Mockingjay Chapter 24 Quotes
How we cite the quotes:
(Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote 1
The little girl who was watching me kneels beside a motionless woman, screeching and trying to rouse her. Another wave of bullets slices across the chest of her yellow coat, staining it with red, knocking the girl onto her back. For a moment, looking at her tiny crumpled form, I lose my ability to form words. (24.51)
This is a taste of the awfulness of the battle that's about to come. Innocent people are dying. Children are dying. And Katniss can't do anything to stop it. To make matters worse, there's no one side of the fight that's good and one side that's evil. Both sides are acting without compassion and are using inhumane tactics in their attempts to win the war.
Quote 2
A hovercraft marked with the Capitol's seal materializes directly over the barricaded children. Scores of silver parachutes rain down on them. Even in this chaos, the children know what silver parachutes contain. Food. Medicine. Gifts. They eagerly scoop them up, frozen fingers struggling with the strings. The hovercraft vanishes, five seconds pass, and then about twenty parachutes simultaneously explode. (24.74)
Help and aid turn into injury and death. This is one of the cruelest twists of fate presented throughout the war as more innocent people die yet again. This time, the children are tricked into accepting aid that turns out to be lethal. The incident seems to suggest that, no matter what, no one is ever safe.
Quote 3
"I'm not sure exactly. The one thing that I might still be useful at is causing a diversion. You saw what happened to that man who looked like me," he says. (24.26)
Yet again, Peeta steps bravely forward. He's still not fully recovered from being hijacked and yet he's determined to "be useful" doing the "one thing" that he still <em>can</em> do to help. That's giving himself up so the other rebels, including Katniss, can get through and get closer to Snow.
Quote 4
Trying to shout her name above the roar. I'm almost there, almost to the barricade, when I think she hears me. Because for just a moment, she catches sight of me, her lips form my name. (24.76)
Romantic love isn't the only kind of love in this text, nor is it perhaps the most powerful. The single event that makes Katniss feel most deeply is this glimpse she has of her sister, Prim. Katniss's whole journey started with an attempt to protect her sister. She's been through Games after Games because she volunteered to take her sister's place. That might be the greatest display of love throughout the books.
Quote 5
I wrap my arms around his neck, feel his arms hesitate before they embrace me. Not as steady as they once were, but still warm and strong. A thousand moments surge through me. All the times these arms were my only refuge from the world. Perhaps not fully appreciated then, but so sweet in my memory and now gone forever. (24.42)
Katniss turns to Peeta for comfort one last time, just as she turned to him for comfort so many times – "a thousand" – during the Games and the victory tour. Has anything of their friendship remained? Will she ever see him again? This might be the last time they'll ever embrace – the last time she will ever see or get to hold on to her friend.
Quote 6
Heart pounding, adrenaline burning through me, everyone is my enemy. Except Gale. My hunting partner, the one person who has my back. There's nothing to do but move forward, killing whoever comes into our path. (24.60)
In the Games, Katniss didn't have Gale at her "back" – she didn't have him to rely on, to be a team with. Instead, she had Peeta, whose skills complemented hers, but who – let's face it – was never a fighter. Gale can protect her and work with her in ways that Peeta just can't.
Quote 7
"Never underestimate the power of a brilliant stylist," says Peeta. (24.36)
As he used to, Peeta's able to twist his words to smooth out a situation and make everything better. He compliments Tigris and is able to pay her, in a certain sense, for helping the rebels out. The fact that the rebels need a stylist's help reinforces the parallels between the situation they're in and the ones Peeta and Katniss endured during the Games. Then, as now, they needed the battle armor that could only come from a "brilliant stylist." It's no accident that "brilliant" is the same word Katniss used to describe Cinna (1.34).
Quote 8
I fall into a doorway, tears stinging my eyes. Shoot me. That's what he was mouthing. I was supposed to shoot him! That was my job. That was our unspoken promise, all of us, to one another. And I didn't do it and now the Capitol will kill him or torture him or hijack him or – the cracks begin opening inside me, threatening to break me into pieces. (24.70)
Katniss is so overcome with emotion that she feels "cracks begin [to] open" within herself, just as they opened on the street mere moments ago. Her sense of self is being ravaged by the war just as the Capitol city is. Here, she fears she's sacrificed Gale unknowingly – that she didn't protect him (by killing him) the last time she had a chance to do so.