At the end, you cannot even trust yourself

(Just giving a "heads up" here, everything below this line may be spoilerific. You have been warned.)

Some books leave you with more questions than answers, and that is often comforting. The creator of the universe does not have all the answers, and life can not be summed up into something that is neat and occasionally nausea inducing.

Suzanne Collins does not try to answer all the questions in the third book of her Hunger Games trilogy and she does not have to. She answers the important ones and leaves more disturbing ones out there.

To summarize the first two novels, Katniss Everdeen, a young and poor woman living in what was the Appalachian region of the former United States is selected to fight for her District in the annual Hunger Games, a bread and circuses reaction to a civil war seventy five years previous. The bread and circuses aspect is taken quite literally with the nation being named Panem. She and a fellow citizen named Peeta compete and win, based on a number of duplicities and the fallout from this is great, with Katniss becoming the voice of a burgeoning resistance.

The next annual Hunger Games has Katniss and Peeta again fighting, with other previous victors. There is quite a bit of posturing regarding rights and such, and in the end, the "victors", along with help from the resistance, sabotage the Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell, and rescue Katniss (while leaving Peeta) to make her the symbolic leader of the revolt against Panem. This revolt is coordinated by rebels and inhabitants of the mysterious (if you have never read any Soviet era literature or seen any dystopian films) District 13, which has been destroyed according to the official record.

And that is where we begin.

The only quality of any redeeming merit that Katniss possess is her unwavering lover for her sister and her refusal to see any harm come to her. Otherwise, she is what she is: oblivious, haughty, stubborn, rude, and quick to judge others, as well as being a skilled killer.

Mockingjay does nothing to disabuse of that notion regarding Katniss. More to the point, Collins goes out of her way to show that her protagonist is not an example of a complex and moral person, rather someone trapped by circumstances and by both sides into becoming something that she is neither comfortable with or can understand until the very end.

The is the story of a chess match, written from the perspective of a particularly well made and camera ready pawn.

Peeta (who is eventually rescued, after being tortured and brainwashed by President Snow, the leader of Panem) and Gale, Katniss' confidant, love interest, and protector, have a conversation about who will end up with Katniss when the revolution is over.

Gale states, "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."

Katniss, who is pretending to be sleeping when she overhears this, is sent into a fugue state and slowly comes to realize how she presents and who she really is. She comes to grip with her reality starting at that moment and the reality is that she is cruel, callous, and maybe irredeemable.

This is the beginning of the end, and the end is dramatic, with Katniss assassinating the new leader of Panem, the former leader of District 13 for essentially what amount to war crimes. Katniss is her own tribunal, and executioner.

The war crimes in question involve the fire bombing of children and then the killing of the first responders the same way. Among these first responders, and Katniss' real motivation for the assassination is Katniss' sister Prim. The only person she loves unconditionally in this world.

So...

These books take a number of facets of modern life in America and package them as a fairly deep allegory for young adults.

To make a quick list:

• The efficacy of torture
• Media as a tool for manipulating the masses
• The stardom of "normal" people in extraordinary circumstances
• The concept of a Just War
• Rebels against a powerful central government being the ideal
• Individualism, and rural pastoralism, as being the ideals for humanity
• The foppishness, and general uselessness, of urbanites
• A longing for a simpler time of small towns and simple pleasures

I know nothing of Suzanne Collins political views, and I really do not care about them. I can read however, and each of the bulleted points is on very clear display in the last novel. That being said, there are some counters that are offered in the book, and one regarding the uselessness of urbanites seems close to genuine, however the bulk of the book keeps hitting on those themes.

While not coming out and saying what the real audience for these books are, and not saying that these very popular books could be used as an indoctrination took themselves, I ask you...

What person would look that the above list and say, "Yeah, sure, you betcha" to the truths contained therein?