What's Anya Page? | Steph Anya Book Club discussion

Towards the beginning of Chapter 7, Katniss mentally corrects Madge about Mockingjays thinking, “A mockingjay is not just a songbird. A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist. They hadn’t counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic code, to thrive in a new form. They hadn’t anticipated its will to live.”

Do you think Suzanne purposefully chose her words to liken the districts as jabberjays? What would the mockingbirds they mated with symbolize? Clearly throughout Catching Fire, the Capitol never intended the other districts to have the will or brains to start an uprising. At first when I read this as a teenager I remember thinking how this paragraph spelled out Katniss as the mockingjay, but I think now I prefer Gale’s interpretation of Katniss in the chapter, “you haven’t hurt people- you’ve given them an opportunity. They just have to be brave enough to take it…”

I’d love to hear how others see Katniss as the Mockingjay or if you’ve considered applying the jabberjay/mockingjay symbolism to the districts?

I’ll be back for this question once I start this one!

Gabriela wrote: "Towards the beginning of Chapter 7, Katniss mentally corrects Madge about Mockingjays thinking, “A mockingjay is not just a songbird. A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist...."

See! It's still here. I don't know why the folders are out of order. I'll be starting this soon!

Amazing! I’m on the app so I can’t reply directly but I hope it pings you. That’s so weird- I might have to do book club stuff via desktop version

Okay! I can finally respond! The symbolism of the mockingjay was definitely overt. It popped right out at me too! I do still believe that the mockingjay represents Katniss which is of course spelled out for us at the end, but I love how you’re thinking about how the districts play into the metaphor. I actually think the districts are the “genetic code” referenced in your quote! They represent a passed down ideology that the capitol cannot contain and are struggling to control. They’ve taken on a form of their own that is hard to distinguish without close inspection which is evident in the selected game maker actually being a leader for the revolution! What do you think about that take?

I love the symbolism of the Mockingjay as an inevitable side-effect of the Capitol’s own tools of oppression; in the same way that the mockingjay wouldn’t exist without the Capitol genetically engineering jabberjays as a creature of control, so too would rebellion not exist without the Capitol’s mechanisms of tyranny.

Katniss would not have become the face of revolution if the Capitol hadn’t trained her to survive by starving her family, leading to her becoming a deadly hunter, and if the Capitol hadn’t given her an audience by forcing her to participate in the Hunger Games.

Both scenarios, with the jabberjays/mockingjays and the Games/Katniss, reveal that the Capitol’s “need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle.” And if authority is brittle, it can be overcome.
*That quote is actually from the TV show Andor haha but very applicable here.

And to bring it back to mental health topics, I think this is also indicative of how we form adaptive/maladaptive behaviors to survive. Trauma changes us; that much is inevitable. But with the proper resiliency toolkit, we can make that change for the better.

@Monica I love this take! They created the very resilience that threatens them