Mockingjay: Chapter 26 Summary & Analysis

Katniss isn’t foolish enough to believe Snow without any evidence: the problem is that she has just enough evidence to see that Snow must be telling the truth. The darker implication of Snow’s argument is that Coin wanted the other districts to be as weak as possible: this is part of the reason that District 13 has been laying dormant for so many years. By letting the districts do Coin’s dirty work for her, Coin was able to swoop in and claim power without any further fighting.

Katniss realizes that Coin has murdered as many of her friends as has Snow—they really are alike. It’s important that Katniss’s mind jumps to Gale for the first time, it would seem, since they became separated. Katniss has been too busy thinking about revenge against Snow—revenge that now doesn’t seem so satisfying and clear-cut.

The single arrow that Katniss holds symbolizes her greatest strength and her greatest weakness. She’s a strong, resourceful young woman, but she’s also a pawn and a weapon, whether for the Capitol or for the rebels. This is confirmed by the presence of Effie Trinket, previously an organizer for the Hunger Games—it would seem that nothing has changed under the new regime. Gale’s apparent indifference to Prim’s death signals the principle difference between him and Peeta, now that the trilogy draws to a close—Gale is fundamentally a callous person who is willing to commit evil acts “for the greater good,” while Peeta is a sensitive, empathetic person who doesn’t believe that the ends justify the means.

There’s great pathos in the fact that the Hunger Games tributes were the most heavily devastated demographic of Panem: they’ve been forced to fight with one another against their wills, but then they’re blamed for the conflict above all other citizens. They are, above all, victims of their own prestige—their fame makes it impossible for them to escape some kind of punishment, whether by the rebels or the government.

Coin is cold and rational, much like Gale—she wants Capitol officials dead, but also wants to repopulate Panem. This is also Collins’s way of showing us that very little will change in Panem under President Coin. There will still be cruel, corrupt people in power who place little value on human lives. In many ways, Peeta was right when Flickerman interviewed him—the only real change that will come of the war between the rebels and the government is the loss of many lives in combat. Tyranny itself will not go away, only change its name from “Snow” to “Coin.”

Collins runs through the ceremony quickly, preventing us from savoring any details of a fundamentally bloodthirsty, sensationalist event. This is entirely intentional, as Collins wants us to see such ceremonies for what they really are: a glamorization of murder, whether the murder of Hunger Games tributes or of corrupt politicians. The death of President Coin comes as a surprise—Collins’ great “twist” of the trilogy’s finale—and is a final act of agency on Katniss’s part. She has been a pawn for both Snow and Coin, but part of her power as a symbol is her danger, as represented by the arrow she wields. In this moment Katniss the symbol again becomes Katniss the person, a warrior fighting independently for what she thinks is right.