Mockingjay

By Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press

Mockingjay has finally arrived to conclude the breathtaking trilogy that began in 2006 with the conclusively-titled The Hunger Games. And this time, things have changed. In global effect, for better or worse, the main characters are bringing the furious fight to the enemy’s doorstep, in an act of rousing rebellion. But do they prevail? Well, I can’t answer that.

In Mockingjay, Collins holds her own under external pressure to show the blunted faces of the worst brought out in humanity, but also the best of what makes us human, compatible life forces willing to love, to teach, and to learn in the shadows of dark times. What was merely a sadistic game of cat-and-mouse is now a battleground, a fledgling place where heroes are born and lives are lost. Every punch is pulled, which is not to say the first and second books didn't contain conflict, but things are now broadened on the horizon. The characters realize they have entered an alien place, a wildfire atmosphere only done justice by a single word: war.

What really propels this book is its characters, particularly Katniss, who fight for what they believe in and stand alongside those they love. Each play pivotal roles in supporting each other, and adds a unique back story, just when you thought everything was already revealed. Loyalties are tested and occasional twists paint a very thin line between good and evil, relishing in the fact that, as human beings, we are collections of both.

Any age can enjoy this book; however, the content is some of the most unwaveringly brutal and violent written work on the young adult market. Accusing The Hunger Games of glorifying violence is putting a very narrow perspective on things. The violence is there because it is necessary, willing to achieve a point by demonstrating the calculating monstrosities of war, warning readers about the implications of certain decisions, and feeling powerless to stop others of a higher social status.

The inclusion of strong female heroine give a sense of feminism to the book. At times, Katniss remained stricken, almost too conflicted, but it is a foreplay, a buildup to the explosive climax. She learns things about herself, growing as a person. It is the emotion, what we feel in our heart, not the misguided actions that make us for who we are. Everyone has a flaw, whether it be acid, spiders, or fear itself.

All the while, Collins maintains the pacing she keeps in the previous two. I was floored from the first page all to the way to the spectacular last. Small things are left unanswered, forcing the reader to come away from the experience to visualize, decoding what they think and understand.

By the time I finished, Mockingjay left me conflicted but satisfied, ruminating on the implications of what I read. Thankfully, it was a virtuoso performance I will not forget in a hurry. And not many books can do that. In a sense, young adult literature has some startlingly powerful messages to deliver, even branded for a younger generation. Older readers, and even fully-fledged adults, would find much to enjoy here.

Mockingjay delivers a stark limelight of the gratuitous impact of war on life, and examines the most powerful force on the planet through post-trauma, blood, tears, and the unbreakable substance of love. It is a masterful conclusion to an already groundbreaking series in young adult literature. If you haven’t experienced the raw potential for what The Hunger Games is all about, then I highly recommend doing so.

Review by Dan Goodman

Excerpted from Literary Musings

Survival of the Dead

Directed by George A. Romero
Magnolia Pictures



Pop films that take on politics tend to do so as an add-on and go all over the place. Since I have come late to zombie films and director George A. Romero, perhaps I am being unfair to Romero and his Survival of the Dead, the latest of his zombie films, in expecting consistent politics from a gore fest, but perhaps dystopia deserves its due.

The only zombie film I have ever seen—if “seen” can mean glimpsed out of the corner of a fearful child’s eye—was a production rerun on afternoon television sometime in the 1950s, in my case, to keep children content while they waited for a school bus. However, like Romero, I was a fan of pre-code horror comic books. A gloomy disposition predisposes me to dystopia. With this risk factor, perhaps I was slated to become zombie food.

The movie takes place in the near future in which a disease has conferred a horrid form of immortality on the dead. National Guardsman Sarge (Alan Van Sprang) is on killing duty in the morgue, where bodies spring to murderous life. A fellow Guardsman who refuses to shoot a buddy-turned-zombie is summarily executed; Sarge and a few comrades say enough already—actually, “I didn’t sign up for this”—and go AWOL into a lawless United States, where the only protection is individual armed self-protection, but nighttime comics telling zombie jokes can still be downloaded on a PC. Surviving as thieves, Sarge and his band are busy not only killing zombies coming back to life, but also dealing with the generalized violent breakdown of society.

After a confrontation with another band of renegades, a young man (Devon Bostick) who survives the encounter (and provides some additional snarky, intergenerational conflict) joins up with them to take off in an armored van with a safeful of money. The posse ends up heading for Plum Island (ostensibly off the coast of Delaware, though the film was shot in Canada) because an Internet huckster, Patrick O’Flynn, is luring social outcasts, now much of the population, there to rob them. O’Flynn has been exiled from the island as a result of a long-standing family feud with another clan. (How two Irish clans got on this island in the first place is left unexplained, but there are hints of religious fundamentalism and right-wing survivalism.) A great subplot is the hopeless courting of the lesbian tomboy by her would-be Latin lover/comrade in arms and the genuine nonsexual affection between them.

Romero is quoted as saying the movie is about war, but it could as easily be about too permissive gun laws justified by the Second Amendment. Or out-of-control conflicts over different strategies for dealing with a serious threat—the overlay of the feud. Or it could just be a corkboard for any one-off social commentary—about professional salaries or the narrow perspectives of small towns—that can be stuck in a spot in the plot.

The real Plum Island, off the coast of Long Island, is the site of the federal Animal Disease Center run by the Department of Homeland Security, and at one time a secret bioweapons research facility. There, any wild mammal is said to be shot on sight. This is O’Flynn’s solution to the zombie problem, while his rival, Muldoon, wants to rehabilitate them.

“Zombie”—as in banks—is fast becoming an overused metaphor. In the book Imaginal Machines, cultural theorist Stevphen Shukaitis presents an analysis of the capitalist transformation of human workers into labor power, living into dead labor; cooptation/recuperation of social movements into nightmare versions of themselves; and the question of whether such altered movements could be truly revitalized or need to be put out of their misery—all strung, along with their sources, on the extended metaphor of zombification.

Personally, I like zombies better as the main attraction, when they are actors in heavy makeup “getting their brains” blown out in movies; and when social commentary, however scattershot, is the sideshow.

Review by Frances Chapman