never actually rejected by Katniss. He recognizes her feelings, which have to do with Prim rather than Peeta, and bows out. Last we hear, he has a “fancy job” and Katniss speculates about his possible other romances. Gale seems to be doing just fine for himself, and indeed one has pictures of the rebellion reunions in which Gale shows up in a flashy sports car and says, “Katniss, baby, you could have got with all this.” We, like Katniss, may feel a certain amount of regret at how things turned out, but we also see how feeding the fire of hate plays out with Gale, so we sympathize with Katniss
both in her realization that she is similar to Gale and in how it informs her ultimate decision that Peeta is a better mate for her, which we see when their love is both verbally confirmed and physically consummated.
“Wait, what was that you just said?” I hear you cry. Don’t worry, dear reader, I am not the lucky recipient of the Secret Naughty Edition of the Hunger Games. But Katniss wakes screaming in Peeta’s arms, and then his lips are there to comfort her, and then “on the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach ... So after ... ” ( Mockingjay ). After what, Katniss? Don’t think we didn’t notice the adroit dropping of the word “hunger” either. After the Games of Amore end, after the conclusion of the Hunger for Loooove, after their ardent quest to catch fire in the flames of passion, after—I’m sure nobody wants to hear me make a sexy joke involving Mockingjay ’s title. Perhaps Katniss only refers to a truly excellent make-out session. Perhaps I am a filthy-minded creature from the gutter (perhaps there is no perhaps about that one). Anyway, they eventually have two kids, so I rest assured in the knowledge it’s going to happen sometime.
Katniss and Peeta’s romance has a very definite conclusion. In fact, overall the Hunger Games has a very final ending, in the manner of Harry Potter, which wound up the seven-book series nineteen years later, with the hero and several other characters established as married with children. Katniss and Peeta have aged at least fifteen years and have children, and their society has been successfully readjusted, the Hunger Games seemingly permanently eliminated, though their psyches remain scarred by war. The book is definitively closed, perhaps to remove any possibility of being tempted to write sequels that might spoil the arc of the books. Many of the most beloved series have very final endings and give their readers a resounding sense of closure,
though this may be more cause than effect—because of their popularity, the author may feel he or she has to close the book on the series with no possibility of return. I feel C.S. Lewis still takes the cake with his ending for the Chronicles of Narnia, which is “the world ends, and everyone who isn’t currently in that world dies in a train crash anyway—oh, except for that one chick”—but well played on a decisive finish, Ms. Collins!
The Hunger Games trilogy has an unsettling premise that combines action adventure with a social conscience, the wishfulfillment of having two guys desperately in love with you, and a resoundingly conclusive ending. It also has a writer who selected her subject material carefully, and who by choosing a subject that fascinated her chose a subject that resonated with a great many other people. We sympathize with the characters, able to doubt them just enough to add to the suspense, as we fear Peeta is betraying Katniss in The Hunger Games and Katniss is supporting a new Hunger Games in Mockingjay , and yet we are able to trust them in extremis. Katniss never considers killing the young girl Rue in The Hunger Games ; the worst lines are never crossed by our hero and heroine, which allows us to continue to care for them despite their violent actions. Suzanne Collins even provides us, through the romantic subplot, with an answer for the overlap between