Mockingjay

The hissing of her name confirms to Katniss that Snow knows her whereabouts. He has sent a pack of “mutts,” mutated humanoid creatures, to kill her. Peeta begins to hiss “Katniss” in his sleep. Certain that he will kill her upon waking, Katniss aims an arrow at his head, but he suddenly sits up and warns her to get out.

The group emerges back into the tunnels. As they run, they hear screams from the Avoxes working in the tunnels; the mutts are killing anyone between themselves and Katniss. Katniss urges the others to leave her behind, but they refuse. In the Transfer—a tunnel located just below street level—the group is cornered by the mutts, who turn out to be four-legged reptilian creatures with powerful jaws. Katniss manages to escape with Finnick, Pollux, Cressida, and Peeta; the others are killed. The group finds a ladder up to surface level, but Finnick, who is last up, is caught by several mutts. Katniss watches helplessly from above as a mutt decapitates him. Katniss activates the Holo’s self-destruct mode and throws it down the tunnel, killing the remaining mutts.

Peeta again begs Katniss to kill him. The presence of the mutts is making his sanity slip, and he’s worried he will hurt her again. Instead, Katniss kisses him and demands, “Don’t let [Snow] take you from me” (267).

The surviving group members scale a final ladder, which emerges into the home of a Capitol resident. The woman recognizes the group, but Katniss kills her with an arrow before she can cry out.

As the apartment is in a busy section of the Capitol, the group disguises themselves using makeup and clothing in the woman’s apartment. Cressida leads them to a shop owned by a woman named Tigris, whose features have been surgically altered to look disturbingly feline. Katniss recognizes her as a former stylist from an earlier Hunger Games. At some point, Tigris was banned from the games and outcast from Capitol society. Now, she wants revenge against Snow.

Tigris leads the group to a hidden cellar in the back of her shop. Everyone sleeps for a while. On waking up, Katniss is so guilt-ridden over the deaths of their friends that she confesses to fabricating the special mission. Gale tells her they’ve known it all along, and Peeta says that the group follows her precisely because they believe she can kill Snow. They begin to strategize a plan to execute Snow. Katniss suggests giving herself up as bait but is shut down by the others.

Tigris calls the group into the shop for dinner. On television, the Capitol announces massive bounties on each of their heads. Later that night, Katniss overhears Gale and Peeta talking when they think she is asleep. They discuss her love for both of them and wonder which one she will choose. Gale says she will choose “whoever she thinks she can’t survive without” (379).

Katniss ponders the conversation she overheard. She is upset that Gale and Peeta apparently view her as emotionless. In the morning, the group watches on Tigris’s television as the rebels push further into the city, forcing Capitol citizens toward the center and Snow’s mansion. Katniss remains firm in her resolve to kill Snow. She wonders if he will open his mansion to his citizens, giving her a chance to infiltrate.

Snow issues a demand that local shopkeepers open up their stores to Capitol refugees. Knowing they can’t stay with Tigris any longer, the group decides to leave. Tigris makes them all up to look like Capitol citizens, and the group splits into three subgroups: Cressida will go with Pollux, Katniss with Gale, and Peeta alone. Katniss takes off Peeta’s handcuffs and gives him her nightlock pill. She embraces him, and they part ways.

Katniss and Gale make their way toward Snow’s mansion. A little girl in the crowd seems to recognize Katniss; seconds later, she is gunned down. Katniss realizes that the rebels are shooting into the crowd. In the chaos, several pods are activated, killing rebels, peacekeepers, and citizens alike. Katniss and Gale push on until another pod activates, splitting the street in two and separating them. Katniss can only watch as Peacekeepers apprehend Gale. He mouths, “Shoot me,” but she recognizes the request too late, and Gale is taken prisoner.

Katniss rejoins the crowd, knowing that the Peacekeepers will torture and kill Gale unless she can get to Snow first. Reaching the vicinity of Snow’s mansion, she is stopped by a concrete barrier in front of the mansion. Behind the barrier, she sees a group of children and realizes Snow is using them as a human shield. The rebels arrive, and Katniss scrambles up a flagpole.

A Capitol hovercraft appears in the sky, dropping silver parachutes. The Capitol children recognize the parachutes as the gift packages sent to Hunger Games tributes and scramble for them. Twenty seconds after they are dropped, the parachutes explode, killing and maiming the children. Rebel medics immediately rush in to tend to the wounded; Katniss recognizes Prim among them. As she drops down from the flagpole and begins to run, a second explosion detonates, killing Prim.

Katniss drifts through dreams in which she catches fire, then transforms into a bird and flies over the sea with the people she has lost. She begs to join them in death but is denied.

When Katniss wakes up, she’s in the hospital, recovering from the severe burns sustained in the attack that killed Prim. Coin visits to tell Katniss that Snow is imprisoned, awaiting execution by Katniss. Katniss is unable to speak. She learns that the Capitol has fallen, and Coin now leads Panem. The remaining members of Unit 451 have all survived.

After weeks of painful recovery, Katniss is discharged from the hospital. She moves into a room in Snow’s mansion along with her mother. One day as she wanders the halls, she follows the smell of roses to a greenhouse, hoping to find a single flower to place in his lapel before she kills him. Katniss is surprised to find the room guarded by armed soldiers from District 8 but is granted the authority to enter by Commander Paylor.

She enters and picks a white rose before she’s surprised by Snow, who’s shackled to a wall. Snow offers his condolences over Prim’s death. Snow says that Coin, not he, dropped the bombs on the children. The rebels staged the attack to seem like the Capitol’s work. Snow points out that he had nothing to gain from the bombing. In fact, he was about to surrender when the attack took place. Coin, however, had a vested interest in making it seem like Snow had turned on his own citizens.

Snow encourages Katniss to consider the fallout of Coins’ actions throughout the entire war. Her insistence that all of the districts should join the fight against the Capitol means that every district except 13 has suffered heavy losses, leaving District 13 in a power position. The centerpiece of Coin’s strategy was Katniss, whom she used as a tool to encourage continued fighting and as bait to misdirect Snow. Snow admits to watching Katniss when he should have been watching Coin. He failed to recognize Coin’s ultimate plan: “to let the Capitol and the districts destroy one another, and then step in to take power” (305).

Katniss remembers the day in District 13 when Gale and Beetee showed her their designs, including the double bomb designed to kill first responders. For the first time since Prim’s death, Katniss speaks to tell Snow she doesn’t believe him, but Snow knows she is lying. He reminds her of their promise after the first Hunger Games: to never lie to one another.