In mockingjay, when the haymitch accuses Katniss of letting it be separated from the peeta, can you explain to me?And in the end, after Katniss lost her old peeta because of the hijacked, the finnick dying, the bogs and of course the only reason for it happened the death of her dear sister, the dismissing effie is said to seek the winner's life, seriously? what's the reason for saying something like that?
Oh, good questions, Anon.
I’ll start with Haymitch’s accusation. I assume you’re referring to this moment:
I think of the snarling, cruel exchange back on the hovercraft. The bitterness that followed. But all I say is “I can’t believe you didn’t rescue Peeta.”
There’s a sense of incompleteness. And not because he hasn’t apologized. But because we were a team. We had a deal to keep Peeta safe. A drunken, unrealistic deal made in the dark of night, but a deal just the same. And in my heart of hearts, I know we both failed.
“Now you say it,” I tell him.
“I can’t believe you let him out of your sight that night,” says Haymitch.”
I don’t think either of them are levying accusations that have much weight to them and they know it. It isn’t as if either of them could’ve necessarily prevented what happened. But I don’t think that’s the point of this exchange. The point is that these two people, for whom debts and owing and deals mean so much, lost a person they both love almost more than anything (alongside Prim in Katniss’s case and Katniss herself in Haymitch’s). They’re hurt, and frightened, and they’re playing the blame game, drowning in the “what ifs?” But I appreciate that at least they’re honest about it, however bitter they both are.
As for Effie’s comment, I don’t think that line is in the book (please correct me if I’m wrong) and it has never sat right with me that they added it to the films. I suppose, in her own well-meaning, misguided way, it’s the only frame of reference Effie has: for her, maybe, the life of a Victor means a life of hard-won peace. But with the way that the movies gave Effie a more sympathetic treatment, I can barely buy that either. I don’t think movie!Effie would be so oblivious to how that sounds.
Like you say, it feels wrong to me. Katniss may have won the “seventy-sixth Hunger Games” as Finnick calls it, but at the cost of her sister and so many more.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s meant to feel wrong. Elizabeth Banks doesn’t play it like that, though …
Anyone else care to chime in?
