The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion (24 page)

Assuming District 13 does indeed have access to a reactor and can hence make nukes, then as Katniss puts it very early into the third book (
Mockingjay,
81), and I also wondered while reading: Why doesn’t District 13 help everyone else? Better yet, given how easily they blow up the Nut in
Mockingjay,
after finishing the book (and reading it three times), I wondered why District 13 didn’t blow up the Nut years ago. We’re told that during the Dark Days, the Capitol and District 13
both
had nuclear weapons, so the Capitol agreed to leave District 13 alone if all the people stayed underground. The Capitol then hid the fact that District 13 existed from all the other districts (
Mockingjay,
17). But if it’s so easy
now
(in Katniss’s time) to take the warplane-hovercrafts to the Nut and bomb it, then why hadn’t District 13 done this a very long time ago? Somehow, Boggs’s explanation (
Mockingjay,
81) felt “off” to me, that District 13
would
have launched nuclear missiles but they feared the end of all human life and they simply weren’t ready to attack the Capitol yet. It’s no different in Katniss’s time that a nuclear war could end all human life. And it hardly seems reasonable that District 13 was “barely surviving” given their complex technologies (updated Capitol hovercrafts, power generation, heat, food, water purification, high-tech body armor and shoes, missile launchers, armored vehicles, and much more). Surely, District 13 could have filtered help to one district, then another, and so on down the line, making their way to the Capitol—decades ago.

Even after reading
Mockingjay
three times, I remained perplexed by this aspect of the series. The first time I read
Mockingjay,
I thought perhaps that District 13 was in cahoots with the Capitol, and hence, didn’t filter its weapons to the other districts earlier.

I also wondered how an underground society trains its warplane-hovercraft pilots. It would be pretty hard to fly a bomber with accuracy for the first time if you’ve lived underground during your entire life.

These are nitpicking points, of course. As a whole, the series stands as a remarkable literary achievement.
The Hunger Games
is brilliant;
Catching Fire
has some remarkable technical imagery and poignant moments; and
Mockingjay
is a gruesome violence-fest that winds down to a bittersweet ending. The rebellion had to occur somehow during Katniss’s time, or we wouldn’t have a satisfying end to her story. In the end, readers must always suspend disbelief while reading science fiction and fantasy. If there are loose ends that feel disjointed or somewhat illogical, we tell ourselves that the story was a good ride, the novels were beautifully written, we loved certain characters, and the books had depth and emotional impact. What more do we want?

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793, Spain

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806–992

A
side from the torture of starvation (chapter 3) and the gladiatorial arena (chapter 4) with its full array of monstrous weapons (chapter 5), the Peacekeepers, Mayors, and other Capitol officials dish out plenty of other excruciating tortures. They use torture, of course, to intimidate people, deter possible uprisings, and to punish supposed traitors.

Given that torture tends to shock people into downward spirals of fear and terror, it’s no surprise that Peeta basically loses his mind and Katniss suffers from constant nightmares. The two are so intertwined that her nightmares whip into frenzies of torture scenes in which Peeta is being mutilated, beaten, burned, drowned, and shocked with electricity (
Mockingjay,
9). Suzanne Collins has said that her own father suffered from terrible nightmares after returning from Vietnam and that as a child she heard him “crying out” at night.
¹
In large part, it’s Peeta’s change from a happy-go-lucky, delightful, loving, giving boy into a terrified zombie-like drone that pushes Katniss
toward
him. She empathizes with him and feels responsible, if only out of friendship, to help him, but given that he can’t distinguish reality from whatever’s swirling in his mind, and given that he’s convinced she’s an enemy who needs to die, it’s a battle for her to help him. Still, her nightmares persist. We see the true beauty of her character in light of her deeply rooted kindness, loyalty, and genuine concern. Had Peeta simply remained a happy-go-lucky, delightful, loving, giving boy, then the reader wouldn’t see Katniss with the same depth.

Some of the methods of inflicting pain and executing victims that the Capitol uses to exerts its power over citizens are: