There are SPOILERS for the Hunger Games franchise in the following article. – editor
“Remember who the real enemy is.”
If I had to pick one phrase to sum up the entire Hunger Games film series, it would be this one. Although it is mainly heard in the series’ second and third installments (Catching Fire and Mockingjay, Part 1), its echoes are felt throughout the first and fourth films (The Hunger Games and Mockingjay, Part 2). However, the identity of this “real enemy” is never explicitly stated in any of the films. We are certainly meant to infer that the real enemy is the oligarchic Capitol, against which the rebels in the Districts of Panem are uniting. However, throughout Mockingjay, Part 2, another enemy gradually comes into view – the rebels themselves.
In Mockingjay, Part 2, a philosophical and ethical problem solidifies, one which had been ambiguously nagging at me since I first saw series opener The Hunger Games. In one of the initial scenes of the fourth and final film, Katniss (played by Jennifer Lawrence) voices concerns with the rebels’ decision to place civilians in harm’s way in order to win a strategic military victory. She is unsure whether they should be using violence as a means to the end of achieving peace. After all, the Capitol has been sanctioning the use of violence through the Hunger Games as a means to keep the peace for 75 years, and few are more aware of that than Katniss.
Katniss’ objections are downplayed by Gale (Liam Hemsworth), rebel President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) and the other rebels, who reason that since the Capitol plays dirty, they have a right to do the same. This is one of the more subtle underlying themes of the series – the tension between the desire for a just, violent revenge and the desire for justice through peaceful resolution. Katniss feels this tension quite palpably because of her unique role as the Mockingjay. She is the figurehead for this rebellion and believes in its overall goal of peace. Even though she started out as a soldier for the cause, the psychological abuse that she experienced during her time in the Games has taken its toll on her, to the point that she is simply tired of fighting. She is tired of everything war represents and just wants it to be over, but not at the cost of unnecessary violence. In her mind the real enemy is not just the Capitol but specifically President Snow (Donald Sutherland), the initiator of all the violence.
At the end of Mockingjay, Part 2, Katniss and the rebels have almost achieved their goal and are literally on the doorstep of the Presidential palace, ready to storm the gates and complete their overthrow of the Capitol. Suddenly bombs are dropped all around her, killing not only rebels but also Panem forces and innocent civilians (even children). At first it appears that this was a final act of defiance by President Snow. During a chilling exchange with the now-deposed Snow, Katniss realizes that those bombs had actually been dropped by Coin and the rebels in an attempt to incense all sides against Snow and end the war. It worked; the palace was overrun by rebels and Panem forces alike, Snow was deposed, and the war ended. But at what cost?
An unspoken question lingers throughout this film: Is it best to achieve peace by any means possible, or should we care about how we attempt to bring about peace? With every new act of retaliatory violence by both the rebels and the Capitol, I (along with Katniss) became further disillusioned with the entire concept of this civil war, a war which had started out as a “righteous” uprising in the name of justice but had somehow turned into a win-at-all-costs battle for those on both sides.
After President Coin’s authorization of that horrific bombing, Katniss sees her in a new, disturbing light, realizing that Coin is just as bad as Snow since she is willing to go to any lengths to achieve “peace.” In her last act as the Mockingjay, Katniss is supposed to publicly execute President Snow for his crimes against Panem. However, as she looks at the old dying man she realizes he will be dead eventually anyway. Katniss instead turns her arrow and assassinates President Coin, recognizing that Coin had now become the real enemy because of her violent actions.
Yet even the elimination of “the real enemy” was not without great cost. Even though Katniss defeated both Coin and Snow, she had to resort to violence herself to do so. Yes, it cost fewer lives than an entire war would have, and she may have even saved future lives from further oppression and tyranny under the new leadership of Coin. But as we see in some of the final scenes, Katniss has been wounded deeply by her own experiences and actions, and she will probably never truly recover.
One of the most moving moments in the entire series occurs in Catching Fire, as Woody Harrelson’s character Haymitch somberly points out, “Nobody ever wins the Games…” The same could also be said of war. Are there ever truly any victors in a war? How does our world attempt to assign victors to such conflicts? Is it simply the last one left standing after everyone else has been defeated – the ones who killed without being killed themselves? Is this really the “most excellent way” Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 13?
Is peace ever truly possible in a world that solves its biggest disagreements and ideological conflicts through violence? Even if we stand up for justice and fight for our ideals yet kill another human being in doing so, how might that affect our soul? How do we reconcile a righteous anger with a theological anthropology that views each human being as being made in the Imago Dei?
Maybe the answer to all of these questions is that we need to follow the mantra of The Hunger Games series: “Remember who the real enemy is.” The real enemy of peace is an attitude that fails to practice a deep, genuine love for every human – the kind of love that would never allow for the presence of violence.
