Read The Girl Who Was on Fire for Free Online Page B

earlier prisoner, Valerie, and tells the story of Valerie’s life. Valerie was gay, rounded up and put to death in a concentration camp. In the letter left behind, she wrote:
    Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us. ... An inch, it is small and it is fragile, but it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. ... what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you.
    Valerie died because of who she loved, but her love is stronger than the hate that executed her. It survives her death, waiting patiently in the cell until Evie comes and finds it later.
    Julia and Winston’s love doesn’t survive the things that they are put through when they are captured—the tortures hijack that last inch of them. When they see each other again, as broken and hijacked as Peeta becomes in Mockingjay , Winston thinks of an old song lyric:
    Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me.
    The last time Katniss sees Peeta in the war, before trying to infiltrate Snow’s mansion and instead witnessing the violent and horrific death of her sister, she imagines Gale being taken by Peacekeepers and Peeta being forced to take the nightlock poison. She then thinks of “The Hanging Tree” song:
    Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
    Combined, the two songs become a question posed to Peeta and Katniss: will fear, torture, hate, lust for power, and the desire for self-preservation ultimately prove to be so strong that even lovers would betray each other? Are they coming to the chestnut tree, where they will sell each other out?
    The Hunger Games, however, declare that no, love does conquer hate, even in circumstances as dire as Katniss and Peeta’s. Their love survives what Winston and Julia’s cannot.
    Katniss and Peeta both have moments of suicidal despair in Mockingjay . Peeta is tortured until he can’t even remember what his favorite color is, much less whether or not he loves Katniss.
Katniss loses Prim, the sister she loves more than her own life. They are broken as absolutely as Julia and Winston are broken.
    But Katniss is driven by love and compassion, even when the thing she loves most in the world is dead. When President Coin asks the surviving tributes whether another Hunger Games should be held, Katniss understands that Coin is no different, in the end, than Snow. In order to ensure herself an opportunity to assassinate Coin, Katniss gives a vote of yes to the new round of Games, and says that she does so “for Prim.”
    The explanation seems, on the surface, to be one of vengeance: for Prim’s death, Katniss wants to see the children of the Capitol suffer in the same way. But in reality her motivation is self-sacrifice: Katniss began her journey when she put her own life in danger for Prim, for a child who would otherwise have died in the arena. Expecting to die after the assassination, Katniss once again places the life of children bound for the arena before her own by killing the woman who would have reinstated the Games. And Katniss does so out of love—she does it for Prim, even if Prim is already dead.
    Katniss remains true, even in the face of crushing loss and the prospect of her own death, to an ideal that Winston has in Nineteen Eighty-Four but is ultimately unable to uphold himself: “the object was not to stay alive but to stay human.” Katniss retains that last inch of integrity and love that Valerie of V for Vendetta prized above life.
    This is not to say that the power of love is always a triumphant force in the Hunger Games. Katniss’ mother is a skilled healer who can face terrible injury and illness without flinching, but losing her husband almost killed her and, because she was