Mockingjay

Katniss begs to come along on the mission, but the team has already left. She wakes Finnick, who takes the surprisingly optimistic view that this mission will end their tortuous months-long uncertainty. At the end of the day, Peeta and Annie will either be dead or safe.

As a distraction, Katniss and Finnick film another propo, which will be broadcast during the rescue attempt to distract the Capitol. Cressida interviews each of them in turn. Katniss recalls the day she met Peeta in 12, shortly after the death of her father in a mine collapse. Peeta saved her family from starvation by smuggling her loaves of bread from his family’s bakery.

When it’s Finnick’s turn to be interviewed, he reveals that President Snow forced him and other attractive victors into commercial sexual exploitation, trading their bodies in exchange for influence and favors. Through pillow talk, Finnick learned secrets about the Capitol, the most explosive of which is that President Snow has a history of poisoning his political adversaries. To avoid suspicion, he himself would drink from cups he had poisoned, then take an antidote.

After filming wraps, Katniss asks Haymitch what happened to his family. Haymitch tells her that Snow killed everyone he loved weeks after he broke a rule during his Hunger Games. Until Katniss and Peeta entered his life, he was totally alone.

At 15:00 hours, the scheduled hour of the mission, Beetee airs the newest propo over the Capitol’s feed. Several tense hours later, Haymitch brings the news that the rescue was a success; everyone has returned alive. In the hospital, Finnick and Annie reunite joyfully. Katniss catches a glimpse of a wounded Gale before proceeding to Peeta’s room. Peeta runs up to her and begins strangling her.

Katniss awakes, bruised and battered. Beetee arrives to explain that Peeta has been “hijacked” by the Capitol, a form of torture that involves injecting victims with fear-inducing tracker-jacker venom. The Capitol used the terror caused by the venom to manipulate Peeta’s memories of Katniss to the point that he sees her as “life-threatening” and is willing to kill her. There is no known way of reversing this conditioning. Katniss is devastated.

Gale and Beetee visit Katniss in the hospital, showing off their new weapons research. Their designs leverage “human impulses” like compassion to achieve maximal destruction. One design, in particular, disturbs Katniss: a double bomb. The first bomb is designed to injure victims. When first responders arrive on the scene, the second, larger bomb detonates. Katniss asks if they aren’t crossing a line, but Gale responds that they’re “following the same rule book President Snow used when he hijacked Peeta” (160).

Several days after being discharged, Katniss is back at the hospital, where the medical team is testing a new strategy on Peeta. She watches from an observation room as Delly Cartwright, a childhood friend of Peeta’s, is brought into his hospital room. Their conversation is initially pleasant, but when Delly tells Peeta that District 12 has been destroyed and his family killed, he snaps and begins shouting that it’s all Katniss’s fault. He tells Delly that Katniss is a “mutt,” a genetically modified animal created by the Capitol Gamemakers to torture Hunger Games contestants.

Faced with the prospect that Peeta will hate her forever, a heartbroken Katniss tells her team that she will have to leave District 13 if she is to continue as the Mockingjay. They agree to send her to District 2, the only district still allied with the Capitol.

District 2 is a collection of former mining villages strewn across a mountain range. Before the rebellion, District 2 supplied the Capitol with Peacekeepers. In exchange, they were treated favorably, so their loyalty is harder to sway. Several weeks into Katniss’s stay, the town remains divided. The greatest challenge is posed by an impenetrable mountain in the middle of the district, nicknamed “The Nut.” The Nut contains the Capitol’s military stronghold. Katniss feels well in District 2.

From District 13, Haymitch keeps Katniss apprised of Peeta’s progress. His medical team has come up with the idea to trigger his memories of Katniss while dosing him with the calming drug morphling. This approach seems to be working, albeit slowly.

Gale is sent to District 2 as part of a special team, tasked with defeating the Nut. He tells Katniss that he is jealous of Peeta because he knows that she can never fully commit herself to him. After everyone else leaves, Katniss and Gale kiss, but Gale rightly recognizes that Katniss’s actions are motivated by desperation rather than desire, so he stops her.

The following day, the special team meets to discuss the Nut. Gale suggests using bombs to trigger rockslides, which will block the entrances to the mountain, suffocating the inhabitants of the Nut. Katniss realizes that Gale is describing a death trap.

Gale’s suggestion ignites a debate. Beetee points out that many people working in the Nut are civilians who will be killed indiscriminately. Gale argues that destroying the Nut is justified revenge for the firebombing attack on District 12.

Katniss tries to dissuade Gale by reminding him that both of their fathers suffocated in a collapsed mine, but he remains unmoved. Eventually, the team decides to proceed with the bombing but leave the train tunnel leading out of the mountain open, providing people a chance to escape. The rebels will wait outside of the Nut to capture any escaped survivors.

That evening, Katniss puts on her Mockingjay uniform and climbs onto the roof of District 2’s Justice Building, where she watches the bombing of the Nut. As rockslides block the entrances, Katniss is overwhelmed by memories of the day her father died and wonders, “What did we just do?” (179). She retreats indoors, where Haymitch reports Peeta’s latest progress. His medical team showed him a clip of Katniss singing “The Hanging Tree.” Peeta recognized the song and didn’t react violently to her voice.

Haymitch instructs Katniss to film a propo on the steps of the Justice Building. As she speaks, armed survivors from the Nut arrive. Katniss spots a badly burned man on the ground and moves to help him, but as she draws closer, he aims his gun at her head and asks for one reason he shouldn’t shoot her. Katniss admits that she can’t think of a reason and drops her weapon. Addressing the crowd around her, she says that the Capitol has made them all into its slaves, killing each other off instead of banding together against their real enemy, the Capitol. Looking up toward the broadcast screens, she watches herself be shot.