#Hunger games theory

[between-the-pages-ofa-book]

While lots of reapings have been rigged, I wish people would understand that it makes no sense for every single reaping in the history of the Hunger Games to be rigged.

Prim wasn't reaped in order to further punish Haymitch. He'd already been broken beyond repair and pushed everyone away.

She was reaped for Suzanne Collins to show us that the odds are never in our favor, with Prim having 1 slip of paper in there versus her sister's 20.

The original trilogy was about a girl who just wanted to save her sister that turned into so much more. It wasn't a sort of chosen one story.

[melody-013]

No cause they cant erase Lucy Gray no matter how hard they try! They may erase her game, her memory but not her music, never her music. Cause the Covey may not sing anymore but their tale in songs will go on to their kids. Maude Ivory is Katniss's grandmother!! Thats how Katniss knows the Hanging Tree song! And i think when Katniss and Prim was kids and Katniss was singing the Hanging Tree and their mother took their necklaces they were making and said "dont sing that ever again" it was because she didnt want anyone knowing they were Covey. Singing that song could get you killed and thats why she didnt want anyone to know that theyre Covey!

They might make everyone forget about Lucy Gray but Covey will remember. Only way Katniss could know about that song is that shes Covey and Maude Ivory makes perfect sense! Maude Ivory loved to eat the plant Katniss and Katniss's dad knows about the lake which only the Covey's know and Katniss can sing everysong with hearing it once (or something like that) therefore Katniss is Maude Ivory's granddaughter!!

[millie-mei]

ok so this is just a thought that popped into my head while writing, but do you think the Capitol supplied the districts with like toothpaste or anything so--although the districts are barbaric--they are still somewhat hygienic because when the kids are reaped, they don't want someone with any "unattractive" features.

idk just a thought, but do you think the Capitol made any of the victors get braces or have surgery to fix their teeth when they won. Like I'm picturing little victor Finnick fresh from his games getting braces put on and it's breaking my heart oh my goodness.

if anyone has any thoughts on this let me know! Again, just a random idea I was thinking about.

[sirnica]

So, Haymitch's little brother (and mom and girlfriend) were all killed by Snow. We know that from the original trilogy.

But, if I was Snow and I wanted to get back at a kid who made us look dumb (and probably did something a lot "worse" because I really don't believe the forcefield was what really happened), how would I go about punishing him, while at the same time making sure the Games are entertaining?

Well, I would simply wait two years and send his brother in.

Haymitch would have to mentor him, being only eighteen himself, knowing there was nothing he could do to help him, not really at least.

Because Haymitch said they were all killed by Snow, but not how.

I really hope I'm not right.

[foog-ie]

SUNRISE ON THE REAPING SPOILERS

After finishing SOTR, to fill the whole in my heart, I was rewatching The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and I was thinking about how sad Snow’s and Tigris’ relationship is. And then how Tigris ends up getting cat ears.

Cat ears?

THE CAT EARED LADY IN HAYMITCH’S INTERVIEW CROWD? THE CAT EARED LADY WHO FEEDS HIM THE BIRDCAGE?!?!?

Im not crazy. Tigris was a stylist for the Hunger Games (mentioned in Mockingjay) and like Cinna the stylists would sit in the interview crowd. It depends on when she was fired from the stylist job but is it possible that the cat eared lady is Tigris?

Suzanne Collin’s drop a Tigris book and my life is yours🙏🙏

[tending-the-hearth]

going back through mockingjay and what do you MEAN clerk carmine is most likely the fiddler at annie and finnick's wedding, what do you MEAN clerk who was the one to bring lucy gray the katniss just before things fell apart and the one to raise the girl who became haymitch's reason for living what do you MEAN clerk got to see his sister and his niece's dreams come true as the hunger games are destroyed by a girl with lucy gray's fire and lenore dove's heart what do you MEAN clerk saw the arrows his friend made be part of the downfall of the capital what do you MEAN clerk lost his family but saw them live on in haymitch and katniss and peeta

[inkblotsonmyhands]

----- SPOILERS FOR SUNRISE ON THE REAPING BY SUSANNE COLLINS + BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES + HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY-----

one thing about me is that i loooove to overanalyze a piece of media. i just finished reading sunrise on the reaping after highly anticipating this book for a couple of months and now need to put down my thoughts about it somewhere so here we are.

for the majority of this discussion, im going to be comparing sunrise on the reaping, the ballad of songbirds and snakes, and the hunger games trilogy as three stories. im regarding the entire hunger games trilogy as one story because i see that as the story of katniss. the ballad of songbirds and snakes is the story of snow. sunrise on the reaping is the story of haymitch.

i think sunrise on the reaping is the worst hunger games book. that doesn't mean it's a bad book; it's just that the original trilogy and tbosas (which i personally loved) set a very high bar. i'm starting this off with a disclaimer that, although most of this post is criticism, i definitely did enjoy reading the book and i think it's generally pretty good. it's just not incredibly good.

this story explores two main themes: the first being propaganda, and the second being the question of why an oppressed population does not fight against authority. i think it tackles the theme of propaganda pretty well. we see multiple instances of media being altered to represent a certain narrative. haymitch operates within the games as a character he makes up, the "rascal" and tries to put out his own propaganda, but the capitol beats him at his own game and uses the rascal against him. there's also the posters in district 12 and the capitol, haymitch's reaping, louella's death and lou lou, and certainly many, many more examples im forgetting to mention. this is done well. however, i don't think the book does an amazing job at tackling its second topic. the thing is, susanne collins' books have a pattern of posing a question which, by the conclusion of the book (or series, if you look at the hunger games trilogy), the main character answers for themselves. the hunger games is about just war theory, which asks what is an acceptable cause for war and what are acceptable actions during a war. the series explores different takes on the answers to these questions through different characters, most prominently peeta and gale. simply put, gale stands for violence and peeta stands for diplomacy. by choosing peeta at the end of the series, katniss makes a decision about her own stance on the topic. the ballad of songbirds and snakes is about the social contract theory. snow has to decide what the purpose of the hunger games is, and he concludes by the end of the book that the hunger games exist as a representation of the natural state of man as described by thomas hobbes. sunrise on the reaping asks why haymitch, all the tributes, district 12, or the entirety of the population of the districts do not rebel against their oppressors: snow, the peacekeepers, ultimately the entire capitol, who they outnumber easily. and haymitch's answer to this question is... nothing. he just thinks about it a bunch of times but doesn't get anywhere beyond that. and yes, the reason he doesn't manage to answer that question is probably because he is busy attempting to carry out a rebel plot and failing, which is reasonable, but the story as a whole suffers from that question remaining unanswered. the propaganda point, while well done, is not a question. the book is just showing many examples of something. interesting, but not necessarily engaging. the other hunger games books invite the reader to think about the moral question of the book themselves and give deep insight on the main character through the way they go about answering it. sunrise on the reaping largely fails to do that with the kind of depth that the other books did.

this brings me to my second point. sunrise on the reaping (before the epilogue) ends with haymitch on a complete low, having failed to carry out his rebel plot and lost his family and girlfriend. the hunger games ends with katniss still traumatized and recovering, but free of the oppressive regime. the ballad of songbirds and snakes ends with snow ready to rise to power, having destroyed all evidence of his wrongdoing, and the one person who knows it all vanished. basically, the other two stories do not end on entirely sad notes for the main character. there's nothing wrong with a sad ending in a book, but it definitely took away from my enjoyment of the book because there was no reward at any point. the entire story felt futile, and, to make it worse, i knew throughout the story that it was going to be futile. the happy epilogue is also not particularly rewarding because it has basically nothing at all to do with the events of the book. i would say that the book's sad ending didn't even really impact me because it wasn't a surprise. the saddest moment to me was probably louella's death, but it had been so long since that happened by the end of the story that it didn't really compound at the conclusion. even then, louella's death was not particularly devastating, because i barely had any attachment to the character.

i think sunrise on the reaping suffers most severely from being an unplanned prequel. what i mean by this is that it was obviously not planned out while the hunger games trilogy was being written. this is absolutely normal and expected; the ballad of songbirds and snakes was also obviously unplanned. the difference, however, is that tbosas takes place 64 years before the start of the original trilogy. the only character from tbosas who is present in the main books is snow himself, and he's the villain who is not having regular intimate conversations with the hunger games' main character and multiple other characters. snow is in a position where his backstory could really be anything and it wouldn't throw off the hunger games; it would only recontextualize it. do i think susanne collins' had thought up lucy gray baird when she said that district 12 had only had two victors before katniss and peeta? no, not at all. she may have had a vague idea that she wanted district 12's first victor to have a history with snow, but i highly doubt she was a fully realized character. in fact, i would guess that the reason why she said two victors but only introduced haymitch was to give herself a nonspecific character she could come back to later. if you asked her while writing catching fire, "who was haymitch's mentor in his games?" her answer may have been "the first district 12 victor", or "that's a secret", or "i haven't decided", but you know what i think was definitely, definitely not the answer? "katniss's unlikely allies, wiress and mags."

sunrise on the reaping reveals that haymitch was close to many significant characters from the hunger games trilogy, then says that the reason why we get no indication of this in those books is because he decided to distance himself from everyone after snow ruined his life. the fact that he knew all these people so closely, though, does recontextualize a lot of the hunger games, but instead of adding fun gotchas, it just makes a lot of the story baffling. for example, we are told that haymitch is so traumatized from his games that he doesn't associate at all with any of the people he knew from that time in his life—yet, when beetee, who hatched the rebel plot that got beetee's own son killed and ruined haymitch's life, hatches a new plot centered around haymitch's childhood best friend's daughter, her boyfriend, and several other people he knows, haymitch simply goes along with it with little to no protest. if haymitch is apathetic to everyone and everything, why isn't he apathetic to the concept of revolution entirely? isn't his motivation not hurting himself and his loved ones no matter what? another example is the dynamics of the youth of haymitch's time in district 12. if maysilee, merilee, and astrid were the best of friends before the games, how is it that by the hunger games trilogy merilee and astrid had basically nothing to do with each other?

moving on. lenore dove suffers from a serious case of tell-dont-show, admittedly because she was off screen for most of the book. i will say that i found it very difficult to care about her and their relationship given how little time she spent actually doing anything in the story. her most important moment, i would say, was the conversation she and haymitch have the morning of the reaping, where she says that the reaping is not an inevitability, although i did think that haymitch didn't actually engage fully with that idea and there could have been more done with that line of thought. i also found her death to be, for lack of a better word, silly. lenore dove's death hinging on her happening to find a bag of poisoned gumdrops in a wholeass meadow and haymitch happening to feed them to her is just too chance-y to me and not the kind of calculated move snow would pull.

going further, snow fully ranting to haymitch about the covey for no reason and basically voluntarily revealing to him that the first district 12 victor was his sweetheart also seems very out of character for snow. it is definitely in character for him to be obsessed with lucy gray even after such a long time; but i found the verbal reveal of it all to haymitch rather contrived.

i don't want to end on a negative note, so im going to talk about some things i did like about the book. like i said before, i think the point about propaganda was displayed well. i think the book's greatest strength, however, is that it shows how long the revolution in the hunger games was in the making. admittedly, the failed rebel plot isn't wildly interesting to read, but i appreciate how it shows that the rebels successfully managed to break the arena in the 75th games but had been at it for years. i would also like to add that most of the criticisms i have stem from understandable causes, like lenore dove being tell-dont-show because she simply cannot be present during the games. the main thing i think didn't really need to be done was the abundance of cameos. i think a couple small cameos would have been a nice nod, but the way almost every character we got to know in this book was present in the humger games was a bit much to me.

in conclusion, sunrise on the reaping adds an interesting new perspective to the world of the hunger games of the role of propaganda in an authoritarian regime and the slow, failure and sacrifice-ridden rise of rebellion. its shortcomings betray the traps of writing an unplanned prequel to a very tightly woven and intricate story, but is still overall a decent book. in fact, i would say that without the hunger games and tbosas for context, sunrise on the reaping is a wonderful book, but given those masterpieces exist, the most i can truly call it is "decent".

essay clear.

[nevergraciee]

beetee’s sotr baby

i was just thinking about how it wouldnt be terribly implausible for beetee’s unborn child to have died in finnick’s games. sotr took place during the 50th games, which means by the 65th games, the kid wouldve been 14 or 15. you could say “oh, well, they wouldve been reaped as soon as they turned 12” but like, not really. it would be much more devastating for beetee to have to wait to see if his baby is going to be reaped just like their older brother. beetee would expect it at 12 and 18 since those are the first and last years theyd be eligible, but 14/15 would be more unexpected (though im not saying beetee wouldnt expect it, just less so). imagine beetee seeing this 14-year-old finnick come home after beetee’s own died (at the hands of finnick? maybe, but i think it’s more likely to be otherwise based on beetee’s and finnick’s dynamic) and seeing his own child in a broken boy’s face.

just a thought

[xoomtown-rat]

Hunger Games Theory about Johanna Mason

I have a theory I only realised recently (and maybe it's a stretch, but I think it's fascinating to think about):

We know a lot of the first names from the districts relate in some way to their district industry. But what about surnames? It's not as common, but we see some instances: the Trinket family in the Capitol, or let's look at Plinth in District 2, for example. What is a plinth? A sort of column, typically of carved stone. What is District 2's industry? *Masonry*. You know who else has a surname related to *Masonry*? Right, Johanna Mason.

So knowing District 2 trains & supplies a notable amount of Peacekeepers, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to think someone from 2 with the surname 'Mason' may have become a Peacekeeper. In any case it seems like an odd name for someone from the lumber district. So my theory is that a Peacekeeper from 2 was stationed in District 7, fell in love with a girl there & had a daughter who they named Johanna.

Now, we know that the rules for Peacekeepers forbid marriage & having children. We also know there's been more than one rigged reaping. So I think Johanna's father was a Peacekeeper from 2 & she was purposefully reaped to punish him for breaking the rules.

HOWEVER, this theoretical father would have a) known he broke the rules of the Capitol, & b) been trained in combat as a peacekeeper. Katniss states people in 12 don't go into the mines until they are 19 so that they never have the chance to learn how to use a pickaxe BEFORE being reaped for the games to put them at a disadvantage. So are girls in District 7 usually chopping lumber at 13, 14, 15? I'm not so sure. So Johanna could have been trained to fight by her father with the most inconspicuous weapon available in 7: an axe. Johanna received a TWO for her training score; Katniss says this was a trick to appear weak to her opponents, but what if it was also to hide the fact she had combat training from the Gamemakers/Capitol?

Well, the plan to reap Johanna to punish her father backfired spectacularly on the Capitol when she revealed she could fight & ended up winning the games. So while I do think part of the reason they killed everyone close to Johanna is because she resisted being trafficked by the Capitol, if this theory were true they would have also killed them to make Johanna pay for winning the games when she was supposed to die as punishment for her father...

[lonelylittlebookworm]

after reading SOTR i started rereading the original trilogy and just got to the part where Katniss recognizes the Avox girl in the capitol and had a thought…

i genuinely can’t remember if Avoxes were a thing in Ballad because i haven’t read it since it came out, so this might be wrong, but what if Snow came up with the concept of Avoxes and the idea of cutting out their tongues as a direct punishment for people like the Covey. if you can’t speak, you can’t sing

[targwh0re]

Anyone and everyone send me theories and headcanons about the 11th hunger games. Mags’ Games.

[daughter-of-sapph0]

Peeta is much closer to Lucy Gray, and Katniss is closer to Sejanus.

spoilers for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

I've seen people compare Lucy Gray and Katniss, and while I do think they have strong similarities (such as being victor girls from 12, having a love for singing, and intentionally or not insighting a rebellion), there isn't that much in common between them beyond that. Lucy Gray loves attention and performance, while Katniss is camera shy and hates being put on display. Katniss has been hunting and killing for her family years, while Lucy Gray and her covey mainly relies on donations from patrons for food. and while they're both exceptionally kind and loving people, Lucy Gray with her way of saying the exact correct thing to manipulate crowds of people make her much more similar to Peeta.

Peeta has always know exactly what to say and do for crowds of people. the interviews with flickerman showed just how persuasive and emotional his words can be. although he isn't much of a singer, the way he works with people and is always shown to be kind and caring to everyone he meets is so much like Lucy Gray.

on the other hand, there's Sejanus, who was born and raised in 2 and moved to the capital. like Katniss, he hated the pomp and circumstance of the capital and absolutely despises the games. the way he enters the arena to be killed by the tributes as protest perfectly mirrors Katniss and the berries.

but the real connection between them both is the mockingjay. Sejanus, after moving to 12 with Snow, is shown to be connected to the jabberjays and by extension the mockingjays. in fact, Snow loathes the birds because of how much they represent Sejanus.

you can't tell me that when someone shows up for the games, incites rebellion and protests, and is called "The Mockingjay" that Snow doesn't immediately see Sejanus in her.

sorry for the long post. feel free to discuss your thoughts.

[katnissandpeetamellark]

Spoiler warning, but you gotta go read this theory about the connection between The Bairds & Everdeens

[lullydoesstuff]

I'd like to say this is a joke but it's my situation rn. I've red Sunrise on the Reaping and I loved it, Hunger Games was never a phase and never will be. But let's be serious on this.

The game gamemakers often come out with new hybrids, new effects in the arena, new mutations in both animals and plants for the new Hunger Games... to do these things you need chemicals because you alter the DNA of someone or something (Elden Ring reference, I'm not trying to hide it). You need chemicals for medicines too and multiple times in the books characters mention they have surgeries after the games, president Snow himself is technically 90% plastic, (⚠️SOTR spoiler ahead!⚠️) Haymitch basically has his guts rearranged after his victory and I mean... you need medicines, pretty good ones, not homemade-like remedies Katniss' mum makes at the District 12 pharmacy.

I get it, the Capitol can produce them on its own, but think about that, the Capitol doesn't even produce luxury items, those are produced by District 1, and chemistry is far from being safe. The other idea could be "District 13 used to produce them" but... there's no more District 13.

So basically what's my theory? Since Panem doesn't produce resources used by the Capitol they import them from other countries. I know this sounds strange but a completely closed state, we know very little about that has plenty of controversies and sanctions but still keeps doing wathever it was doing before is this impossible? North Korea isn't real?

I don't want to discuss politics and business in the specific, I'm just making theories about a dystopian novels series, I'm not qualified to talk about politics and business. But North Korea buys stuff from China, they also sell and buy stuff from South Korea as well. So there's probably a country not as closed as Panem but in a similar political situation that sells chemicals to them, it's far from being impossible.

I also think (and hope) the rest of the world doesn't stand there doing nothing while every year 24 kids are sent in an arena to fight a deadly combat, Panem has plenty of sanctions probably; not only for the Hunger Games but for the way the citizens are treated in the districts in general.

This was just a theory so, consider that just a theory. But what's your opinion?

[saraharchivee]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬

*. ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬

[pervertedmystic]

Enobaria

I think a lot about Enobaria. At first she seems indifferent, if a bit sadist or even barbaric. She ripped a tribute's throat out with her teeth, that seems fitting for a ruthless, sadist girl from district two.

But anyone that knows even a little bit of fighting would realize that it was not an act of sadism. If, for example, she came up to the other tribute from behind, would they not have enough time to run the minute they felt her hands on their body? Would they not be able to somehow wrestle their way out? The idea that the tribute might been someone frail also doesn't make this more plausible. Not to mention, if this was how she wanted to kill them, wouldn't she have done it multiple times throughout the Games? But it's stated in the books, it was her last act of violence in her Games.

Biting someone's neck is an act of desperation. It's something that can only be accomplished by doing it to someone weak or otherwise incapacitated, unlikely because they made it to the final 2. It's much more likely that she was in a struggle with this person, likely had her hands occupied with keeping this tribute's hands/weapons from ending her life.

This is the final duo. The last fight. There’s no ending other then survival or death. Like Katniss said during the fireball attack, you act or die. Enobaria, having been trained for this, knows that. Looking at it this way, it makes her ending to the games so much tragic.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes gives more context as to how the Capitol citizens would have percieved this last act of survival. In the Capitol citizens' eyes, the district people are barely human. Barbaric, in need of control for fear they'll go feral. Enobaria ripping that Tribute's throat out would be a confirmation of this. Of course a District 2 girl would do something so barbaric. That's the backwards mountain country. That's why they're the ones becoming peacekeepers. How else can their feral behavior be contained? Her job as a victor isn't to give the Capitol citizens more entertainment. It's to be held up as a symbol of everything wrong with the district citizens. A reminder that the districts would fall into feral chaos if the capitol released its grip on the districts.

No room for consideration. She probably wasn't comforted by anyone. I wonder if the doctors and capitol attendants made a show of backing away, cowering, giving her wary looks. You could say in this act alone, she was innocent. What else would you expect her to do? Die? What teenage girl would accept that, knowing her death would be braodcast to her parents, her siblings, friends, a lover if she had one? It being the final fight means it would be shown again and again. No one would want their family to see that.

But she doesn't get that empathy. That moment of survival defines her for the rest of her life. It confirms the Capitol's prejudice towards the districts. I doubt her teeth were done with her consent. Haymitch barely got Katniss out of her own cosmetic enhancements. It's actually a rather dangerous cosmetic procedure. How many times have we bit our tongues by accident, drawing blood? Imagine how carefully she'd have to eat for the rest of her life. How often she's been hospitalized from accidentally puncturing her tongue. She couldn't kiss someone, in fear of them poking themselves on her teeth. Everytime she smiles or laughs, her trauma is exposed. And every year, the capitol would make a show of revisiting that moment.

And she's so defined by this act that even Katniss is wary of her. But, she seems to still remember that Enobaria was a child much like her when she won the games. That's why she has enough empathy to give Enobaria immunity, because whatever happened wasn't her fault to begin with. Just like Katniss sentencing Glimmer & the District 4 girl to a horrific death wasn't really her fault.

Of course, when the opportunity to inflict that trauma on the Capitol children pops up, she gleefully takes it. Wanting to give the capitol a taste of their medicine. This last line, to me, cements how traumatized she is by her games. Maybe if she sees a Capitol girl driven to unthinkable acts, being defined by her desperation for the rest of her life, it could lessen the pain of her trauma, if only a little.