Loyalty, Trust, and Trauma in the Hunger Games

Last night I finished the last of the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Interesting series. I’m working them out in my head here, so it includes spoilers.

To separate the books, I’d have to admit that the first book is written the best, the story starts to fully engage in the second book, and the third book allows the characters to become more realistic and frustrating—which is a brave move as a writer (I think), especially when a lot of people hinge some emotion on your fictional world. Mostly I let myself be caught up in the narrative (because sometimes that’s healthy particularly when you have book-snob tendencies), but I occasionally thought, “Really? A dash—there?” or “Careful with the fragment power…” and wished that she could have had more time to refine the books on a sentence level. Still, the books are worth reading; they got into my system and made me analyze a few relationship things, which I appreciated.

People warned me about the last book. They told me I’d hate Katniss. They told me I might have issues with the ending. When I completed the first book, I worried that this would be as a result of the love triangle (gag! Please no more Edward-Bella-Jacob stupidity…at least Katniss can shoot things and has a personality…). I didn’t want to deal with that and almost didn’t read the next two, but gave it a try anyway. Happily the focus remained on survival and grew into themes of loyalty, trust, and coping with trauma (the last I didn’t fully anticipate, despite the violence of the situation). If the characters had been unaffected then they would have seemed heartless, shallow, or simply unbelievable.

When I closed the cover last night I gauged my response: it was almost like the feeling I had after Jonathan Safron Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (a must read). Something both painful and redemptive. Of course, especially in pop-fiction, people want the characters to survive unscathed. They want to see overall success and satisfaction. We’re trained to cheer the main character on to triumph. Katniss does not. Despite her fire and intensity, her humor and convictions, she falters emotionally, she fails in her mission to kill Snow, she fumbles in her most important relationships, she emerges from a coma depressed and deranged. Plus she is young, inexperienced (as we all are to a degree) and used. The books don’t skirt around the realities of broken people and the impact of political unrest, war, and frankly a lack of love and compassion. Katniss wasn’t alone in not trusting anyone, in battling with her loyalties. She can’t be called a “hero,” (which is perhaps why people have stretched a lot and compared her to Winston in 1984), but she can be called human and 17. If anyone is cast as a hero, it’s Peeta—not for his devotional to Katniss necessarily—but because of his courage at trying to figure things out after the trauma, at his willingness to face reality even when he didn’t know what that was, in his ability to create hope, in his selflessness. I knew Gale wouldn’t be sticking around when his character progressed only minimally and mostly as memories; he should have been developed more if only to be more than a narrative tool. I thought Katniss would end up alone and sunk, but I’m glad that Collins allowed Peeta’s loyalty to Katniss and to living life resolve the series—trauma scars people, often permanently, but it doesn’t have to be the final abyss.

Thinking on trauma in addition to the importance of trust and loyalty makes me further reflect on knowing the reality of the Plan of Salvation, on being able to trust God when mortality feels (and is) suffocating, on knowing the loyalty of Christ to me as an individual—so much that He atoned to make me whole. His life exemplifies that compassion and unity are possible even in seemingly hopeless circumstances. This is not stuff in pop-fiction, and those who try often flop with some moralistic beating-the-audience-over-and-over which is less appealing (see The Wednesday Letters, which is fine but not thought provoking or well written). Still, as I heaved my huge body into bed last night and looked at Wesley’s exhausted face, I felt whelmed. Thankful. Relieved to know that our loyalties and trust are in the Lord and in each other, amazed to realized that we will face our own set of horrors. Perhaps we won’t step away as heroes but I know we can grow in our humanity and purpose.