Why did I chose Mockingjay?
Mockingjay was used by Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games trilogy in order to choose free will against the will of Panem Capitol. Hunger Games Trilogy is basically science fiction. It's a story about The Capitol in which there were 12 districts. All these districts were oppressed by the Panem (a state in Capitol) because of an ancestral rebellion by the people of these districts that took place against Panem almost a century ago. They were oppressed economically, socially, emotionally psychologically since so many years. Each year in order to revive the memory of what happened almost a century ago, Panem selects 2 teenage tributes from each district. These 24 tributes are then being sent into an Arena specially designed by the game makers of Panem. The rule is to kill or let others kill you. Only one tribute surviving, in the end, is the winner of these hunger games. The Arena designed by game makers was such that everything inside was controlled by Panem (for instance the fire caused in the woods). Hunger games was a way of Panem conveying the message every year that Panem is the one who has power over everyone else.
Katniss Everdeen was from district 12 and when her younger sister was chosen as a tribute for the 74th annual hunger games, she volunteered herself in order to save her sister. The whole hunger game trilogy is a story of how Katniss never wanted to become a puppet in the Arena who has to kill others in order to survive because Panem wants it so. In her quest, she had used the symbol of Mockingjay.
Mockingjay is a species of bird accidentally produced by the mating of jabbarjays and mocking birds. Jabbarjays were genetically engineered birds produced by Panem to spy on other districts. Jabbarjay had the capability to listen to full-length human speech and reproduce it from their memory. Soon Panem realized that jabbarjays are a liability to their own secrecies so they killed most of them and the rest fled in to wild. In the wild jabbarjays mated with mockingbirds and hence Mockingjay as an offspring came in with similar capabilities.
I don't know why but I feel so closely related to Mockingjay and the story of Katniss. I feel like this whole world is actually an Arena designed by God. That each and every circumstance of this world is controlled by God only. I don't want to generalize by saying we humans have the belief, and so I will talk about my own subjective feelings. I once used to believe that I had free will and I am the master of my own sea, but life has made me realized that this sea is purely a creation of God and the waves of this sea cannot change its direction unless God wills. I feel like all human beings on the planet earth are like tributes and are purely determined in the way they behave because their behaviour is technically an outcome of their internal and external stimuli. They simply don't have control over it. Our circumstances, our rearing, basically the atmosphere and our gardener decide which kind of a creature we'll become in the process of becoming. Whether we'll be a rose, a cactus or maybe a mushroom.
All my life I wondered why I am the way I am and all my life I have tried my best to not become that which is not desirable, that which cannot ever survive. But I ended up becoming the one I don't want to become. It took me ten years to realize that no matter how far I keep myself away from the identity which I don't want to accept it is there programmed in me. Being deviant was never my conscious choice and I still find it very difficult to accept it but it's there, brutally tattooed in my rearing. I feel like a tribute who has no choice other than just to survive in this real-life Arena.
The symbol of Katniss Everdeen served to be a rebellion symbol. Her quest in the hunger games of not to be the one whose life will be determined by the so-called destiny maker, the Panem, started a wave of rebellion in the Capitol once more. When I chose this same symbol for my tattoo, my purpose was not to rebel against God, I do believe in Him since my childhood, but I do want to question Him a lot of things as in for instance why genocides? Why He wants to damage some people and let them be the victims of the oppressors? Why I feel like this world is an Arena and the rule for survival is to become either an oppressor or a victim? Why I felt like I had free will when all my decisions and all my behaviour was just an outcome of what happened to me? Why I cannot stay away from that which I don't want to become? I feel like I am the odd one left out who will never be able to participate in conformity to the laws of God's "Normal Nature".
- Sheliza Hyder.
P.S. Dan Brown in his book "The Lost Symbol", describes the art of tattooing in the following words. I am mentioning those lines here because these hit me hard.
"The goal of tattooing was never beauty. The goal was change. From the scarified Nubian priests of 2000 B.C., to the the tattooed acolytes of the Cybele cult of ancient Rome, to the moko scars of the modern Maori, humans have tattooed themselves as a way of offering up their bodies in partial sacrifice, enduring the physical pain of embellishment and emerging changed beings.
The act of tattooing one's skin was a transformative declaration of power, an announcement to the world: I am in control of my own flesh. The intoxicating feeling of control derived from physical transformation had addicted millions to flesh-altering practices... cosmetic surgery, body piercing, body building and steroids... even bulimia and transgendering. The human spirit craves mastery over its carnal shell."
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