Last week's post dealt with the disturbing trend to force a love triangle into every new YA novel or series of novels. I stated there that readers deserve better than to have their emotions manipulated, and that often these storylines distract readers from the main plot. It's a cheap, easy way to ramp up the drama or conflict, but it's quickly becoming formulaic. Don't be "that writer."
****Spoiler Alert for Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games****
Back to The Hunger Games and why the "love triangle" in the series actually isn't.
Katniss and Gale have a best-friends-and-hunting-buddies relationship. Gale may or may not be in love with her, but we do know for certain that Katniss isn’t at all sure how she feels about Gale. Her main concern is that Gale will marry one of the other girls in town and she’ll lose her best friend. Nor is she interested in exploring her feelings. She doesn’t want to be seen as somebody who “needs” a love interest. This is one of the few areas in her life where she has control. If you choose not to marry and have children, it’s for damn certain that you won’t have to watch any of them fight to the death on national television. It’s all she can do at age sixteen to keep food on the table and help raise her younger sister while her mother tries to manage depression and put her life back together after the death of her husband.
Katniss hardly noticed Peeta until they were both sent to The Capitol and Peeta announces his unrequited love for Katniss on live television, knowing one or both of them were going to die and it would come to naught anyway, so, why not declare it. Readers and critics have called this move “manipulative.” If they weren’t about to enter a battle to the death, I’d agree, but the circumstances change everything.
Peeta and Gale never confront each other. Neither of them ever confronts Katniss, nor does either one of them try to coerce her into choosing between them. Katniss is left to make her own choice, a healthy beginning for a relationship. The reader is left to speculate that, if the situation had been different, would Katniss have chosen Gale? Or, even if the Games and the revolution had not occurred, would Gale and Katniss still be too much alike to be able to achieve a relationship that has balance and staying power? In Mockingjay, Katniss herself concludes: “On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.”
Maybe Gale would have come back from District #2 at the end of Mockingjay if Katniss had asked him to. Maybe they simply missed their moment, both having been too altered by their experiences to get back that innocent camaraderie they experienced before the Games and the revolution turned their world upside down. But Peeta, even after all they went through together, is “the dandelion in the spring,” the boy who loved her from afar and sneaked bread to her at the risk of his mother’s harsh punishment when he knew her family was starving. He gives her hope and represents rebirth rather than destruction. We are left with the impression from Katniss’s internal monologue that she would have chosen Peeta anyway. No phony destiny or soul-matedness, just a calm assurance that Peeta is what she wants and needs.
So, readers, please stop putting this book series on your YA Romance shelf, and stop referring to the Katniss-Peeta-Gale subplot as a “love triangle.”
And authors and prospective authors, please think twice about forcing yet another formulaic, predictable “love triangle” upon your characters and readers.
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