Mockingjay

Mockingjay sounds like something that would look good as a pen name or an alias. Too bad it’s already very popular, thanks to the best-selling Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

Mockingjay is a fictional bird. In the books, it is a species created by mating of a mockingbird with another fictional species, the jabberjay. The jabberjays are like gps systems, they can track the locations of people, spy on them, and give back information to their masters. Can you imagine their gps reviews had they been for real? So the books are about this dystopian society wherein people once rebelled and used the jabberjay to send false information to the government. That’s why the bird was allowed to get extinct, but not before the mockingjays were born. Thus, the hybrid became a symbol of rebellion.

 

I’ve only read the first book, The Hunger Games. It’s a fantastic read, I tell you. A little violent and maybe won’t suit everybody’s taste because the concept is that in that future world, they use unwilling children to fight each other to the death in an arena where only one survives, while the whole world is watching from their television screens. It’s a big arena, like an entire forest area, and there are man-made traps besides the weapons and fear the contestants already carry. Those from rich cities who have sponsors are sometimes given better tools, maybe even gps trackers, to up their chances of survival. Brutal, no? Imagine being the poor one, with no sponsor, no gps, no extra source of food, and generally no hope.  

So I’m hoping to get started on Catching Fire next week so I can read Mockingjay, which was released just this week. I think a movie adaptation is already in the works.