The Girl Who Was on Fire (8 page)

And then we meet Coin. Alma Coin is the president of the District. Katniss’ gut reaction to her—something that, by this point in the series, the reader trusts—is wonderfully described by Collins: “Her eyes are gray ... The color of slush that you wish would melt away” (
Mockingjay
). There is a cold, calculating quality to Coin—and comparing her eyes to “slush” foreshadows that she is really a counterpoint and twisted mirror image of the Capitol’s President Snow.

We learn that District 13’s survival occurred because of a kind of “deal with the devil” they negotiated with the Capitol. After all, it was only 13 and the Capitol that possessed nuclear weapons—enough to blow most of Panem to bits and to render the whole country a radioactive wasteland. So the Capitol let 13 survive on the condition that District 13 be portrayed as a smoldering, uninhabited ruin through the fakery of old video tape aired endlessly on TV. Thirteen made the deal, and the appalling images of 13’s destruction quenched the burgeoning rebellion. No other district wanted to meet the same fate. On this make-believe foundation the Capitol built its tyrannical reign.

District 13 did not just go away, however. Instead, it bided its time, until it could launch a new rebellion. Its tentacles were carefully spread through many districts, and we learn at the end of
Catching Fire
that at least in terms of saving Katniss in the Quarter Quell, tributes from Districts 3, 4, 7, 8, and 11 were in on the plan.

But as the story plunges into out-and-out guerilla warfare, the mask of Coin’s idealism begins to crack. Coin not only plans
to have Katniss conveniently killed, a move worthy of Snow, but her plans after the rebels take the Capitol and imprison Snow show that her own innate corruption and evil matches Snow to the letter—not the “final” Games she proposes, but the way she goes about proposing them. By having the surviving victors of the Games vote on whether the children of the Capitol should become arena tributes, she defends herself against any blame. It’s a move calculated to keep her above public censure. She could tell the populace that sentencing more children to death was not her decision.

Alma Coin’s twisted ambition isn’t District 13’s only mirror-image of Capitol corruption. Though the seeming reality of District 13’s culture is one of great discipline, the militaristic code of the place leads to unspeakable horrors that reflect back the images of torture practiced in the Capitol.

The imprisonment of Katniss’ prep team is one example.

After their kidnapping from the Capitol, Flavius, Octavia, and Venia are certainly treated no worse than the refugees from District 12. Their punishment for repeatedly breaking the rules and hoarding an extra piece of bread, we’re told, is the same as any native of 13 would have experienced. But the prison conditions would have been torturous for anyone, and are especially so for those unused to any hardship or want. And couching their extended imprisonment as needed discipline is a ruse that fools no one from the Capitol (Fulvia and Plutarch Heavensbee), and certainly not Katniss, Haymitch, or Gale.

If any good comes out of Katniss’ discovery of her prep team’s plight, it’s that she is able to verbalize what she has only suspected up to that point: Coin’s corruption. “‘Punishing my prep team’s a warning,’ I tell Fulvia and Heavensbee. ‘Not just to me. But to you, too. About who’s really in control and what happens if she’s
not obeyed’” (
Mockingjay
). Coin, and by extension the district, has become a warped mirror-image of the very regime they wish to destroy—and the least trustworthy bunch in the series.
⁶

In District 13, during
Mockingay
, we also see Katniss and Gale move further and further apart. At the end of
Catching Fire
, when Katniss learns that Peeta has not been saved, only Gale can penetrate her pain and despair. At this point it’s only Gale who she feels she can still trust.

In
The Hunger Games
Katniss declares, “In the woods waits the only person with whom I can be myself. Gale.” An interesting observation: she cannot totally be herself even with her beloved Prim, the little sister for whom she has risked her life. If Prim inadvertently, innocently repeats anything critical of the government, imprisonment, torture, or worse would befall the whole family. As for her mother—Katniss considers her too weak to trust. Certainly she’s too unreliable to protect Prim.

Right through the end of
Catching Fire
Katniss continues to trust Gale. He alone has not betrayed or lied to her. His presence on the District 13 rescue helicopter shocks her, but the fact he
is
there at her most desperate hour of need reaffirms their abiding friendship. He has turned up in spite of his having to witness, during the Quarter Quell broadcasts, her declarations of love for Peeta and the “fact” of her pregnancy—knowing only Peeta could be the father. Gale is the rock she
can lean on and trust, no matter what other fate befalls her. Her faith in Gale crumbles, however, beneath the weight of his betrayal in
Mockingjay
.

Betrayal is close kin to deception, more insidious because only someone you have confided in or bared your heart to, someone you trusted completely, can really betray you. And because of that, the most shattering betrayal Katniss experiences is ultimately by Gale, even though his betrayal is unintentional and not aimed at Katniss. She is just a wounded bystander. Poisoned by the horror of the Capitol’s offenses and of war, he becomes so hardened that he is now incapable of understanding how Katniss can’t share his “take no survivors” mentality.

When, finally able to go hunting in District 13, they are able to talk in private for the first time since Katniss’ rescue, their conversation ultimately leads to a fight. Gale questions her defense of her prep team, recovering at that time under her mother’s care in the district’s medical center. Katniss tries to explain to him that they are simple in a child-like way—that they really cared for her—and that the penalty for stealing bread is not so very different from Gale’s whipping by Thread back home for hunting a turkey. Her arguments fall flat—even for herself. She feels Gale may be right; at the same time her heart tells her he is wrong.

Gale’s next betrayal further ruptures Katniss’ sense of trust. After Katniss and Finnick accidently witness a devastating broadcast of Peeta’s second interview, Katniss waits for Gale to tell her about it. He never does—even though she asks—until eventually she forces him to admit that he knew about it. He lied to her by omission.

By the time Gale and Beetee engineer the collapse of the mountain in District 2, Katniss sees that Gale has become—or
perhaps always was—someone whose compassion extends only to a small sphere of family and friends. Anyone, and as it turns out
everyone
—including, depending on how one reads the events at the end of
Mockingjay
, Prim—can be sacrificed to serve the greater good. Ends justify even the most amoral means. It is a true betrayal of all that motivates Katniss’ personal and eventually “public” life as the Mockingjay.

Gale’s own knife-sharp sense of right and wrong gets increasingly blunted as the tale unfolds, until the one person Katniss trusted in the first book becomes someone whose heart and mind is closed to her by the end of the story.

Whereas Katniss’ early relationship with Gale is characterized by trust, her relationship with Peeta, in all three books, is characterized by
mis
trust. She must, from the beginning, see Peeta as an enemy—or at best, a wary, untrustworthy, temporary ally. Only one of them can win the Hunger Games; only one of them can come back alive.

Katniss is accustomed to mistrust, and it is easy to turn it on Peeta. As she witnesses Peeta approaching their train to the Capitol in
The Hunger Games
all puffy-eyed and blotchy from crying, her reaction is swift, her judgment brutal: Is this part of his strategy? To appear weak and soft-hearted? Immediately she questions the reality of Peeta’s emotions; and through Katniss’ suspicion, Collins plants our own doubts. Is Peeta all about tactics, or is his open, good-hearted nature the real thing? Later on, is his declaration of love for Katniss during Cesar Flickerman’s interview for real—or part of some Machiavellian ability to scheme?

Katniss’ suspicions, however, are not written in stone—far from it. One minute she is sure Peeta has allied himself with the
Careers to kill her; only a short time later when she is sick and disoriented from tracker jacker venom she realizes “Peeta Mellark just saved my life” (
The Hunger Games
).

Before entering the arena for the first time, during the interview with Cesar Flickerman, Peeta catches her totally off guard when he declares shyly that the one girl he’s ever had a crush on is Katniss, the fellow tribute he will be compelled to kill if he wants to be the victor.

Not only is she shocked, she’s furious. She actually shoves him when they are alone. But her anger and confusion mount exponentially when she learns that Haymitch and Peeta had discussed this whole approach before the interview: Peeta in love with Katniss. A brilliant strategy. But the idea that Peeta is telling the truth still haunts her. Does he actually care for her?

As Haymitch reminds her in that same scene when she insists they are not star-crossed lovers, “Who cares? It’s all a big show. It’s how you’re perceived” (
The Hunger Games
).

When it comes to something as personal as romance, Katniss instinctively recoils. Although she is sixteen at the start of the trilogy, she has never given any conscious thought to romance.
⁷
And then there is Gale back home, rooting for her and at the same time witness to Peeta’s televised declaration. Katniss can’t help but wonder about the effect on him, which makes her begin to wonder about her own feelings—and yet, as Haymitch says, it’s all just an act, and one that serves her well.

However, this act becomes even more difficult to pull off in
Catching Fire
. After Snow dictates the course of her future with
Peeta, Peeta himself throws another wrench into the works. He announces she is pregnant. Katniss is horrified, and yet has to play along—and then realizes of course that this gives her another advantage both in the arena and with sponsors. While Katniss is expert at negotiating deceptions to achieve her aims, Peeta, like Haymitch, is expert at achieving his aims by creating them.
⁸

To further complicate matters, Katniss is not sure of her own feelings. Is she falling in love? By the end of
Catching Fire
, neither we nor she is sure. But Katniss has finally come to a place where she trusts his feelings if nothing else. Which is, naturally, when she learns she cannot—when a rescued Peeta turns out to have been hijacked and does not love her at all anymore, his memories manipulated into cruel versions of reality in which Katniss is his enemy.

The whole series, and Peeta and Katniss’ entire relationship, is fraught with the challenge of distinguishing reality from unreality, but Peeta’s hijacking may best illustrate the overriding conundrum of the series. Not only can Katniss not trust Peeta, but Peeta cannot even trust himself.

In District 13 they remain largely separated as Peeta is treated, but when the rebels invade the Capitol, Coin sends Peeta into battle alongside Katniss. His better self has been partially reclaimed, but he is still unable to tell real memories from altered ones and is still unstable, with unpredictable violent outbursts—all aimed at Katniss.

Though he is heavily guarded, Katniss remains wary. One minute his behavior is normal; the next minute it is lethal. Katniss’ own feelings swing wildly: Can she trust him or not? Peeta’s
untrustworthiness is Snow’s fault, not his own, but that doesn’t change the reality that if Katniss guesses wrong at any moment and lets down her guard, she could die.

Her eventual reclamation of their friendship begins with a game of “Real or Not Real”—a poignantly explicit version of the game the two of them have been playing all along. Through it, they are able to find their way back to each other, until, just prior to the epilogue, when Peeta asks: “‘You love me. Real or not real?’” Katniss is at last able to tell him, “‘Real’” (
Mockingjay
).

The reason this exchange is so important is that, of all the people Katniss feels she cannot trust, at various times and in various ways, during the course of the series, the most important is herself.

Smoke and fog—literal and figurative—engulf Katniss throughout the Hunger Games. Toxic fogs in the arena and oily miasmas that fill the alleys and streets of the Capitol battleground threaten her very survival. But the hardest to penetrate is her own blindness: she cannot read the state of her heart. What does she feel? And for whom?

One or two feelings are perfectly clear to her:
⁹
Her unequivocal
love for Prim. Her hatred of President Snow. Perhaps one can also add in a more general way her deep sense of the immorality and horror of the Games.

What makes Katniss a compelling heroine is that she is a bundle of contradictions. She’s a pro at hiding her feelings beneath a stony, angry exterior; at the same time she’s a terrible actress. Whenever she has to “perform”—to
sell
herself—to an audience, she’s a flop. It’s Cinna who tells her from the outset to “be herself,” to “be honest”—Cinna’s job is to create artifice, and yet confronted with Katniss, he sees that she shines best in her own light, with her own natural beauty and manner. And this is a clue to the “real” Katniss, the person she herself is not yet acquainted with.

Katniss frequently doubts her own motivations. For a time she even becomes caught up in Peeta’s post-hijacking delusions. Her own guilt about the devastation her actions seem to have triggered—the destruction of District 12, so many people’s pain, suffering, and death—mounts. Is she really a cold-blooded killer? She slaughters other tributes in the arenas; she longs to murder Snow. What kind of person does that make her? One incapable of feeling? She fears all this, and Peeta’s Capitolinduced rants home in on her own sense of failure and guilt and seem to confirm her suspicions: “Finally he sees me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly” (
Mockingjay
). She grows increasingly confused. If Peeta, the one person who has always thought the best of her, can be convinced of all this, what must others think of her? What should she think of herself?