One citizen asks, “But on what charge was he condemned? Who informed against him?
What was the evidence, who the witnesses, who made good the case?”

Another replies: “Nothing of the sort; a great and wordy letter came from Capri;” in other words, Sejanus had been condemned to death on the basis of a letter from the Emperor Tiberius, because he’d fallen out of favor with his former friend
.
“Good; I ask no more,” replies the first citizen—abandoning law and order to the winds.

Juvenal rails that “the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things—Bread and Games!”

Or, in the original Latin:
Panem et Circenses
. The phrase originated with Juvenal, and two thousand years later, it describes how much of the American public preferred to lose themselves in “reality TV” than pay attention the erosion of civil liberties during the War on Terror; “asking no more” in the way of evidence from their government when confronted by policies that so clearly contradict our laws and our national values. From warrantless wiretapping of American citizens to the politicized hiring and firing of Department of Justice officials, from the abrogation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture to leaking the name of a covert CIA agent for political purposes—the list of Bush administration transgressions goes on. Although the Obama administration has corrected some of the worst abuses, such as the use of torture, it still hasn’t rejected the use of extraordinary rendition or closed the prison at Guantanamo Bay, despite the fact that the harsh treatment received there has motivated several released prisoners to become members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Yet much of the American public remains too busy watching TV, preferring to discuss
Dancing with the Stars
and
Jersey Shore
, and continues to
accept the harsh treatment of prisoners under the guise of “national security” without understanding the global strategic implications, let alone the moral ones.

Plutarch compares the Capitol to ancient Rome (and thus the United States) in
Mockingjay
: “In the Capitol, all they’ve known is Panem et Circenses. ... The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”

In Collins’ series, despite her youth and attempts by both sides to manipulate her for their own ends, Katniss refuses to give up her power. Her suicide threat in
The Hunger Games
gives direct challenge to President Snow on nationwide television, forcing him to declare Peeta and Katniss co-winners of the Seventy-fourth Games. In
Catching Fire
, Katniss helps harness the lightning meant to torment the tributes in the Quarter Quell and uses it to destroy the Arena’s force field. Finally, in
Mockingjay
, after Coin proposes a new Hunger Games and Katniss realizes that the end result of the rebellion has been merely to replace one amoral leader with another, she aims her arrow upward and shoots Coin dead. (Granted, it’s a sad reflection of the violence that she’s experienced in her short life and her complete distrust of the entire political structure of Panem—one that threw her into the Hunger Games arena in the first place—that she feels assassination is the only answer. We are fortunate, in contrast, to live in a country where we are free to express our unhappiness with the status quo through less drastic means.)

The BookPage blog asked Suzanne Collins: What do you hope these books will encourage in readers? Her answer: “I hope they encourage debate and questions. Katniss is in a position where she has to question everything she sees. And like Katniss herself, young readers are coming of age politically.” In an interview on
the Scholastic website, Collins said she hoped that readers would come away with “questions about how elements of the book might be relevant in their own lives. And, if they’re disturbing, what they might do about them.”

I consider
Mockingjay
a brilliant book for our time. Not only does it raise the difficult, eternal questions of war and humanity, grief and revenge, but one hopes it will encourage all of us to become more politically aware and active, and not to ever allow ourselves to risk the erosion of our democracy and civil liberties for
panem et circenses
.

SARAH DARER LITTMAN
is an award-winning author of middlegrade and young adult novels, including
Confessions of a Closet Catholic
,
Purge
,
Life
,
After
, and the upcoming
Want to go Private?
In addition to writing for teens, she is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers (CT) and writes for the political websites
CTNewsJunkie.com
and
MyLeftNutmeg.com
.

��

 

 

Decadence is fun in theory: eating all of the ice cream you want whenever you want and having nothing to do but read and watch television and hang out with friends sounds great at first. But while you’re busy indulging yourself, someone has to keep the world running smoothly. Someone has to do all that work you’re avoiding, and chances are that they’d like the chance to indulge in a little decadence too. As Adrienne Kress explains, Panem is a perfect example of a society that lives to excess, as well as the perfect example of excess’ inevitable result.