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trilogy is in stoking the flames of the rebellion.
    In Nineteen Eighty-Four , Winston and Julia’s love story starts when Julia slips Winston a piece of paper as they bump into one another one day.
    Whatever was written on the paper, it must have some kind of political meaning.... He flattened it out. On it was written, in a large unformed handwriting: I LOVE YOU.
    If that sounds like a bait-and-switch—he expected something political, but really she’s in love with him!—think again. Love when there isn’t supposed to be love is a hugely subversive political act. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be protest marches in countries all over the world demanding same-sex marriage. It was illegal until 1967 for black and white people to marry one another in some parts of the USA. A 2007 survey found that more than half of the Jewish people in Israel believed intermarriage between Jewish females and Arab males was equivalent to national treason.

    When the love you feel is against the laws of those in control, then love is a political act. It’s true in the real world, true in Nineteen Eighty-Four , and true in the Hunger Games.
    When Katniss and Peeta make as if to kill themselves rather than one another at the end of the first Games, it is seen by President Snow as dangerous because it could be interpreted as an act of rebellion. In Catching Fire , he demands that Katniss convince the districts that she acted out of love for Peeta, not out of defiance against the Capitol. As far as Snow can see, her actions are either/or—either Katniss looks like a rebel or she looks like a girl in love; her motivation can only be one or the other.
    What President Snow never understands is that choosing love over survival is the ultimate act of defiance Katniss can make. It’s not one or the other; the love and rebellion are one in the same.
    The Capitol teaches almost everyone to see the tributes as less than human: when Katniss is first being styled by her prep team, they wax and scrub her and then declare happily that she looks almost like a person. Before that, when Katniss says good-bye to Gale, he tells her that killing the other tributes won’t be any different to killing animals in the woods. When President Snow’s scientists hijack Peeta and make him think that Katniss is a mutt it is only another example of the Capitol’s commitment to dehumanization.
    But Katniss doesn’t accept that. She sees the value in human life, even as she is forced into becoming a killer and soldier. She teams up with Rue in the arena, rather than simply killing the little girl and taking out some of her competition. When Rue dies, Katniss sings to her, and covers her with flowers.
    The effect of this tiny, humanizing act—singing to a dying child—has immediate and far reaching consequences. Rue’s
district sends Katniss bread. Rue’s fellow tribute spares her life when they face off later in the Games. In Catching Fire , it’s Rue’s song that the district whistles to Katniss to show their support for her, and in Mockingjay Boggs offers Katniss’ singing as a moment when he was touched by her.
    Do you begin to see what President Snow couldn’t?
    Love, like fire, is catching.
    Katniss, going along with Snow’s plan to make the romance with Peeta seem to be the cause of her actions, can’t see it either. But with every interview and appearance, she declares herself loyal to something other than the Capitol. And love has already proved to be more powerful than the Capitol, because both of District 12’s tributes have survived the Games.
    Another post-apocalyptic political story of recent years was the graphic novel, and subsequent film, V for Vendetta . It, like the Hunger Games, is the story of the figurehead of a rebellion, and of a teenage girl, Evie. It, too, shows clear echoes of Nineteen Eighty-Four in its storytelling.
    When Evie is captured by the police and taken to jail, she finds a letter hidden in her cell. It was from an