Earlier, he’d said that the fake ones seemed shiny to him. While Katniss stands guard, she talks to Peeta about his memories. Led by Pollux, who spent five years as a slave to the Capitol in the sewers, the group settles in a room for the night. The unit decides that their clearest path to the Capitol’s center is underground. Katniss knows that, more than anything, Snow would love to make Katniss kill Peeta. Katniss hopes that she’s not keeping him alive to use in her own “Games,” one in which she refuses to let Snow win. Peeta asks that they kill him because he knows that he’s a danger to the unit. Katniss knows they must advance as quickly as they can before it’s discovered that they survived. The Capitol televises a broadcast declaring Katniss and her unit dead. Before he dies, Boggs tells Katniss to continue on her mission, not to go back, and to kill Peeta. The others contain him, and they seek shelter in an apartment. Immediately the unit is thrown into a true battle with another pod, a toxic black oily substance coming after them. Just as everyone is laughing and teasing one another about their acting jobs, Boggs trips a bomb and his legs are blown off. While filming, the crew adds smoke to enhance the shots and has each individual reenact his or her response to the pods going off. To get some more exciting footage, the squad embarks on a staged mission to a residential block to set off some pods. It’s a slow, excruciating process for Katniss, but she can see that there is some of Peeta still left, and this gives her hope. The team develops a game for Peeta called “Real or Not Real,” in which Peeta describes memories and squad members tell him if those memories are real or fake. Peeta is able to control himself but is still skeptical of Katniss. Katniss struggles between her desire to kill Snow and her inability to save Peeta from his own mind. For everyone’s safety, the crew sets up an around-the-clock guard on Peeta. For now, that might mean turning Katniss into a martyr. Coin wants to remain in power after the revolution, and if Katniss isn’t going to support Coin’s leadership, then Coin will use her in whatever way she can to give the rebellion momentum. Boggs, the unit leader, promises to keep Peeta contained but does confide in Katniss that Coin probably does see Katniss as a threat. I'm trying to think of a way to make it not happen, but in a strange, horrible way, it seems essential.Katniss believes that Coin must really want her dead. Either we get this ending, or a typical "happily ever after" ending where Katniss eventually makes it to Snow, shoots him in the head, thus making all the other deaths count (well, 'count' in a very unsatisfying way -the rebels would have killed him anyway), with the entire country being giddy -and the end. Typical, expected, unfulfilling, yet relatively happy.
This "happy ending" was the ending I was waiting to reach. It seemed inevitable, with everyone dropping one after the other, till Gale got captured and Katniss made it to the mansion, and I was thinking, 'this is it'. I have to say, I find the ending -while extremely irritating- also extremely masterful on Collins part. First, the irritating bit: Keeping Prim alive was the whole point of Katniss volunteering. She was Katniss' only motivation, thus the reader's only motivation. She was the innocent future that lied ahead. Even if the Katniss/Snow/Coin exchange hadn't occurred, everything good was already gone with Prim's death. And this brings me to why the ending was so masterful. When Prim died, it gave me something else bigger to look forward to. Coin was proving to be yet another Snow in disguise, and it all came to light when they decided to bring another round of Hunger Games. It showed that the happy ending isn't really about Katniss on an individual level, but Panem as a whole.
It also helped Katniss decide it was Peeta she needed to survive. It also led to Snow's "irrelevant" death, since it really wasn't all about him, as a person. Prim's death triggered a chain of events that lead to a much deeper conclusion bigger than Katniss, Snow and Prim as individual people. It was sad, and you can feel the remnant bitterness in Katniss' life when the book ended -you can feel she'll never be a 'happy' person again. The kids and Peeta could give her something to look forward to, but not enough to make her a 'happy person'. It felt sad, but it also felt so utterly realistic.
Hunger Games is no fairytale with a fairytale happy ending.
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