Complicated Katniss Feelings:

Having just seen Catching Fire (twice) last week and chatted through the books with my sister Lauren as she reads them for the first time, my Hunger Games feelings -- never very far below the surface -- are currently a force to be reckoned with. And you know how it is with me and feelings: if they are there, I will investigate them, for better or for worse.

I've mentioned numerous times here that I highly value Suzanne Collins's trilogy. From a writing standpoint, I'm sure I've discussed the pacing, the characterisation, and the honesty. From a philosophical point of view, I respect and admire the questions Suzanne Collins brings up, as well as the way in which she addresses them. Collins asks hard questions while managing to steer away from soft answers. I have no doubt that these qualities -- along with an authentic-feeling dose of family loyalty and romantic confusion -- are why I feel such a connection to these books as well as to the movies which do such a laudable job of pulling the stories from page to screen. But my experience isn't unique; half the world is in love with this series and its beautifully rich cast of characters.

In amongst all the Team Peeta and Team Gale fanfare, though (and of course I have thoughts about this, too, I mean -- how could I not?), honestly I think I'm cheering for Team Katniss.

I relish young adult fiction; it makes up a fair percentage of what I read and what I write. But I don't always relate to its heroes. The most lasting young adult heroine I've really felt a kinship to was Jo March, of Little Women. There was something about her blunt and manly exterior coupled with her desperately optimistic and maybe even a little fantastical thought life that made sense to me. She didn't have to beat the boys off with a stick. She was too busy inventing worlds and dreams and wrestling with her own identity. Besides which, she didn't really have the face or figure that garnered that kind of attention. She left that stuff to Meg, and Amy.

But then Katniss came along and though Katniss Everdeen is nothing like Jo March, there is still something inherently relatable about her. Perhaps it's that, amongst all the sword-wielding, purpose-filled young men and women who move from weakness into strength to fulfill their destiny, Katniss remains firmly within sight of her weakness -- at least in her own eyes.

Katniss is a heroine who does what needs to be done. She stays alive. She fights for the safety of her loved ones. She becomes the symbol, the figurehead, for an entire cause. Yet the rightness of the cause can never truly outbalance the wrongness of what Katniss is forced to do. Throughout her journey, Katniss doesn't attain some mystical higher plane of realisation; she does not embody the single-minded and pure heroine ideal because she can never truly be certain that wrong things become right things when they are done for the right reasons. Katniss is always going to wrestle with this part of herself, and it's what makes her story so compelling -- and, particularly in the trilogy's final episode, so wrenching.

Some teen characters, even those in bestselling series, are paper doll figures who have one quirk (usually endearing, never grotesque) to remind us they're human. Often, though, what makes them the hero is their ability to pursue the cause (whether it's a romance or a rebellion) at all cost. This is what makes them "good." Katniss, and in fact, most of the other chararacters in the Hunger Games, is neither all good nor all bad. Sometimes, she is a conflicted mess.

Heroines must leap forward into action in a split second. They must think on their feet. They must throw aside their own comfort and their own desires. All these things and more Katniss does and is, but unlike the mythic hero, the two-dimensional one, Katniss cannot merely charge forward leaving rubble in her wake. Katniss constantly looks backwards, never entirely rested or resting in what she has done. She is selfless when it comes to her sister Prim -- the only person Katniss knows without a doubt that she loves unequivocally -- but she is no angel. What Katniss is, is fiercer and stronger and kinder than she herself knows. She is not always good, but she recognises good and grasps desperately after it.

I think this is why I love Katniss, and why she's such a relatable character. Easy fiction, cheap fiction, wants to give us characters without loose ends, with polished sides so that they fit neatly into recognisable boxes. Katniss Everdeen is nothing like that.

There will be blood (and vague spoilers):

This semester, I had to read (among others) The Hunger Games. Of course, there was no had about it. I've already read the book three or four times. One more time did not feel in the least bit like work. (And getting to write about Katniss for one of my papers? So much fun!). I definitely read with a more critical eye this time around, though. When I first read The Hunger Games, it was pre-craze, so I came to it without preconceptions and was completely swept up in the fast pace and startlingly scary world that Suzanne Collins had created. There was barely time to focus on the words, let alone critique anything of the writing. The second time through, I read to re-experience that wild ride, and I'm pretty sure the third time I read it was post-movie, when I wanted to check things and make comparisons.

This time, though, I wasn't reading to see how things turned out or to refresh my memory on the story arc. The characters, the plot twists, and the bleak world of Panem are all pretty familiar to me by now. So I was a little nervous. I love these books, but I'm well aware they are not classics. As well, I'd recently read some debates about the books' bleakness and a critique of their violence. As I went into reading The Hunger Games again, those criticisms were the little cartoon devil on my shoulder. Does this book stand up to the re-reading, in spite of these objections?

It does -- for me, at least. And grandly. As I read again (warily), I couldn't help but be impressed by two things in particular: the pacing and the characterisation. I think Suzanne Collins nailed both, and these, combined with the gripping worldbuilding of dystopian America, are what I think makes the book (and its sequels) work so well.

But what of the violence and the bleak perspective?

Collins' treatment of these themes, which are key to the text (and key to most of the criticism I've read about The Hunger Games) is gritty and realist. However, it is never gratuitous. This might sound contradictory. If violence is fictional, and if it is explicit (which it occasionally is in The Hunger Games), then isn't it, by nature, gratuitous? I don't think so. I think violence is gratuitous when it exists for its own sake. I think violence is gratuitous when it exists to bring pleasure (when it gratifies). I think violence is gratuitous when it has no meaning, or when it is revelled in. And I think violence is gratuitous when it is divorced from consequences.

None of this can be said for The Hunger Games. I think Collins' perspective on violence and what it means to live in a violent society comes through incredibly clearly. In no place is violence praised or upheld. Those who enjoy violence (like the Capitol which creates the Hunger Games, and the Career tributes bred for fighting) are recognised to be depraved. Even when Katniss is pulled into the violence of the Games and feels a brief surge of triumph at conquering one of the other tributes, it leaves her feeling empty and soiled: she has been forced to take a position that revolts her.

The arc of what violence does to the individual and the society follows through in the other two books of the trilogy. Mockingjay, the final book of the three, is emotionally wringing to read. The intensity of Katniss's world and the sensibilities of war take their toll on all the characters -- and those who are destroyed physically may have the easier time of it. The conclusion to The Hunger Games trilogy is not an entirely happy one, but it is satisfying. Does that seem like an oxymoron? There are no puppies and rainbows, but the story ends the only way it can.

There is an honesty to sad books that is not always present in books with fairytale endings. Certainly, sadness in literature can be just as self-indulgent as cheer, but when it is done well (or maybe even just honestly), there is an authenticity to it that is enriching. I've heard people complain about the lack of sunshine, but I relished the ending because it was an honest one. A character -- a person -- cannot experience the kinds of things Katniss did and remain unchanged by them. Grief changes people; hardship changes people. I think Suzanne Collins was very truthful in her presentation of that.

And in spite of the lack of confetti and streamers, the ending to The Hunger Games trilogy is a hopeful one, and that is where I think these books make another important distinction. Life is tragic and life is wonderful. Freeze the frame at a sunshiny moment and you have your comedy. Freeze the frame in another and it's a tragedy. But regardless of whether the sun shines, there is hope and a sense that, because of the future, the past has not been for nothing.