Welcome to the Hunger Games read-along! Beginning July 1st, 2010, we will be reading and chatting about one chapter a day of both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins in anticipation of the release of Mockingjay on August 24th.

In the unlikely event that this is your first read of these amazing books, welcome! And more importantly, beware of spoilers! There will be spoilers.







Sunday, August 22, 2010

Catching Fire Chapter 26

Dang, y'all!  We are SO close!  Two more chapters and then we'll know all. Tomorrow will have two posts, one for questions, and one for predictions.  So gear up!

Eep!  No dead tributes on day three!  How can this be?  Madam Secretary, I need you.  Who was chopped up into bits?

Beetee's plan is put to work:  but the golden wire snaps up, snaring the girls!  Worse!  Johanna whacks Katniss in the head with the spool, then knifes her in the arm!  WTF!?  Brutus declares her "as good as dead" but he don't know our girl too good.  (The Capitol crowd must be beside themselves when her eyes flick open!)  Katniss hurls again (Madam Secretary, are you keeping track?  It seems like she barfs a LOT).

Peeta is Katniss's dying wish.  Sigh.  I give up.  I love Gale, so I guess this  means he's MINE.  Someone dies, Finnick's net Beetee's wire catches Katniss, Beetee is cut!  And has a knife wrapped in wire!  Here's where I hate the Capitol for their edumacational disparities, and Katniss's un-excitedness to excel at electronics.

Finnick and Enobaria of the Razor Teeth reach the tree at the same time.  Why isn't she trying to kill him?  So, with two people dead, Beetee on his way out, lightning about to strike, Katniss FINALLY thinks about Haymitch and his advice to remember who the enemy is.  At last, she thinks to shoot the wavery part in the FF.  Then she (almost) dies.  Atta girl.

What was Beetee attempting?  Did he accomplish it?

WHY IS KATNISS SO THICK?  Why do you think Katniss's default is to play by the rules, even now?  Why suspect everyone to be an enemy?  Why not think of Haymitch's advice earlier?  Will the next chapter be Katniss from beyond the grave?

Who are the two dead people?  Where's Chaff?

2 comments:

  1. Here's my thoughts when I first read chapter 26:


    I. Freaking. Love. Johanna. I really hope she wasn’t one of the cannons.

    Katniss is clueless. It’s obvious to me that Johanna wanted to make it LOOK like she was breaking the alliance and attacking Katniss, and then made her all bloody all over so Brutus and Enobaria wouldn’t bother with her. Really, she had Katniss knocked out; it would have been ridiculously easy to slit her throat.

    It feels great being right about my predictions, but it was still beautiful to watch the story reach that moment. The anticipation just makes it so much sweeter.

    I wonder how much of this was District 2 interfering and ruining the original plan, or if a lot of this was subterfuge to keep the Gamemakers distracted so they didn’t realize the plan was to break out all along.

    The mechanism at the end reminds me a lot of the Golden Compass, thoughts?

    ----------------------

    Now responding to Heather.

    I'm not madame secretary, but to answer your question, the Woman from District 5 and the Man from District 10 died on day 2. One was killed by the wave at 10-11am, the other by Peeta's "beast" at 6-7pm. We don't know which was which (I had to correct this on the wikia).

    The first time I read it, I thought Brutus was referring to Katniss when he said "she". But now I'm not sure, he could have been referring to Johanna, meaning B&E never saw Katniss.

    I think Katniss just never considered the possibility of bringing down the force field. Where can the contestants go, anyways? Hovercraft seem to be capable of teleporting to locations instantly to recapture them.

    BTW, if anyone's interested, here is the final map of the known arena: clicky.

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  2. Just a quick (late) post to say, hahaha, ew, and no, I haven't been counting all the times K hurls in this book. Also, PK9's right, the last two periphery deaths we hear about are on day 2 and they're the man from D10 and the woman from D5 (p349, ew)

    K figures that Beetee's goal was to break the electric force field by directing the lightening current that hits the tree through the chink in the force field by way of the wire wrapped around his knife. Looks like K was right when she shoots the wire via her arrow through the chink and then sees stars! Real stars? Real stars from the real world beyond the force field? Did she break through?!

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