Mockingjay Chapter 5 Quotes

Mockingjay Chapter 5 Quotes

How we cite the quotes:
(Chapter.Paragraph)

Another force to contend with. Another power player who has decided to use me as a piece in her games, although things never seem to go according to plan.  […] But she [President Coin] has been the quickest to determine that I have an agenda of my own and am therefore not to be trusted. She has been the first to publicly brand me as a threat. (5.1)

No matter what she does or how hard tries, Katniss keeps ending up in the same darn position. Over and over again, she becomes someone else's tool, manipulated for someone else's ends. She always seems to be hopping from one bad situation to another. Just when she thinks she's safe, she's in more danger than ever.

"So, it'd be easy for you? Using that on people?" I ask.

"I didn't say that." Gale drops the bow to his side. "But if I'd had a weapon that could've stopped what I saw happen in Twelve... if I'd had a weapon that could have kept you out of the arena... I'd have used it." (5.58-59)

Here, the text seems to be asking whether it's <em>ever</em> OK to kill other people or to use such "a weapon" on someone else. Gale tries to explain that, in some situations, any weapon ought to be allowed, to protect the ones he loves from a terrifying alternative, like going to the arena.

"Oh," I whisper in admiration. I lift it carefully into the air to admire the exquisite balance, the elegant design, and the curve of the limbs that somehow suggests the wings of a bird extended in flight. There's something else. I have to hold very still to make sure I'm not imagining it. No, the bow is alive in my hands. (5.62)

Sometimes a weapon, a thing of destruction, can also be a thing of great beauty. The way Katniss describes it, this bow sounds most like an art object – the work of a master craftsman. And, since Beetee created it, in many ways it is. Yet this art object is perhaps one of the most deadly things the characters will encounter in the pages of <em>Mockingjay</em>.