Hunger Games = Harry Potter without Voldemort (SPOILERS!)

When I first picked up the Hunger Games, I found it extremely riveting. But... after I finished the first installment of the series, I just couldn't bring myself to love Katniss as a character. The way that she coldheartedly handled and manipulated Peeta's love for her and the way that she just brushed off her mother just turned me off. I didn't even want her to get together with Peeta when I was reading the first book...i was a bit "pro kale" (katniss and Gale)... when I was reading it... but even though i didn't like peeta too much, Katniss' demeanor toward him just seemed plain wrong. I mean, I realize that perhaps the loss of her father caused her to have that cold shoulder toward certain people but Harry Potter had a pretty sucky childhood and still was able to properly love. I decided not to read the rest of the series (my friends told me that if I didn't like the first book the next ones were just going to get worse). However, I watched the movie last tuesday and the acting and the sets really made the book come alive to me. It's probably one of the better book-to-film adaptations that I've seen. It didn't change my thoughts about Katniss' character, but it made me want to finish the trilogy. so i did. At about 1 am last night. :] I have a few mixed feelings about the books though. I think I liked Catching Fire more than I liked The Hunger Games simply because Katniss' character really started to develop. Not only that, but Peeta's determination to keep loving Katniss no matter what was just really...i want to say virtuous, but i think some of my friends will yell at me for using ambiguous terminology. Though I have heard someone say that Peeta's love for Katniss was not real love, but lust... but i don't buy that. If he only lusted after Katniss, he would have dropped her as a friend after she rejected him on the train home from the hunger games (and continued to lust at a distance). I've never been in that kind of situation, but i feel like you would only fight that hard for the people you love, not the people you lust after. Plus, Peeta saw Katniss as a person, not a body. Anyway haha if you're interested in why I titled this blog post the way I did, I realize that the Hunger Games trilogy is A LOT like the Harry Potter series. For instance: 1. President snow intrudes into Kaniss's home in Catching Fire. Rufus Scrimgeour barges into the Weasley's right before Bill's wedding in HP7. 2. Gale's jealousy of Peeta's relationship with Katniss. Ron's jealousy toward Harry and Hermione in HP7. (Though when you have a heroic trio there's only so many patterns of love you can spin.) 3. The rebels vs. the Capitol felt a bit too similar to The order of the Phoenix vs. the Ministry of magic. (There is a difference i guess though... cause one government is corrupt while the other is sickly tyrannical.) 4. Harry is The Boy Who Lived. Katniss is the Mockingjay. Both are rebel poster children. 5. Harry and Katniss are both war heroes. 6. Finnick and Annie's kid is like Lupin's and Tonk's kid in a way. 7. Hermione is tortured in Malfory Mannor. Peeta is tortured in the Captitol (though Peeta's torture is like 10000000000000000000x worse). 7. Death. Oh my goodnesss EVERYONE dies. Here is where I think Collins doesn't deal with death as well as Rowling does. Rowling had reasons for killing off her characters...she used these deaths address the nature of death, the nature of grief, and the nature of war while Collins kills off characters to simply imply that war is brutal and damaging. Despite the similarities between Rowling's and Collins' work, I think that Harry Potter wins out. Collin's choice of which characters she kills and how Katniss deals with the grief seems a little sloppy... there were some characters that died for unnecessary purposes... their deaths just left Katniss deeply deeply deeply scarred, suicidal, and almost insane. On the other hand, the characters that Rowling choices to ax were just as close to Harry as the characters who died in the Hunger Games were to Katniss, if not closer (I apologize for my crappy sentence structure... trying to avoid major major spoilers). Yet, Harry's tale is able to end with "all is well" while Katniss' story ends with how best she can tell her children of her bitter past. Reading Mockingjay's epilogue gave me this really intense "she-is-still-severly-haunted-by-her-past" kind of feeling. In comparison, by highlighting the better future that Harry helped create in her epilogue, Rowling was able to leave her audience with the "all is well" feeling. Plus, at the end of Mockingjay, I'm still not convinced that Katniss really feels like she finally has freedom. Though so much of the story, Collins emphasizes how Snow and Coin use her like a puppet. When both Snow and Coin are dead and gone, Katniss doesn't seems free, but broken. Collins leaves you with this feeling that Snow and Coin's death don't change the fact that Snow and Coin have clipped Katniss' wings. Plus, the demise of her relationship with Gale also has this "i'm-too-broken-by-what-you-could-have-done-to-mend-this-relationship" feel. And just like that, Gale is gone. Idk, Mockingjay definitely had a "this-is-what-war-is-like-and-how-war-changes-you" feeling, but it seemed a bit much. Maybe this is just the "i-want-a-really-happy-ending" part of me speaking. But this did make me wonder. Rowling's purpose in writing HP was geared toward addressing the themes of Love, Death, and Grief. The death of her mother had a huge role in helping her craft the story. On the other hand, Collin's purpose in writing HG was geared toward addressing the sick effects of war. Her father was a veteran and she said he was instrumental in laying the foundation to her stories. I guess the questions I have are, 1. Was Rowling being idealistic in thinking that an "all is well" future for Harry was possible in lieu of his grief and war tainted past? 2. Was Collins wrong in assuming that Katiness would never be able to escape the past? Things to remember though... Katiness saw a LOT more bloodshed than Harry saw. She went through a LOT more trauma than Harry did.