BLOGGING THE HUNGER GAMES, pt. 21: Have Fun At Dinner

Last time Katniss told us a boring story about a goat and then date-raped Peeta. What? Sort of. Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 21

OK so Katniss doesn't actually date-rape Peeta. She leads the horse to the roofies and then doesn't take the plunge. Just pretend that makes sense. She drugs Peeta and then sets about preparing for her battle tomorrow, is what happens. But it does get kind of weird when Katniss climbs into the sleeping bag with him and tries to absorb all of his “fever heat.” Yeah, you do that girl. I'd tell you what the warmest places are, but you already know. You SO already know.

She thinks about what her mother and sister will be doing tomorrow and we get a little background info on the Games and how they look to the outside world; Katniss says that given how late they are in the fight, school will probably be canceled so kids can watch the likely bloodbath. Nice. She assumes her mother and sister will go the square where they can watch on the big HD screens, and takes comfort in the fact that they'll have support from the community, come what may. The essential purity and goodheartedness of poor people is a nice little undercurrent in these books, one that filmmakers would do well to emphasize come March 2012. (Sort of in the way filmmakers emphasized post-9/11 unity in Spider-Man. “You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!” Never mind that the Green Goblin was one of us too, but whatever guy, it worked at the time.)

Then she thinks about Gale (remember him?), and how he will be feeling while he watches tomorrow, and how he's BEEN feeling watching “all this kissing.” She wonders if there's any romantic potential there, if when Gale talked about running away with her it was all “practical calculation” or if there was “something more.” STORY OF YOUR LIFE, EH KATNISS? When Suzanne Collins does this “wandering narrative” thing and keeps changing topics quickly like this, it's a lot of fun to read. When she lingers on a story about a goat for ten pages like last time it's just irritating. That fucking goat.

In the morning Katniss gives Peeta a long, fake kiss and wipes away a fake tear. So when Peeta finally goes “No, Katniss, my feelings were real!” what is Suzanne Collins going to do? Is Katniss going to reevaluate her every gesture (for the fiftieth time) and conclude she really meant them all along, too? Is our little robot finally going to discover Human Love? Anyway, she leaves Peeta's side and heads along the stream to the arranged spot where her magic cure for Peeta's leg wound is supposed to appear. I wonder what the other fighters “need desperately.” A chill pill for Cato? A few character details for Thresh? Along the way Katniss permits herself a little swagger, bitching about her blown eardrum and musing that once she wins she'll be able to “pay someone to hear” for her. And then she arrives at the battlefield.

(This chapter is a fist-biter. That's a technical term for what happens to you, the reader, when Katniss gets sliced in the forehead with a knife and you bite your nails, and then Clove tackles her and you bite your fingers, and then Clove gets all Joker on her, talking about carving her mouth off, and then suddenly your hand is on your own mouth, protecting it from Clove and her jacket full of knives. Yeah, we will get to that part in a second.)

Katniss hides in the bushes, surveys the area and wonders where the backpacks could be. She's also wonders where everyone else is. There's a lot of stuff that we don't know where it is! (I'm writing at 1am, can you tell?) Then a table rises up from the ground, four backpacks sitting on it, each marked with a district number. As usual I am struck by the aesthetic choices favored by the capital. Putting each prize in a backpack? Sitting them all on like, a dining room table? I wonder if the film version will try to fancy everything up. Magic bubbles sitting on gold columns! Anyway, the Capitol is the least-creative totalitarian regime ever.

"Just give us a hovercraft or two and we're good."-The Capitol

And then Foxface, that bitch, comes running out, grabs her backpack, and bails before anyone has time to react. Katniss realizes that by only grabbing her own pack, Foxface has guaranteed that no one will give chase, and she's so blind with jealousy over Foxface's superior strategery that she charges into the fray without thinking. She hears a knife coming at her (how do you hear a knife coming?) and deflects it with her bow. Then she sends an arrow at the thrower, Clove, and gets her in the arm. But the next knife catches our hero in the forehead (AHHHH) and slices her eyebrow open, and suddenly blood is flowing into Katniss's eyes. FUCK. And then Clove tackles her to the ground. DOUBLE FUCK.

So Clove pins Katniss to the ground, which would ordinarily be kinda hot, but she opens her jacket and shows Katniss an array of knives and says she promised Cato she'd give the people a show. “Why so serious?” Clove says, not really bit basically, and then she talks some trash about how Peeta is going to die and how they killed Rue (she's a talker, but it's her last scene so give her a break) and then says she's going to cut off Katniss's pretty lips. YIKES. Just as her knife reaches Katniss's face, she's lifted into the air. THRESH EX MACHINA, WOOOO!

The huge dude from Rue's district, heretofore unseen, has Clove in his Thresh-hold. That would so be his signature move if he was a pro-wrestler, by the way. (“Thresh has Triple-H in the thresh-hold! Can you believe the audacity? Elbow to the sternum!” I used to watch a lot of wrestling as a kid, and in my head the color commentary is just the words “audacity” and “sternum” over and over again.) And to hear Katniss rhapsodize about how massive he is (ladies) he probably should be one; I'm not sure what help he is in the agricultural district (maybe he pulls the plow!). He starts shouting in a kind of vaguely Hulk-like voice (he only misses a few articles here and there, like Collins was going for the brute thing but didn't want to go too far with it) and accuses Clove of killing Rue. She denies it, but soon he's thrown her on the ground and bashed her head in with a rock. DAMN, SAM!

He turns to Katniss and asks what Clove meant by suggesting she and Rue were allied. Katniss quickly explains the partnership and the burial and is moved to tears by memories of Rue. She begs Thresh to make it quick. But there's a certain honor amongst theives, and he says he will let her go this time, which will make them square. Katniss thinks appreciatively of the way people have bent rules for her as she grabs her pack and runs (remember Peeta's insinuation that Katniss doesn't realize she gets special treatment?). Thresh grabs his own and the one for Clove and Cato (ha!) and they flee as Cato finally breaks through the trees. Damn Cato, where the hell you been?

Katniss runs and runs and bleeds and bleeds, and back at the cave she finds a hypodermic needle in the pack and quickly stabs it into Peeta's arm. Then she dies. Or maybe just passes out. We'll see next time! Hey, that was quite the chapter!