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Mockingjay – Book Theme

There is a concept in society that all is fair in love and war. Somewhere in that concept that is taught to us at a very young age, we lose sight of how important it is to not just think that we don’t have to fight fair when we’re fighting for something that we really want. What we lack is human decency, the compassion for others.

Instead, with this ideology of “all is fair in love and war,” we become selfish creatures and we look out for ourselves. In Mockingjay, we see the characters struggle with this. Gale states openly that his and Beetee’s trap that plays on the human instincts may be cruel, but he’s playing by the same rule book as President Snow when he hijacked Peeta. Collins says in the acknowledgements that she wrote the series with a foundation in her father’s teachings of war and peace.

Here, we have Gale who is willing to kill innocent Capitol citizens because the Capitol kills innocent district citizens and we have Katniss who feels remorse over the lives she takes in the war, but still will kill who she has to in order to reach Snow so she can kill him. It’s clear towards the end that the need for revenge and the fighting will never stop because all’s fair in love and war.

It is even suggested and agreed upon to have another Hunger Games with Capitol children. In the end, after having seen all of the cruelty and slaughter that even took her own sister and drove her to assassinate President Coin, Katniss returns to District Twelve, rattled. In Mockingjay, it is seen that human decency is what society needs to live in peace.

Katniss spends the rest of her life with Peeta, watching their children play in the meadow while she makes a list in her head of all the goodness she’s witnessed people do in the world, a list she calls a tedious game. “But,” she states with an air of finality, “there are worse games to play.”

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