i get why a lot of people don’t like reading mockingjay as much as the rest of the trilogy, but i think it’s actually so essential to understanding the central thesis of the entire hunger games series.

the whole point of the hunger games is this: all human life is valuable, and artificial divisions between people keep them weak. and the only way out is radical love.

and this is something that is literally echoed again and again in the books. take, for example, gale. why is gale such an interesting, complex, and yet reprehensible character? yes, it’s because at the end katniss cannot separate his bomb from prim’s death. but it’s deeper than that. why does gale build the bomb in the first place? it’s because gale doesn’t see every human life as valuable. gale is willing to kill people and to deny them their humanity simply because they are his “enemy.” so, there’s the obvious example of his willingness to blow up the nut with everyone inside and his disregard for the human casualty. and the people in the nut aren’t even from the captiol, he just wants to do it because the stereotype of that district is their allegiance to the capitol, and gale hates that.

but there’s another scene, also in mockingjay, that i think goes under-discussed which is his view of katniss’ prep team. when katniss finds her prep team literally imprisoned in 13, she’s horrified and upset by the conditions they are in. but gale isn’t. and he’s confused about why katniss would care for them! her response is to say that it’s because they cried when she went to the quarter quell. and gale is like, “sure, but they’re still from the captiol.” and this argument is so important. because katniss argues that the prep team deserves to be treated as human beings, and when he presses her on why, she basically says because they treated her as a human being. but gale can’t see that–all he can see is that they’re from the capitol, and he’s confused about why katniss should care.

and this is, so crucially, what katniss learns in the hunger games. she realizes that she doesn’t want to kill the other tributes just because they are from the other districts. she hates the fact that they have turned her against people who are, in their core, just like her. frightened children who have been manipulated to kill other children against their will, all selected based on their district, a social divide that has literally been invented and imposed on them.

and another just absolutely essential thing to understand here is that peeta knows this all along. we talk at length about how peeta’s defining trait is his kindness. but what’s so important about peeta’s kindness is how it transcends any boundaries of social class or social division.

when peeta gives katniss the bread, it’s important to note that just before he does that, we hear his mother talking about “seam brats pawing through her trash.” peeta’s mother buys into the social divides in district twelve–she views herself as better than someone from the seam simply because of her standing as a merchant, and reinforces these class divides by refusing to extend the simplest humanity to a child from the seam. she literally refuses to feed a starving child on the grounds of a social divide, within a world that already has divided them into districts. but peeta doesn’t see it like this. peeta refuses to deny katniss food just because she’s from the seam. peeta gives her kindness. peeta gives her humanity.

and he does the same thing in the games! his entire first interview, the dramatic king focuses, not on the games, but on his genuine love and adoration for another tribute. how radical! to refuse to subscribe to a system which asks him to hate her? to want to kill her? and to instead confess his love for her? sure, katniss ends up being the mockingjay. katniss might have held out the berries. but peeta in that moment is the one who sets the rebellion in motion. peeta is the one who refuses to engage in the senseless hatred of someone who “should” be his enemy. instead, he reaches out in love.

and it all culminates at the end of mockingjay, when katniss votes for the capitol hunger games to gain coin’s trust. and peeta is utterly horrified by this. because he can’t understand how she could have been through everything he has been through and not understand that continuing to senselessly kill human beings (children!!) for some kind of revenge just reinforces these binary modes of thinking. but the thing is–katniss DOES see that. and when coin proposes it, that’s when she knows she has to stop her. because coin, like gale, like peeta’s mother, and like so others many around her, is still buying into these divides. is still viewing the captiol as the enemy. is still viewing a human life as expendable. 

and there’s a quote in mockingjay that i think lays this out pretty explicitly. katniss says, after she kills coin and is recovering, point blank: “they can design dream weapons that come to life in my hands, but they will never again brainwash me into the necessity of using them.” she’s realized the crux of the entire hunger games–that manipulating us to hate and kill our fellow humans, that drawing up divisions between people because of where they live and what they produce, that believing that hating someone on the basis of any of these is justification for their death, is all a farce. it’s all a distraction. it’s all pretend. she says, in the same chapter: “no one benefits in a world where these things happen.” not the districts. not the capitol. not the victors. no one.

the entire arc of the hunger games is really just about katniss catching up to what peeta has known from the start. katniss overcoming all the manipulation from those around her, all the glitz and glamour, all the artificial social and class divides to see what peeta has seen clearly from the start: love.