Oh, and thank you for the definition of Mags and Madge meaning pearl. The connection of the pearl was one that I got, but not as it related to those two characters. I don’t know if this belongs with literary alchemy or. Tags. Graphic Depictions Of Violence; Major Character Death; Underage; Hermione Granger/Harry Potter; Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley; Daphne Greengrass/Harry Potter; Hermione Granger/Ginny Weasley; Hermione Granger/Daphne. This troper realized that the Hunger Games are an empty threat. If another district rebels, it gets wiped out, but the Capitol can't keep doing it, …. Main characters in Catching Fire book, analysis of key characters. Unlocking ‘Mockingjay': The Literary Alchemy. This is the second part of a three part ‘Unlocking’ series on the more esoteric, allegorical meanings of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy with special emphasis on the series finale, Mockingjay. For the first part, see ‘Unlocking Mockingjay: The Spiritual Allegory.’We left yesterday’s discussion of the Hunger Games as an echo of Dante’s allegorical journey with Katniss as soul and Peeta as Spirit or Christ. We’ll return to Peeta in a moment to explain his superficially un- Christ like behaviors in Mockingjay, but we need to look at Gale through our allegorical glasses first. Who or what does he represent in this story of the pure heart’s spiritual transformation? The first thing we learn about Gale is that Katniss believes he is “the only person with whom I can be myself.” The kinship is more than good feelings; she tells us “he could be my brother,” they look so much alike. There is no romantic feeling between them, she insists, largely because they grew up together as hunting partners in the forest (Games, Chapter 1, pp. First appearance: The Hunger Games: Created by: Suzanne Collins: Portrayed by: Jennifer Lawrence: Information; Nickname(s) Catnip (by Gale) Sweetheart (by Haymitch) Girl on Fire (by Cinna and Caesar Flickerman) Aliases: The. The Hunger Games has 4,248,069 ratings and 148,529 reviews. Dija said: My Epic Book Recipe Checklist for The Hunger Games: 1. A sharp and intelligent. This platonic fellowship and shared identity is a pointer to Gale’s representing “body” to Katniss’ “soul.” The human person is a psycho- somatic unity or body- soul integer; Gale- Katniss reflect this unity throughout the novels, with Gale always embodying the best of human virtues alongside a calculating, juridical perspective. He “thinks like men think” rather than as God thinks. And this is the difference between him and Peeta and the heart of Katniss’ schizophrenia about her feelings for both. Gale is justice, an eye for an eye, and Peeta is mercy; the soul identifies both with the body to which it is joined in this world and with the world’s concern for justice but she survives only by the grace and mercy of the spirit. Gale- Katniss- Peeta are a literary triptych of body- soul- spirit, the three principal human ‘parts’ reflected in each person. Think of Plato’s charioteer and his two horses in the Phaedrusand the The Brothers Karamazov, Dmitri- Ivan- and- Alosha. If that’s not familiar, try recent triptychs in fantasy fiction: Ron- Hermione- Harry, Jacob- Bella- Edward, and Gollum- Sam- Frodo. Ms. Collins’ character- symbolism is fresh and brilliant but not unique or original. With this allegorical understanding of the three major players, let’s look at the story. District 1. 2 at the beginning of Games is “the World,” a transparency consequent to the number 1. The Reaping in the city square and center is “death; ” the word “reaping” because of its association with a scythe has very few contemporary usages besides the personification of Death as the Grim Reaper. Katniss marks herself as a pure soul and savior by volunteering to die, in effect sacrificing herself, to save Primrose, literally the “first rose,” a white flower resembling the sun shining out to the four corners of existence (i. In choosing sacrificial death in imitatio Christi, Katniss demonstrates her ground- floor qualifications for eternal life in being selfless, having renounced the world, and in her love for the innocent. This death, of course, requires the soul’s separation from the Gale- body and results in her confusion about who she is in her newly disembodied state. She has entered the alchemical alembic with only Peeta the Christ and the catalytic reagents Cinna, the story symbol for mercury or quicksilver, and Haymitch Abernathy as story- Sulphur (see ‘Cinna the Mysterious‘ for that important discussion). Games’ time in the Capitol is largely the parable of the soul’s coming to believe in and embrace the love of the sacrificial Christ under the hot and cold influences of expansive, good cop Cinnabar and explosive, bad cop Sulphur. The soul survives the World’s first attempts to separate her from the Christ by choosing to die rather than live without him. She came into the Games, in Cinna’s poetic costume for the chariot entrance of the tributes, as light shining out of darkness with love; she is dressed for interviews with Caesar Flickerman after her sacrificial triumph, as “candlelight” itself (Chapter 2. Cinna] dresses me in a white, gauzy dress and pink shoes. Then he personally adjusts my make- up until I seem to radiate a soft, rosy glow” (Chapter 2. For an Everyman drama or Mystery play of the soul’s journey to God, however, we’re missing an essential player: Satan, the deceiver, or the Evil One. In Hunger Games, the part of the Prince of this World is played by the person at the pinnacle of Panem’s power structure, President Snow. Like the characters in Dante’s Commedia, Snow is compelled to tell the truth in his encounters with Katniss; though he suffers from vampire’s halitosis and a murderous disposition, Snow in his talks with the Mockingjay at the beginning of Fire and the end of the series finale reveals to Katniss in horrible fashion the world as it is. See ‘Mockingjay Alchemy: The Scent of Blood and Roses‘ for much more on President Snow.)The Soul’s Alchemical Purification: Katniss in the Arena Alembic. The Dante- esque kind of hero’s journey we’re talking about — one in which the principal character plays the part of what the Bible calls “the heart” and their story is about their apotheosis or spiritual illumination, something like divinization — has a tradition of its own in English literature we can call “literary alchemy.” The English alchemical tradition in letters begins in earnest with Shakespeare and the Metaphysical poets; its tropes, symbols, and story stages are evident thereafter in the poetry and novels of Greats like Blake, Dickens, Yeats, Joyce, and C. S. Lewis. In my books on Harry Potter and on Twilight, I have explained how Joanne Rowling, alchemist wannabe, and Stephenie Meyer have adapted this tradition as powerfully and effectively as they have in Harry’s and Bella’s epic transformations (you can read about it in chapter 3 of The Deathly Hallows Lecturesand chapter 4 of. Spotlight — and of course I hope you will!). Though there are academic journals devoted to this subject and a host of books, when a writer uses the alchemical formula and colors and such, readers of their work — especially if they’re serious Potter readers — write me to confirm their sighting. I picked up Hunger Games for the first time because two readers I respect very much, one in Houston and another outside Spokane, wrote me independently and nigh on simultaneously to ask me if I thought Suzanne Collins was writing in this tradition. Yes, she is. Again, I urge you to read the more longer and helpful introductions to literary alchemy in Lectures and in Spotlight, but let me give you five key markers of a work in the alchemical tradition: The work is going to have three key stages marked by the use of specific colors and story events, namely, black, white, and red, which stages reflect, in sequence, the dissolution or break down of the subject character or main characters (nigredo) usually by heat, the purification or purgation of same (albedo) usually with water, and the revelation of the transformation undergone in the process in the story crisis (rubedo). More on this in a second. There will be story contraries that must be resolved by the principals’ transformation, contraries like the Two Cities in Dickens’ most popular novel or the Montagues and Capulets of Shakespeare’s Verona, or just groups like Gryffindors and Slytherines and the Quileute Wolfpack and Cullen Vampires. Look for a couple, a pair in opposition, one relatively feminine or lunar, the other masculine and solar, who engage the character being broken down to prima materia for illumination as ‘solid light’ or gold. This duo are polar opposites and they either quarrel or draw the principal in contrary directions (the ‘Quarreling Couple’ of alchemical mercury and sulphur mentioned above). Between the white and red stages, there is an Alchemical Wedding of the Red King and White Queen that prefigures the conjunction of opposites signaling the golden moment of the Philosopher’s Stone creation, i. Philosophical Orphan or story savior joining contraries as a Rebus or hermaphrodite. And there should be remarkable resurrection imagery, say, something as simple as light shining out of darkness or grander images of a hero rising from the dead or even of a Phoenix, a Rose, or a Red Lion, symbols of the Stone and of Christ, the Light of the World. If this is all new to you, I’m sure you’re profoundly skeptical that such a tradition exists or, if it does, that these bizarre sequences, symbols, and story points are anything but a conceit shared by egg head writers. That’s understandable. Given the popularity of Harry Potter, Twilight, and now The Hunger Games, though, not to mention the shadow Shakespeare casts to this day over all English writing, I would suggest you not write this alchemy stuff off as “For Geeks Only.” It’s obviously a powerful and pervasive way to frame a story. My evidence that The Hunger Games is written deliberately as an alchemical trilogy? In brief: the nigredo, albedo, and rubedo character of and the black, white, and red elements in the books, i. Mockingjay has all three stages in its arena- equivalent and is the series rubedo,the contraries to be resolved between Seam and City, Capitol and District, are the dynamic driving the story,the ‘Quarreling Couple’ of Peeta and Gale are the essential tension in Katniss’ Mockingjay life and her guides for the first two Games, Cinna and Haymitch, serve a similar function,the alchemical wedding of Katniss and Peeta we’ve been to (sort of) in Fire and the orphan they have conceived and lost are the spiritual conjunction of alchemical transformation,and the light- from- darkness phoenix imagery in the story are pervasive, from Cinna’s costumes for Katniss, especially the Mockingjay wedding dress, the golden Mockingjay pendant that is the token of District 1. Katniss’ and Peeta’s fate as transcendent Fire- Mutts/phoenices in the finale. The hermaphrodite of the finale?
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