Finished reading Mockingjay yesterday. Much as I utterly love these books, this third and last one did, in fact, bother me a bit. Apart from the unnecessary reliance on death and destruction this book resorts to - in measures wholly different from the first two, it seems - there was something generally dissatisfying about the main character's attitude throughout the whole. Laura Miller dissects this feeling in her article at the Salon, here. Don't read it if you haven't read the books! Spoilers beware!!
because you were all wondering what I'm writing my dissertation on, here's a brief synopsis of my 'research context': When James Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry in 1760, he went to great lengths to make the Fragments appear to be authentic remains of an ancient, heroic oral tradition. His reasons for this were largely political, and as such, influenced the content of the epics themselves. As an attempt to establish a particularly Scottish identity, the poems were quite effective. However, to do so required both a simplification and a manipulation of traditional mythology. Stripped of anagogical significance, the Ossian epics more or less represented an Enlightenment version of history, tradition, and mythic heritage. The stories themselves were changed by their very purpose and in turn changed the manner of representing myth in future narratives. Moreover, the emphasis on the Ossian epics as authentic tales from the past, as ‘fragments,’ served...
I've seen several other comments about this book and all the readers seem to be underwhelmed. Sometimes the third book just isn't as good as the first two, I suppose. Still worth a read, though?
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