“My name is Katniss Everdeen. Why am I not dead? I should be dead.”
Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.
District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Though she’s long been a part of the revolution, Katniss hasn’t known it. Now it seems that everyone has had a hand in the carefully laid plans but her.
The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss’s willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels’ Mockingjay – no matter what the cost.[1]
Honestly, I love Mockingjay; it’s a very action-packed novel that keeps you engaged. Suzanne includes themes of revolution, defiance, depression, loss, and more. There is so much going on in this book that I don’t think I can talk about every plot point, so I’ll just talk about the main ones.
The novel does a good job at showing the similarities between District 13 and the Capitol. Our first impressions of District 13 are described as eerie and uncomfortable by Katniss, and it just escalates from there. We read as Katniss is dolled up for the cameras once again, given elaborate costumes, heavy makeup, and showy weapons. She’s made to perform in propaganda clips, “propos,” Plutarch calls them, to show to the districts, and eventually the Capitol. Katniss also does not trust Coin or most of her staff in the slightest. She only agrees to be the face of the revolution to save Peeta and the other victors. There is even a scene in the novel where Katniss finds her old prep team chained to a wall, naked, with a drain on the floor beneath them. It was revealed they had been in there for multiple days, all because one of them stole an extra roll of bread. This really shows the readers how District 13 is not a perfect place with freedom for everyone, and makes the readers lose trust in Coin in the beginning of the book.
It’s also interesting to see how Katniss’s intentions change in this book; in The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, Katniss was just trying to save her and her family’s lives. Yes, she had rebellious actions and beliefs, but they were directly tied to her and her family’s safety and wellbeing. In Mockingjay, however, we see Katniss focusing her actions towards the rebellion as a whole, acknowledging the harm that all people have endured from the Capitol, and inspiring people to do something about it.
The propo they recorded when they were trying to distract Snow from the rescue squad in the tribute center revealed some things about Finnick Odair. In an attempt to distract President Snow, Finnick revealed that he had been sold for his body to people of the Capitol for years. This is very concerning to learn, especially when it was revealed in Catching Fire that Finnick was the youngest victor ever recorded, winning his games at just 14 years old. We don’t know when exactly this forced prostitution of Finnick began, nor the extent of it, but the fact alone reveals to us how deep the corruption in the Capitol is, and makes us wonder how far it goes and how many people are affected by it. We don’t know how many people have also been forced into prostitution in the Capitol, and, although it was briefly mentioned in the prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I don’t think that we ever will know the full extent of this disturbing affair.
Mockingjay does a good job at showing how the horrors of war affect everybody, even the people who aren’t even involved. Peeta is a very good example of this; he had nothing to do with the rebel plan in the arena, yet he was the one most affected by it. The whole time he was in the arena, his goal was to save Katniss, and he, along with Katniss, had no idea of any rebel plan until after it was over. Even though he had no rebel agenda, he was still captured and tortured by the Capitol, along with Johanna and Annie.
This affects Katniss heavily; she’s been feeling extreme guilt over Peeta being captured by the Capitol, and it just gets worse when she realizes that Snow was using Peeta to punish Katniss, which leads to Peeta being rescued and Katniss learning of his torture and “hijacking”. Her learning that Peeta now saw her as a mutt from the Capitol made her mental health much worse; she tries to shut Peeta out, and refuses to think of him like she once did. She can’t handle the fact that the Peeta she once knew is gone, and tries to immerse herself in the rebellion and killing Snow, effectively distancing herself from Peeta, at least until Coin sends Peeta to the Capitol to join the Star Squad.
While in the Capitol, Peeta is very unstable. He is nowhere near ready to be out of the hospital, but Coin knows this. She purposely sent him to Katniss with the knowledge that he was dangerous, in hopes that he would kill Katniss, who is dangerous to Coin in the fact that she would not throw support to her if an election were to happen after the revolution. Boggs explains this to Katniss in the Capitol, warning her that she might need to kill Peeta if the time comes to it. This conversation helps to build tension against Katniss and Coin, which is brought up again multiple times throughout the novel and is a main plot point in the end.
Peeta, despite the hopes of Coin, does not kill Katniss. He does have an episode after Boggs’ death, in the chaos after a pod was detonated, in which he attacks Katniss and kills a different squad member, but that was the only time he lost control, and it was somewhat justified. Overall, Peeta seems to be doing well in the Capitol; the squad helps him to sort out what’s real and not real, and he’s trying to figure out what his relationship with Katniss was before he was hijacked. After he watches a video recording of him killing one of the squad members in a rage—one that he does not remember—he tells them that he needs them to kill him because he is dangerous. This reinforced the idea to us that Peeta has not turned into some bloodthirsty killer, and that he does not want more people to get hurt by him. You can still see how, even though Peeta is never going to be the same person he was before he was tortured, he still has his selfless personality.
Alma Coin is a very interesting character in this book. She’s initially introduced as this hero, the leader of the rebellion. Quickly, however, we start to see how she’s not that different from President Snow. She has a very tight hold over the people of her district; everybody needs to follow a strict schedule, their food rations are measured very precisely to their nutritional needs, and they are basically trapped underground with very minimal access to the surface. We also get to see how controlling Coin really is, and how much she tries to manipulate every situation in her favor. Coin refuses Katniss’ request to go to the Capitol after she was shot in the chest, and Katniss ignores her refusal and sneaks onto a cargo ship on its way to the Capitol. After Coin gets knowledge of this, she spins it in her favor by telling Plutarch to make it into their idea, and she begins to write Katniss off as a martyr before she even dies. Katniss has already been of use to Coin; she’s rallied the districts to the point of revolution, and she is seen by the districts as this symbol who has survived so much that the only thing that would be of use to Coin now is if she died. If Katniss survives this revolution, she, while probably not wanting to run for president herself, would probably not give her support to Coin, which would influence the people of the districts to not vote for her. Coin, in turn, sends Peeta to them in hopes of increasing the chance that Katniss will not survive this “last battle” of the rebellion.
Directly after getting the news that Katniss had “died” in the Capitol, she intercepts Snow’s message to the people of Panem to give grievances to Katniss and to establish her identity as a martyr. She has this incredibly emotional speech ready, which is interesting because Katniss had only been labeled as dead for a few minutes. This shows the audience that Coin was ready for the announcement of Katniss’ death and was practically expecting it with how eager she was to use her death as a rally cry.
After Katniss is revealed to be alive, and the Capitol is taken by the rebels, Coin changes her approach. She can’t use Katniss as a martyr, and can’t control what she does or what she stands for anymore, not that she really could in the first place. She doesn’t seem to be worried by this, at least not in front of Katniss directly. In a meeting with all of the surviving victors, a total of 7, announces her idea of hosting a “Honorary Hunger Games” with Capitol children. This sick idea gets 4 out of 7 votes, 2 of which are from Katniss and Haymitch. At first, we aren’t told the reasoning behind this decision to support Coin’s idea, but it is revealed to us in the next couple of minutes, when Katniss is about to assassinate President Snow, and shoots Coin instead. Coin, while not being as directly evil as Snow, is still one side of the same coin (you see what I did there). They are both okay with lying to their people, manipulating situations to benefit them, killing out of “necessity”, and are both just trying to hold onto power in any way that they can.
Right after Katniss shoots Coin, she tries to take a nightlock pill and kill herself. She believes that she will be executed or worse, and she is already resigned and ready for death. But as she is pulling it out of her pocket, Peeta stops her and she is handcuffed and blindfolded while being brought to her old room in the Tribute Center. In the book, Katniss’ skin is all torn up after the bomb that killed Prim exploded, and it was patched up with lab-grown cells. After struggling harshly with the guards while being brought up to her room, her new skin is all shredded up and bleeding, but no medics come for her. She’s given food and medicine daily, but has no contact with the outside. She goes crazy in that room; at first, she tries to commit suicide, but there’s nothing in the room that she could do that with. She then tries to stop eating and taking medicine, which doesn’t work when she starts getting painful morphine withdrawals. Eventually, she starts to sing again in that room, all of the songs that her father taught her as a child. She notices her morphling doses shrinking, and is confused why. She believes that she is going to be executed, but realizes that they might have another plan for her. She’s terrified that they’re going to doll her up and use her again.
Eventually, she is released back to District 12 with Haymitch. When she arrives at her home in the Victor’s Village, she sits down in a chair in her kitchen, and doesn’t get up except to go to the bathroom for months. Greasy Sae, an old woman who used to sell soup in the Hob, cooks and cleans for herself twice a day so she doesn’t starve. Eventually, after a particularly disturbing nightmare, she runs outside in the dark to scream, where she sees Peeta. He just arrived back in 12, and is planting Primroses from the woods by Katniss’ house. This reminds Katniss of the vase of white roses from Snow upstairs, and she throws them in the fire. She then showers to get the rose smell off of her, and burns her clothes.
This is one thing the movies never showed: in every Hunger Games, the tributes didn’t look clean and neat, they had dirty faces, matted hair, etc. Throughout all the movies, Katniss always looks presentable and clean, when usually in the books she looks dirty and unkept, much to the dismay of her prep team.
A few days later, Buttercup, Prim’s cat, returns. He walked on foot all the way from District 13 (modern-day New York/Ontario) to District 12 (Appalachia/Virginia) to find Prim. Katniss yells at the cat that Prim is gone, having a breakdown, and eventually falling asleep, waking up to find Buttercup next to her. Buttercup is a good metaphor for Katniss throughout the whole series, with his love for Prim and ability to survive situations where he should’ve died mirroring Katniss’s.
Eventually, Katniss starts to get better. Peeta brings her bread often, Greasy Sae still cooks for her, and she actually answers the calls from Dr. Aurelius, her psychiatrist. She mentions an idea of creating a book to memorialize all the people who died in the war, and he sends parchment to her from the Capitol to create it.
So many books and movies show the female main character with children at the end to show their growth. It’s a very common ending, and is usually just used to push motherhood onto women. The Hunger Games uses this ending differently, however. In the book, Katniss and Gale talk about having children. Gale says he would have children if they lived somewhere else, but Katniss replies to him, saying that they don’t live somewhere else; they live in Panem. Somewhere where your kids can be picked up and dropped into an arena to fight to the death. Katniss is against having children throughout the whole series. She believes that there is no reason to even consider having kids because of where they live. Katniss having kids at the end of the series concludes it in such a powerful way, showing how her whole mindset has changed from the first book, along with the country around her. It shows how she finally feels safe enough to have children without the threat of starvation or the Capitol. She has always been a motherly figure to others in the book; from parenting Primrose when her mother was unable, to watching over Rue in the arena, Katniss has always been protective of others and willing to sacrifice herself for the people she loves most. She was never against having kids because she didn’t like kids; it was just the safety issue that bothered her.
Something that I believe could have been established better was the whole Katniss-Gale-Peeta love triangle that is going on. I believe that the “love triangle” is more than just teenage drama; In the books, Gale is initially seen as more of a sibling to Katniss than a potential lover; it was even referenced in Catching Fire how someone started the rumor that Katniss and Gale were cousins after camera crews interviewed Katniss’ family in District 12. Katniss met Gale when she was 14, after both their dads died in the same mine explosion and Katniss had to start hunting in the woods to eat. Their dynamic was platonic up until Catching Fire, when it was revealed that Gale had romantic feelings for Katniss, and Katniss, reasonably, had a lot larger issues to deal with than teenage romance and did not make any advancements on Gale.
Even with Peeta in The Hunger Games, Katniss never saw him as a potential romantic interest. Throughout the whole first novel, Katniss was under the impression that Peeta was making up the entire “I’ve been in love with you since we were kids” motto for the cameras, and she was doing the same. It was only revealed to her on the train back to District 12 at the end of the first movie that Peeta was serious, but she did nothing to reciprocate his feelings, leading to the tense relationship you see them having in the beginning of Catching Fire.
Throughout the whole series, Katniss has been far too preoccupied to worry about her potential romantic interest. Even as a child, she has always been in “survival mode”, only giving her attention to things like feeding her family and keeping them healthy. She has never had time to think about who she would like to be with, and it has never been important for her. In Mockingjay, however, that topic is more relevant. The people of Panem are actually interested in what Katniss’ romantic life is going to be like; Plutarch even mentions presenting Gale as Katniss’ lover, which Katniss automatically turns down. She doesn’t see the importance of her romantic interest when people are dying.
The Katniss-Gale-Peeta love triangle as a whole represents more than just Katniss’ romantic interest; it represents what Katniss needs in her life after the revolution ends. Throughout this whole series, Gale has been characterized as hot-headed, ambitious, and ready for action, a lot similar to Katniss. This is important to keep a revolution going, with the “fire” of the revolution being Katniss’ arrow into the force field in the 75th games. Fire, however, is not always the best thing to have. Throughout Mockingjay, we see many horrors of war: death, famine, torture, loss, etc. We see how much this war affects people’s entire lives, and how desensitized so many people are to it. Gale is especially categorized in this way, with him actively dehumanizing the enemy, even if they’re just sweeping the floor for them. This is shown most heavily in the way he helped design a particular bomb, one that would have a delayed explosion to draw in more people. This exact bomb is used in one of the last scenes of this movie to show how the destruction and devastation of war can harm anyone when it kills the one person Katniss has been trying to save since the first scene of the first movie: Primrose Everdeen. The betrayal Katniss feels after this, even though Gale did not intend for Prim to get hurt, leads Katniss to cut Gale out of her life.
Katniss does not need any more fire in her; she has enough of that. What she really needs to live on is peace. Peeta’s warmth and kindness are what she really needs to live on and grow. Peeta, despite being heavily traumatized and unstable, has this gentle quality that Katniss lacks, and is what she needs to complement her. That is what the epilogue of this book symbolizes; it symbolizes the necessity of peace and gentleness after the horrors of war; the light at the end of the tunnel; the calm after the storm.
- Collins, Suzanne. “The Hunger Games #3: Mockingjay.” Scholastic, Scholastic Inc., 2010, scholastic.com. Accessed 8 June 2026.
