A NOTE ON THE SPOILERS
A while ago I got a comment tantrum from a semiliterate rando because apparently some people are too stupid to understand a SPOILER WARNING, so I thought I’d elaborate on my exact definition of a spoiler. I AM GOING TO SUMMARIZE THE ENTIRE BOOK, INCLUDING THE ENDING. Think of me as a very niche Wikipedia. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to stop reading at any time. I don’t make money from this content. I don’t care how many people read it.
This is your legacy, Fedup: an extra line on an obscure book blog that probably doesn’t even have ten followers. It’s not exactly a Nobel prize, but it’s still quite a nifty little achievement. Your parents must be so proud. Please seek help.
The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers for pretty much the entire series. Other reviews in this series can be found here.
Ugh, fine. I’ll admit it: I actually really like Peeta, and I always have. This in no way changes my opinion that love triangles are stupid and I remain bewildered by Collins’s apparent need to force Katniss into romance, but I do like the boy with the bread. There is of course a whole school of thought on that love triangle and its symbolism and per usual I don’t agree with it, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
There is a certain advantage to reviewing the series so late, after I have already read it in its entirety multiple times: I know every thread and every twist and I know where it’s all going, and I am far better grounded than I would be if I were coming to this series fresh. From this vantage, it makes the most sense to start with the setting. Every Hunger Games book takes place in Panem – short for panem et circenses, “bread and circuses” – a dismal country that really understands its own branding. The fate of the rest of the world is never explained, but Panem is the current iteration of North America, which succumbed to natural disasters and warfare in a time out of memory. From the ashes of the continent rose the Capitol, a shining city ringed by thirteen districts, each specializing in a different industry. However, the Capitol is not known for its generosity, and the districts revolted during a period known as the Dark Days. Twelve were defeated and the thirteenth bombed to dust, and the Capitol forced the survivors to accept the Treaty of Treason, which instituted severe laws to ensure peace.
These laws included the creation of the Hunger Games, an annual televised melee in which each district sends one boy and one girl, called tributes, to the Capitol to fight to the death in a specially designed arena. Over the last several decades, these arenas have become playgrounds for the Hunger Games administrators, known as Gamemakers, who have taken on the role of Dungeon Master as they manipulate the tributes for the excitement of the audience. In addition to the environmental traps set by the Gamemakers, the Games typically include a host of “muttations,” more commonly referred to as “mutts,” animals that have been genetically engineered as weapons. The last tribute standing is crowned the victor and is given a house in the Victors’ Village, an exclusive neighborhood built in every District, while their District is showered with expensive gifts from the Capitol.
Where the original Games involved nothing more complex than throwing twenty-four teenagers into an abandoned arena with a handful of weapons and then filming the results, they have evolved over time, to the point that the tributes are now treated like gladiators and the Games themselves have become a cross between a battle royale and a beauty pageant. In the Capitol, the deaths of these children have been normalized to an insane degree: almost everyone eagerly anticipates the ceremony in which the tributes are chosen, called the reaping; old arenas are popular tourist destinations; Capitol citizens participate in the Games by placing bets and sending gifts to their favorites; and the Games have spawned a whole professional ecosystem, providing jobs to probably at least three-quarters of the Capitol’s population. Meanwhile, the wealthier, more Capitol-friendly Districts have spent the last several generations raising so-called “Career Tributes,” who are trained for the Games from an early age, and who then volunteer for the glory of their District. With the advantage of this extra training, the Careers typically win. In the poorer Districts things are less rosy, but they too are forced to buy into the Games through the tesserae system, which allows age-eligible children to earn more food for their families in exchange for increasing their chances of being chosen in the reaping. All of this takes place under the stern and – if you believe the propaganda – benevolent eye of President Coriolanus Snow, who once had a really bad summer and has never let the rest of the country forget it.
Thus, Panem wakes up to another reaping sixty-four years after Lucy Gray Baird became District 12’s first victor, and twenty-four years after Haymitch Abernathy became its second. Lucy Gray is long forgotten but Haymitch is still around, and in fact has spent the last couple of decades trying to mentor the tributes of District 12. It might be bad luck or it might be Haymitch’s alcoholism, but either way District 12 hasn’t had a victor since the 50th Hunger Games, and the reaping is widely regarded as a death sentence. Enter Katniss Everdeen, daughter of Asterid March and Burdock Everdeen, a steel-spined sixteen-year-old with a gift for archery. Born and raised in the Seam, the poorest part of the District, Katniss became the head of her household and her family’s primary breadwinner at the age of eleven, when her father died in a mine explosion and her mother succumbed to grief. After a rough couple of months, she learned to hunt and gather in the woods adjacent to her family’s home, and, with the help of fellow hunter Gale Hawthorne (age eighteen and possessed of smoldering good looks), she has been feeding her family – consisting of her mother and her beloved younger sister, Primrose (“Prim”) – for the last five years. This is illegal, but the District 12 Peacekeepers like meat as much as anyone else and they’re some of Katniss’s best customers, so nobody bats an eye when she and Gale regularly turn up with fresh game. Unfortunately, she has also still had to rely on the tesserae provided by the Capitol, with the result that she is now twenty times more likely to be chosen in the reaping. Even worse, Prim has recently turned twelve and is now old enough to be sent to the Games; however, Katniss has forbidden her to accept any tesserae, so her chances of being chosen are minimal – but never zero, as they learn when Prim is chosen by bubbleheaded escort Effie Trinket, who apparently has been stuck with District 12 ever since she helped propel Haymitch to victory.
With no other options, Katniss immediately volunteers to take Prim’s place. She expects nothing in the way of support from her own people, but is moved almost to tears when the audience gives her the traditional District 12 farewell salute, marking her as something beloved. However, goodbyes are short, and she is shortly shipped off to the Capitol with only a gold mockingjay pin to remind her of home, gifted to her by Madge Undersee, daughter of the mayor and niece of Maysilee Donner. She is accompanied by classmate Peeta Mellark, son of the bakers, who once secretly gave her enough bread to keep her family going during the worst time. In the present day, Katniss has dubbed him the boy with the bread, and, though she barely knows him, she feels indebted to him and is extremely uncomfortable in his presence. For his part, Peeta has had a massive crush on Katniss since almost the moment he laid eyes on her, but he doesn’t tell her so much as announce it on national TV during his interview with Games host Caesar Flickerman. This confuses Katniss enormously: even if she were not naturally suspicious of most people, the inevitable outcome of the Games – that is, that only one person can survive – throws a shadow over Peeta’s announcement, and she privately overanalyzes everything he does and says. On the bright side, her prep team is top-notch, and her stylist turns out to be a young man named Cinna, who appears to have more sense and far more empathy than the average Capitol citizen. Thanks to his brilliant work, Katniss becomes known as “the girl on fire,” making her a sensation overnight. Even Haymitch comes around enough to agree to try to keep the kids alive, though he and Katniss are too much alike to really get along.
The beginning of the actual Games is fairly conventional (as far as the Games go): the Careers from Districts 1 and 2 team up and quickly take over the Cornucopia, a golden horn-shaped structure filled with food, weapons, and other vital supplies, while those tributes less capable of battle scatter across the arena. Though he comes from an outlying District, Peeta manages to get in with the Career pack by promising he can lead them to Katniss, but he then tries to protect her by feeding them misinformation. This protection is not apparent to Katniss, who sees Peeta with the pack and concludes – not unreasonably – that he is out to get her. Things seem grim when the pack corners her up a tree, but the standoff comes to an abrupt end when she drops a nest of angry tracker jackers – wasp mutts packed with hallucinogenic venom – directly on top of them. Most of the pack manages to escape the wasps; the District 1 girl, Glimmer, isn’t so lucky. Despite some trippy hallucinations, in which a sparkling Peeta screams at her to run for her life, Katniss steals Glimmer’s bow and arrows before passing out from the venom. Fortunately for her, the Careers are equally pumped with venom and the rest of the field isn’t as much of a threat, so she has a few days to recuperate.
Finally armed and with the venom out of her system, Katniss forms an impromptu team with Rue, a sweet twelve-year-old from District 11. Together they manage to blow up the supplies at the Cornucopia, leaving the Career pack without food, but this comes at a terrible cost: Rue is caught by the District 1 boy, Marvel, and, though he is killed in his turn by Katniss, she can only watch as Rue dies. Furious and grieving, Katniss covers Rue with flowers and gives her the District 12 salute, which – though outwardly harmless – is still rebellious enough to get cut out of the final Hunger Games highlights film. It seems like the end of Katniss’s ally days, but the Games acquire an unprecedented wrinkle when Hunger Games announcer Claudius Templesmith notifies the surviving tributes that, for the first time in Hunger Games history, two tributes will be crowned as winners if they come from the same District. Katniss welcomes this news and manages to find Peeta, who was badly wounded during a fight with District 2’s Cato and has been in hiding ever since. Outside of the arena, Haymitch persuades a number of wealthy sponsors to support the star-crossed lovers from District 12 and is able to send in a number of expensive gifts, though Katniss quickly comes to realize that these gifts will arrive only if she and Peeta perform well for the cameras.
After a few days spent in hiding, trying unsuccessfully to treat Peeta’s worsening blood poisoning and grappling with her cautious feelings for him, Katniss is finally lured out of hiding by the promise of high-grade Capitol medicine, which can only be acquired at a special Hunger Games “feast.” This leads to her and Peeta’s first real fight, as he tries to persuade her not to throw away her life for his need, but Haymitch sends in enough sleeping syrup to knock him out for a day, and Katniss makes it to the feast. She is nearly killed by Clove, the girl from District 2, but is unexpectedly saved by Thresh, the massive District 11 boy, who kills Clove out of anger after she boasts about killing Rue. Upon learning that Katniss had loved Rue and had given her a burial of sorts, Thresh lets her go and lures Cato away from her, warning her that this is only a one-time deal. With this understanding in place, Katniss returns to Peeta and administers the medicine, saving his life. Things don’t go as smoothly for their remaining adversaries: the sly redheaded District 5 girl (nicknamed “Foxface” by Katniss) eats the poisonous nightlock berries unwittingly harvested by Peeta and quietly dies; Thresh is killed, presumably by Cato, and Cato himself is attacked by a pack of mutant wolves engineered to resemble the fallen tributes. Though Katniss and Peeta try to let the wolves take care of Cato, his suffering eventually becomes so great that Katniss finally shoots him with her last arrow, ending his misery.
This ought to mean that the Games are over, and that Katniss and Peeta have won. In reality, nothing is that easy, and Claudius Templesmith returns long enough to announce that the previous amendment has been canceled, and there can now be only one victor. Peeta tries to convince Katniss to take the win, but Katniss, seething over the Capitol’s bullshit, instead proposes that they both commit suicide with the leftover nightlock berries, leaving the Capitol with no victor at all. They almost succeed in eating the berries but are stopped at the last minute by a panic-stricken Templesmith, who hastily crowns them both the victors of the 74th Hunger Games. And even that’s not the end of it: Haymitch privately warns Katniss that she’s in big trouble, and that the Capitol will be looking for a way to punish her for showing them up. After the festivities that mark the end of the Games, Katniss returns to District 12 a scared teenager terrified of the Capitol, exactly as she was when she left. As a crowning insult, Haymitch instructs both Katniss and Peeta to keep up the relationship ruse as long as the cameras around, and Peeta realizes that their entire romance has been a sham.
I have read this book so many times, and every time it seems like I always forget how much I like Katniss. She doesn’t sound like heaps of fun on paper – she’s unfriendly and borderline humorless, she’s always angry and looking for an insult, she’s so unabashedly unsentimental that her anecdote about the crazy lynx that kept following her around and scaring her prey away actually got me to side with the lynx – but she never becomes unlikable. The girl literally goes on national TV and tells the whole country that the most impressive part of the Capitol is the lamb stew, we love a relatable queen. Nor is she completely unable to get along with other people: she shares a close friendship with Gale, though time and hormones will ruin this, and she absolutely adores Prim, for whose sake she agreed to keep a scruffy orange cat appropriately named Buttercup. (Katniss and Buttercup have never gotten along, but they’re at least at the point where he’s stopped hissing at her.) In the arena she befriends Rue, who becomes like a sister to her, and she mourns Thresh when he dies. She’s tough, but she isn’t made of stone; and, though her romance with Peeta is mostly for show and her actual feelings are far more muddled, she also comes to care for him deeply. She wouldn’t go running into a Hunger Games feast for just anybody.
The relationship with Peeta will grow murkier over the next two books as it begins to conflict with the relationship with Gale, but to be perfectly honest I’ve never liked this aspect of the series and I never will. You will never convince me that Katniss needed to partner up. Peeta might represent peace and Gale might represent war and the two of them can represent the choice Katniss makes – to seek a peaceful life or to continue down the path of violence and destruction – until the cows come home, but I still think a love triangle was a pretty crummy solution. If it was about getting Katniss to open up to other people, that could just as easily have been accomplished by bringing her closer to her community. The threads of it have been there since the beginning of the book. Madge giving her the mockingjay pin. Peeta’s father bringing her cookies before her departure, promising to make sure Prim doesn’t starve. The entire District 12 audience giving her its silent salute, bidding her farewell. I would be less opposed to the romance if Katniss herself were more interested in it, but, as it is, she and Peeta don’t have any particular chemistry, and it feels so unnecessary.
On a more positive note, I liked Haymitch far better this go-round, largely thanks to Sunrise on the Reaping, which went a long way towards assuaging my sore feelings for him. Having now read his story, it was almost funny to see how thoroughly Katniss despises everything about him, from his drunken nosedive off the reaping stage to his careless habit of calling her “sweetheart”; but it was also so bitterly poignant to know that in another life, under other circumstances, he could’ve been Uncle Haymitch. None of this excuses his apathy in past Games, in which he has failed the District 12 tributes so terribly, but I understand it better. This is another reason I am glad to have read the entire series: I am grateful to know that Haymitch redeems himself somewhat over the course of the next two books, and that he does get better from here. And, though they fight like cats, I like that Katniss and Haymitch share a sort of cynical understanding that carries Katniss and Peeta to the first joint victory in Hunger Games history. Even if Katniss is convinced that Haymitch hates her, he shows up for her, and he is so ready to brawl against the stupid Gamemakers who want to give her breast implants without her knowledge or consent, and I just love him so much for that.
Ultimately, I feel I have been too harsh on this book in the past, which has been a consistent three stars every other time I’ve read it. Those other times that rating came from sheer boredom at watching Katniss trudge around the arena and almost die of dehydration, and it might possibly have had something to do with her spending more time falling in love in a cave than killing other tributes (I know, I’m terrible), but this time I was absolutely hooked from start to finish. Part of this is just the effect of time, both of having had more time to think about it and having grown old enough and cynical enough to appreciate the nuanced dystopia Collins has created, from the more obvious oppressions – the Hunger Games themselves – to the disturbing subtleties, such as the tesserae system, the gladiator-celebrity vibe of the tributes, the complexity and extravagance of a cuisine that in Snow’s youth was pure Americana, the sponsor gifts in the arena. I have seen these gifts referred to as “authorial laziness” by a reviewer/author who in my opinion should have known better, but they didn’t bother me. They are another wrinkle in the nastiness of the Games, another level of humiliation as the tributes desperately try to sell themselves to the wealthy just for a little extra food or medicine, another obstacle to victory as the gifts grow more expensive over the course of the Games, and it makes no sense not to include them. The other reason for this softening is of course the giant Hunger Games hangover Haymitch gave me; but I think it also helps to have the context of Snow’s story, as much as it kills me to admit that, because I’d still push him over a cliff if I could. I suppose that’s my own inner beast speaking, but I feel like Snow would understand.
And that dude can blather on all he wants about the goodness of his intentions, the need to keep the Hunger Games running to remind us all of who we truly are deep down in our hearts, the role he is playing in keeping the human species alive to give it the chance to evolve into something better (yes, really – he’s giving a whiff of Dune here), but it does my heart so much good to know that, almost seventy years later, those so-called “noble” intentions have been badly lost, if they were ever really communicated. It is entirely possible that the Temu version of Leto II’s authoritarian survival strategy was some mad fancy cooked up by Gaul and passed on to Snow, and that it just died with him – that is, that he used it to develop his policy but never shared his deeper reasoning with others. Either way, it seems to me that his greatest mistake was dressing up the Games to the extent that he has, to the point that the Capitol citizens, who historically have believed themselves morally superior to the riffraff of the Districts, now take nothing from the Games but their own pleasure and profit. Meanwhile the Districts merely see a constant cycle of grief and death and humiliation, and honestly, good for them. I mean, let’s call it what it is. It doesn’t matter how many dead philosophers Snow tries to call to his defense; there is no deeper meaning to any of what he does. The truth is what the people believe, and he’s going to spend the rest of his life finding that out.
