#implicit submission

[justafewberries]

Themes of Implicit Submission in The Hunger Games (Book One)

I’ve just finished re-reading The Hunger Games (book one) and there are a few themes that I expect SOTR will develop based on Hume’s implicit submission theory. Specifically, these are the main six tactics I believe the Capitol uses to thwart another rebellion present in the first book alone: 

Societal Pressure:

District 12 has a “keep your head down” culture. Any talks of rebellion are frowned upon. Any anti-government statements will cause social repercussions. It’s not just Katniss rolling her eyes at Gale in the woods, it’s how she has been groomed by the culture to keep quiet about the issues pervading life in the district:

“When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually, I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. Do my work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the public market. Discuss little more than trades in the Hob.… Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food shortages, or the Hunger Games. Prim might begin to repeat my words and then where would we be?” (p.6)

All of this proceeds the statement:

“Even here, in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might overhear you.” (p. 5)

Under this point, it is also telling that during the reaping ceremony, Katniss says the “boldest form of dissent [the audience] can manage,” is silence. Not outrage, not yelling, not like district 11, but silence (p. 24).

2. Division between Classes 

The Capitol has created conflict within the districts to draw hatred to a local target. In the case of the first book, Gale remarks tesserae is a tactic to keep them divided. 

“Gale knows his anger at Madge is misdirected. On other days, deep in the woods, I’ve listened to him rant about how the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another. “It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine.” (p. 14)

Interestingly, tesserae is already known as the “courtesy of the capitol” as stamped on Haymitch’s shorts in SOTR. The Capitol markets tesserae as something it does out of goodness. It attempts to make itself seem well-intentioned via the distribution of necessary goods. It’s their courtesy, after all. 

This point also includes the division between the districts. In the games, Katniss remarks how allying with the careers is essentially traitorous. 

“No one from District 12 would think of doing such a thing! Career tributes are overly vicious, arrogant, better fed, but only because they’re the Capitol’s lapdogs.” (p. 162)

By treating certain districts better, the Capitol promotes distrust between the districts, dampening potential unionization with planted hatred. By choosing favorite children, the parent that is the Capitol forces the districts to fight. 

3. Weaponized Language

The name of the Treaty of Treason, the treaty that makes the Hunger Games necessary per the law, is definitive of how the districts are forced to see themselves. They are the ones who committed treason by rebelling, and therefore they are guilty. They must repent by sending the children to the games. The permanent treaty, read during every reaping ceremony, enforces the guilt the districts are supposed to feel. In turn, the fact it is a “treaty” means the districts must have agreed to and signed it. Regardless of the circumstances around the signing of the treaty, the capitol then has the ability to wave it over their heads henceforth. 

The name itself points a finger and keeps the districts forever at fault. 

Furthermore, the fact Katniss is referred to by her district number until and even after she is given something to remember her by (the fire) further dehumanizes the tributes. During the parade, she says the citizens of the capitol have liked her and Peeta enough to "read the program" and learn their names (p. 70).

There are many more examples of villainizing and dehumanizing language in the book, but I have chosen those examples for the sake of brevity.

4. Propagandizing Education

A major theme in many dystopian novels is how the system treats education. In District 12, Katniss tells the reader:

“Besides basic reading and math, most of our instruction is coal-related. Except for the weekly lecture on the history of Panem. It’s mostly a lot of blather about what we owe the Capitol.” (p. 42)

A weekly lecture in a school is quite a lot of time to devote to any one subject. Seeing as how the rest of their curriculum revolves around district-specific content, the weekly lecture must be mandated across all districts, likely leaving the rest up to the discretion of the district itself. The Capitol once again emphasizes how the districts were wrong. It is repeated week after week, and eventually, it becomes ingrained in the social psychology of the district. 

5. Hunger and Deprivation of Needs

Continuing from the section about Katniss knows the weekly lecture must be propaganda, saying,

“I know there must be more than they’re telling us, an actual account of what happened during the rebellion. But I don’t spend much time thinking about it. Whatever the truth is, I don’t see how it will help me get food on the table.” (p. 42)

This point coincides with my second point about the division of classes. By keeping the people hungry, they are too busy thinking about the lowest rung on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. They see those who have food, and they are the opposition in front of them, rather than examining the source of the problem. By keeping the people hungry, they are less likely to have the time or ability to even think about a collective uprising. 

6. Limiting Flow of Information

The Capitol limits the flow of information between districts. In doing so, the districts are forced to make bridging assumptions about one another. This is revealed through Katniss and Rue’s discussion in the games: 

“It’s interesting, hearing about her life. We have so little communication with anyone outside our district. In fact, I wonder if the Gamemakers are blocking out our conversation, because even though the information seems harmless, they don’t want people in different districts to know about one another.” (p. 203)

By keeping them separate, they can turn any district against another. They rely solely on the Capitol for information about other districts, and therefore the Capitol has all of the power. 

Interestingly, another division between classes is shown through Peeta’s knowledge about other districts. He knows the different types of bread from the districts, implying the merchant class may have more access to information than those of the seam, leading to further division between classes. 

All in all, these are the themes I expect to be addressed in SOTR based on the pretense of implicit submission.

See Catching Fire's themes here

See Mockingjay's themes here

[evermarch]

on the mortality of president snow

this post has been in the works since i finished sotr, but i wanted to revisit ballad before sharing my thoughts. one thing i absolutely loved about sotr is that snow was not the #1 Main Antagonist so much as The Capitol, abstractly, because it hammers home one of the most essential points of the trilogy. we have this image of tyrants like snow as all-powerful, hyper-intelligent demigods four steps ahead of everyone else. like a snake charmer, they woo a population into submission with superhuman charisma. we have that concept of snow because that's katniss' view of him, and certainly the view he has of himself in ballad. snow in sotr entirely disrupts that perception. in fact, during each substantial interaction between snow and haymitch, snow appears, more than anything else, weak. in haymitch's words, "he's just a man, as mortal as the rest of us."

in private, snow's fragility is a striking juxtaposition with the young man he presents himself as in his own narrative. in the meeting at the heavensbee home, snow is retching and shuddering from poison. he seethes over how, half a century ago, the heavensbees were rich enough to keep books when he had to burn them. though haymitch doesn't, we know that he's word vomiting about the covey because he’s still not over a girl he had a thing with 40 years ago. the implications of this doomed tribute are so concerning to snow, a man with indefinite and unlimited authority and resources, that he arranges a meeting with haymitch under the guise of warning him that, should his behavior continue, his family will be harmed.

only, that's exactly what happens. publicly, snow and haymitch are caught in a chess match in which, each time the audience is paying attention, haymitch forces snow to forfeit a pawn. when haymitch slow claps over louella’s body, snow has no escape. he is "mocked" on camera by a boy wearing a covey necklace. later, the most snow can do on stage at the victor's ceremony is issue a subtle threat to "enjoy your homecoming." yes, haymitch's family will pay. but that wasn't what snow wanted. it wasn't sid who drank his milk. it wasn't willamae who flooded his watchful eye with its own tears. snow had been unable to kill haymitch, even in the middle of a televised battle royale. amongst the roaring applause for the victor, snow must crown him victorious, kneecapped by the demands of his own people.

not only is snow astonishingly fallible, but he is never solely responsible for any of his horrors. in ballad coriolanus was powerless, and he had to take matters into his own hands. he killed bobbin personally. he used highbottom's weakness against him by poisoning the morphling. only sejanus was not his death blow—but he, a lowly, rank-and-file peacekeeper, reported his friend knowing it would inevitably result in his death, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise. in sotr, not a single one of the atrocities snow orchestrates happens by his hand. from lou lou to beetee and ampert to the games themselves to the deaths of sid/ma/lenore dove, each one involves a substantial number of people. each requires scientists and escorts and gamemakers and arsonists and peacekeepers willing to execute his plans.

so why would people back someone so feeble? someone who is not only personally weak, but whose power depends entirely on other people? because it's not snow they're supporting. it's not even the games, for which people still need convincing. it's what they represent. the message, even 50 years later, must be constantly reinforced to every citizen of panem with posters painted in blood to spread the narrative of "no capitol, no peace." in the districts, "no peacekeepers, no peace" means that, without the peacekeepers upholding the system with their guns and whips and ropes, they will be obliterated for their crimes. just like district 13. in the capitol, "no hunger games, no peace" means that, without the games to punish the enemies responsible for "starting" the war, they will forget and try again. and the capitol will fall besieged once again.

this messaging works because both sides still have people who remember the dark days. they remember the brutality of the capitol and the siege of the rebels. to the survivors, capitol and district alike, giving up their rights and self-determination is unequivocally worth preventing a return to war. it's not a conscious choice, of course. it's implicit submission. and the critical point is that people implicitly submit not to their specific role in upholding the system, and not even to snow, but to the narrative. to the opinion of government. to the inevitability of the system itself. and snow, as the #1 peacekeeper, manifests that narrative.

we meet characters from the districts and capitol alike who represent various points on the spectrum of implicit submission. people who swallow the propaganda wholeheartedly like drusilla, someone who lived through the aftermath of the war, who has dehumanized her enemies so much that she channels her cruelty and selfishness to abuse "their" children. ones who, in the face of hopelessness, forfeit their morality, like jethro callow and the booker boys. those who believe, as mr. donner does, that whatever facade of power their wallets provide is enough to spare them from the system which fuels that facade. and people like effie, whose kindness and humanity remains intact, who feel true sympathy for those who suffer in the name of upholding the system, but swallow like sugar the belief that it is for the greater good.

snow, specifically, appeals to each of these people, whether as a villain or as a savior, not because he is so intuitive or charming or brilliant as he considers himself to be, but because no one believes the propaganda more than coriolanus himself. throughout ballad, he constantly questioned his theory of governance, but he never, not once, questioned his core belief that the capitol is superior to the districts. that capitol people are superior to district people. when lucy gray threatened this fundamental reality by becoming someone worth loving, he first tried to distance her from his enemy by emphasizing her covey background. but when he went to 12 and saw her among his enemies, he decided he'd rather kill the piece of himself capable of love than consider that his belief system might be flawed. 40 years later, he's still not past her because she is the lock on the dam which keeps his cognitive dissonance from spilling over.

snow only learns one lesson in those 40 years, the one he adopts in the epilogue of ballad during his gamemaker internship: the value of a group project. he is successful in coming to power because he realizes that, whether they’re the intoxicated capitol crowd cheering on haymitch’s scar or the gamemakers who maysilee and maritte kill, every capitol citizen is fundamentally necessary to upholding the system over which snow now presides. regardless of their degree of complicity in its maintenance, the implicit submission of the feeble-minded masses is what keeps it running. what snow does not learn by the 50th games is that he is one of them.

not, of course, that he had the opportunity to understand that before—it was the heavensbees, after all, not the snows, who got to keep books for reading and not kindling. by the 50th games, however, coriolanus has no such excuse. yet, he still decides to send haymitch the milk pitcher in the arena. he could have had haymitch killed at any point before now, but he needs haymitch to suffer more than just an agonizing death. he needs him to die a selfish being, who deprived a poor, starving girl of her salvation, or live as a pariah, who poisoned her to survive. it is not just haymitch who needs to die. it is his poster. the opposition to the narrative. to the essence of snow's being. but it's that very choice which causes snow's plan to collapse. because his catch-22 is cut off by silka’s axe.

this moment, not his performance of illness to plutarch and haymitch, not his notice of a covey necklace while haymitch stands over a dead girl, not even his crowning haymitch victor, is what best portrays snow's weakness. that best demonstrates that he doesn’t have ultimate control over the depravity of the games and panem’s system of stratification and subjugation. snow fears chaos more than anything in the world, swallows the propaganda and rises to the top of the government in search of unimpeachable control. yet, despite his supreme power, he does not find what he seeks. because the fear, the pain, the oppression, and the deaths do not serve him; he serves them. his efforts are undermined not by some powerful capitol usurper, but by a scared and brainwashed teenager from district 1 desperate to get home to her family and to glory. his authority is undermined by his own belief system.

snow does not learn his true place during the 50th games. but the lesson is still there to be learned. and people do. plutarch, beetee, wiress, mags, and every subsequent member of the rebellion learn that snow is only one step of the battle. coin, too, learns it, training the focus of her most problematic adversaries like katniss and finnick on him so that they don't notice her. but no one learns the lesson better than haymitch. over time, he comes to realize that the threat to be defeated is a pitcher of milk, not a bag of gumdrops. the real enemy, the true antagonist, is not one man who positions himself as the villain, but the movement from where he sources his power. the real enemy has always been the capitol itself. snow was never the snake charmer. he was always just a snake.

which is why, when the war finally comes, haymitch is not among the parade of people clamoring to kill snow, but rather in the control booth directing the mockingjay. undoubtedly, haymitch wants snow dead. but, at this point, he has the perspective to recognize that his failure in the 50th games was snow's failure, too. which is why, when the war is won, he aligns his vote with katniss. because, after 25 years, he's come to know exactly what she's known from the minute she held out the berries. the lesson she learned from peeta, who's always understood that everyone, even snow, is a piece in the capitol's games. that snow’s death changes nothing. because the power is in the message, not the voice. and if the message isn't contained, its voice can change with a flip of a coin.

coriolanus snow is just a man, a mortal being. he has never been who the real enemy is. the enemy has always been the idea, the propaganda, that fueled him. from the words of a ballad and a declaration of love to the guidance of a mentor shifting the aim of an arrow, all four of the victors from district 12 learn in their own time how to fight this opinion of government. they learn not to implicitly submit. and it's because they do so that the the sun did not rise on a reaping ever again.

[ongreenergrasses]

many things to dislike about sotr honestly but for me I think one of the most egregious things that stuck out is the way she used Hume’s theories…in her past work, she’s at least attempted to put political theory in her characters’ voices or fold illustrations of the concepts into the story organically. these were stated almost word for word, sounding like they were out of a textbook, and explicitly told/lectured as opposed to letting the actions of the characters fully display them and having the reader interpret.

it was pretty heavy handed and jarring, and it pulled you right out of the story. to me? it also shows that she doesn’t fully understand those theories, because if she did, she would be able to restate them in her characters’ voices and organically write situations that display them. and idk how I feel about her including political theory that she doesn’t seem to understand. Plutarch giving an explanation that my college professor would’ve given just. isn’t really the move for a YA novel I think

[mollywog]

If it was Lenore Dove and Haymitch at the end of the 74th games with those berries - she would have swallowed them.

[thesunsethour]

did the new hunger games book need to be written? no. did it get a bit repetitive? yeah. did i LOVE it? yeah!! did i cry? a lot. haymitch? abernathy.

[ohhgingersnaps]

does anyone else wake up with the sudden overwhelming urge to write an effie trinket character study

[hijinks-n-lowjinks]

Suzanne Collin’s is writing another Hunger Games book I have a reason to live again

[sodacowboy]

“I felt like this character didn’t really interact with the story he was just along for the ride and didn’t make choices for himself” 😐

[kneelbeforeclefairy]

What I think is most different and most striking about Sunrise on the Reaping is how CYNICAL it is. To some extent we knew it was going to be. This is a midquel. That the reapings go on and the Hunger Games only ends 25 years later is a forgeon conclusion. We know nothing that happens here is going to work.

The book is about implicit submission, and why, with numbers on their side, the many submit to the few, even when the few are unjust. And it's because, the book seems to say, numbers aren't ENOUGH. the Newcomers alliance is much bigger than the Careers. They should be able to team up and defeat them easily. But they don't. Eighteen of them are killed outright, because the Careers have the strength, the skill and the training. And that's just that.

Plutarch asks why the tributes don't overwhelm the Peacekeepers during training, and Haymitch is rightfully outraged at the privilege of this question. Why don't they? Because they probably couldn't kill them all, and even if they could, what good would it do? It wouldn't stop the Hunger Games. It wouldn't change a thing. No one would even know about it outside that room, because the Capitol would change the narrative. Just like Katniss and the Star Squad can't REALLY take on the Capitol single handed and assassinate the president, the scrappy alliance of kids can't really do any real damage to the system the Capitol has in place. All they can do is choose if they want to die now or later. So why don't they, if there's no difference to them, as Plutarch asks. Because, as Snow puts it. Hope. The slight chance that one of them will come out of it. And, more cynically, the hope that if they are good tributes and obey, their families will be left alone. If they choose to rebel and choose to die now they guarantee retaliation against their families and perhaps their entire district. We see that even in the tributes that attack the Gamemakers in the arena. They rise up, they break that bond of implicit submission--and they die bloody for it.

Why don't they rebel? Because they don't have the privilege to lose.

Even Lenore Dove, the Joan of Arc of Twelve, fails to do any real damage or have any real effect. All she does is get herself a reputation for being a trouble maker, and eventually get herself killed. Was she killed as part of the retaliation against Haymitch, or was her punishment because she's a rebel, and that's what happens to rebels? (and Snow hates covey girls.) but she fails because she IS alone. She focuses on small, symbolic acts that do nothing, but that she hopes will rally the people to action.Unfortunately, the people of Twelve don't want their lives to get any worse, and they don't have the privilege of spending time and energy on revolution the way a teenager girl whose family doesn't need her income to survive does--sadly, Twelve will remain this way, in an uncanny valley where they're beaten down enough to need change, but not enough to have NOTHING to lose. They are not one of the districts that rise up. So acting alone does nothing, teaming up does nothing. How does one fight an enemy with better technology, better weapons, and better organization? Beetee's plan doesn't work out. Of course it doesn't. Could it ever? Was it just borne out of grief for his son? And even if it had, then what? What was the plan? Haymitch's poster gets edited away. The Newcomers fail. Lenore Dove dies. The most you can say is Haymitch himself becomes too important to kill, like Beetee, and Snow let him live to fight another day, but so destroyed that he no longer WANTS to.

So, then, what WORKS?

The answer is, quite cynically, Plutarch's version of the world. Numbers mean something, there are more of US than there are of THEM , but that isn't enough. You need weapons, you can't bring a knife to a gun fight, you need EVERYONE on your side. You need organization, not just a series of disconnected rebellions, and you need an Army, provided by Thirteen, as problematic as they are. The timing just needs to be right. And most crucially, what I think Plutarch and everyone involved here learned is that victory belongs to those who control the narrative. Those who control the flow of information and tell their story. And it's not Plutarch, for all his cameras and his propos and his idea behind The Mockingjay, who eventually does that well.

It's Haymitch.

Who learned to tell a story and sell a narrative with himself and the Newcomers. Who tried to paint his poster in the arena only to see it rewritten in front of him. Who won't make that mistake again. When it's time for the deciding factor in the revolution, it's Haymitch who creates the Mockingjay-- and is he also using Katniss and her image? Yes. but he at least sees Katniss and the human she is inside it, unlike Plutarch who hasn't changed much from the man who makes a grieving family do reshoots over and over so he can get his footage, while congratulating himself for letting Haymitch have his goodbye.

When Katniss sets off the spark twenty five years later, the world is ready. The work is in place. Plutarch, Haymitch, Beetee, everyone can say GO , and this time it'll work. So buckle in, and wait for the Long Game, even though only Plutarch really has the privilege to wait, the rest of them don't have a choice. It's cynical. It's awful. People die. The lone rebels and the plucky girls and the alliance depending on its numbers all fail. Plutarch motherfucking Heavensbee, the richest of the rich the privilegedest of the privileged, pulls off the revolution, takes the credit, and lives to see the end of it, without ever once examining his own privilege, and unpacking the fact that despite his head being on the right side of history, he's never managed to see the Districts as PEOPLE . (and you could argue, ANYONE as people. ) But it's just the only way.

But this book isn't the middle of the series. It's the end. How awful would it be to read if we didn't know that Katniss and the Mockingjay rebellion would eventually succeed. We know that despite the cynism of a failed revolution and all its players, that one day it WILL work out. This book is called sunrise on the Reaping....the sun rises on a world where this is inevitable. But one day it won't be.

[justafewberries]

Something i didnt quite understand in the book is why in the arena they had to kill the game makers is theres any bigger piece to it or is it just pure brutality?

Thanks for your ask!

The answer comes from a few different places, but it ultimately leads back to David Hume’s essay Of the First Principles of Government. (It's a short read, and I highly recommend it!)

In Of the First Principles of Government, Hume discusses implicit submission. He maintains governing bodies derive their power from public opinion, and it is exactly why all of the characters acted the way they did in that scene. I will break it down by character, but first I want to examine some context in SOTR.

In the text, the training scene right before Plutarch begins to question Haymitch foreshadows the later scene:

“There’s this moment, just as I get to my feet, where I look around, and I’m armed, and they’re armed. A half dozen of us hold sleek, deadly knives. And I see that there aren’t many Peacekeepers here today. Not really. We outnumber them four to one. And if we moved quickly, we could probably free up some of those tridents and spears and swords at the other stations and have ourselves a real nice arsenal. I meet Ringina’s eyes, and I’d swear she’s thinking the same thing.” [...] “The more I think it over, the more my dismay grows. Every year we let them herd us into their killing machine. Every year they pay no price for the slaughter. They just throw a big party and box up our bodies like presents for our families to open back home.”

When you read this as context to the scene in the arena, it is the same idea. The armed tributes outnumber the Gamemakers, and in the arena, everyone is on equal footing. The tributes have the numbers and the momentum of days in the arena behind them. 

There are two lines that are thematically significant in this section. The first line is from a Gamemaker: 

The Gamemaker with the drill raises her mask and straightens up to a full height. "That’s right. And all four of you are in absolute violation of the rules. You must immediately withdraw or there will be repercussions." "That’d be a lot more impressive if you weren’t shaking like a leaf," observes Maysilee, fingering her blowgun. 

The only defense the Capitol worker has is that of governing status. She attempts to assert the rules of governance on her side by claiming that they are all in violation of the rules, and therefore they must submit to the Capitol by leaving them alone. Even she knows, as her shaking voice exposes, there is no true way to enforce this rule. This is where David Hume’s essay comes in:

"When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion."

The force is always on the side of the governed. The governed, in this case, are the tributes of the arena. Yet, in the arena, where the purpose, according to Dr. Gaul, is to strip man down to his base instincts, a governing body cannot exist. The government exists to make sure man doesn’t regress to said instincts. Therefore, the government cannot exist in the arena in the same way it does in the rest of Panem. Ergo, the public opinion needed to enforce the rules is obsolete, to the point where both parties are on equal grounds. There is no illusion of power. 

The second line is: 

Silka seems stunned into inertia as well. “What’d you do? Did you kill Gamemmakers? They’ll never let us win now!”

Silka still believes there are winners in the games. In fact, she goes so far as to say “let us win”, thus she recognizes that the Capitol has true control over who wins, and prior to this, she expected to be able to win. Now, she believes winning is a right that the Capitol can revoke, which lends itself to the idea of Hume’s secondary principles of government:

"There are indeed other principles, which add force to these, and determine, limit, or alter their operation; such as self-interest, fear, and affection: But still we may assert, that these other principles can have no influence alone, but suppose the antecedent influence of those opinions above-mentioned."

Because Silka expects to be able to win, she is stunned into submission under her expectation of particular rewards:

"For, first, as to self-interest, by which I mean the expectation of particular rewards, distinct from the general protection which we receive from government, it is evident that the magistrate's authority must be antecedently established, at least be hoped for, in order to produce this expectation."

On the other side, fear stuns Haymitch. Hume details how fear is a form of submission:

"No man would have any reason to fear the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear; since, as a single man, his bodily force can reach but a small way, and all the farther power he possesses must be founded either on our own opinion, or on the presumed opinion of others."

Haymitch recognizes how futile it would be to take down a few Gamemakers. It is the same reason he deduces when he reflects on his time in the training center. They may outnumber the peacekeepers in the training center, but what would happen? It would be a fruitless rebellion, and public opinion would squash anything that could potentially develop from it. Hume’s discussion of fear is not exactly fear of the tyrant himself, rather, fear of the power he possesses over others. Snow had public opinion on his side outside of the arena. Killing a few Gamemakers here would just bring upon the tyrant’s arsenal.

Maysilee and Maritte, however, both recognize that the perception of power via public opinion doesn’t exist in the arena. Both realize they cannot be punished more than they already are. I don’t usually quote the movies, but I think Reaper’s taunting of the Capitol when he rips the flag down in the 10th Games suits this philosophy extremely well: 

“Are you gonna punish me now? Are you going to punish me now?”

Both girls act because they are disillusioned with the power of the Capitol. They refuse to submit. They are free from the secondary aspects of self-interest, fear, and affection. Maysilee alludes to the idea that winning was never going to happen in the first place: 

Maysilee’s voice drips honey. “Still chasing that sad little dream, Silka?” 

While one can interpret this by assuming Maysilee means she was going to kill Silka, it can also be taken to counter Silka’s belief of a fair win, calling it a dream. Maysilee likely recognizes the Capitol can always give advantages to people they want to win, or send mutts on whoever they don’t like. We see this with Titus in his games. She doesn’t submit. 

I would like to cross reference this with the 10th Games in Ballad, where Coriolanus and Sejanus entered the arena. Dr. Gaul used Coryo’s experience in the arena about a lesson on human nature: 

“Without the threat of death, it wouldn’t have been much of a lesson,” said Dr. Gaul. “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.”

Later in the scene, she talks about how the death of Coryo and Sejanus would not have brought anyone closer to winning. This is the same idea, just from the perspective of what would have been the Gamemakers, had they survived: 

“What did you think of them, now that their chains have been removed? Now that they’ve tried to kill you? Because it was of no benefit to them, your death. You’re not the competition.”  It was true. They’d been close enough to recognize him. But they’d hunted down him and Sejanus — Sejanus, who’d treated the tributes so well, fed them, defended them, given them last rites! — even though they could have used that opportunity to kill one another.  “I think I underestimated how much they hate us,” said Coriolanus.  “And when you realized that, what was your response?” she asked.  He thought back to Bobbin, to the escape, to the tributes’ bloodlust even after he’d cleared the bars. “I wanted them dead. I wanted every one of them dead.”

Interestingly, he makes a point about human nature that calls back to what Hume is saying:

“I think I wouldn’t have beaten anyone to death if you hadn’t stuck me in that arena!” he retorted.  “You can blame it on the circumstances, the environment, but you made the choices you made, no one else. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but it’s essential that you make an effort to answer that question. Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need. Later on, I hope you can reflect and be honest with yourself about what you learned tonight.” Dr. Gaul began to wrap his wound in gauze.

While initially it seems to validate Dr. Gaul’s argument that humans, by nature, are violent creatures, his refutation actually provides the basis for the very reason Maysilee and Maritte killed the Gamemakers. “[They] wouldn’t have beaten anyone to death if [the Capitol] hadn’t stuck [them] in that arena”. 

The arena does not strip people of their nature. It forces them to submit for the very secondary aspects Hume provides. The governing body forces them to kill, and by stepping into the arena, where the Capitol has stripped itself and all beings of their own power to display what it believes to be human nature in its primitive form, it has erased the protection of public opinion. 

The Capitol holds no real power in the arena itself. Sure, they bomb it afterwards to clear out the four tributes. Sure, they sic the mutts on Maysilee and Maritte, but they do not govern in the way they do over Panem. 

Inasmuch, the Gamemakers died because the arena disillusioned Maysilee and Maritte to their implicit submission. The moment the Gamemakers entered the arena, they were powerless as of their own creation.

I hope this makes sense. Thanks for the ask!

[evermarch]

hey! you said you had more to say on asterid and im so curious about your thoughts. I wonder what you think about how she might represent the progression of submission (from implicit, to anxious when she bans the hanging tree song, to silence when burdock dies). Just feel like you might have some interesting words on this.

i’m still processing all my *thoughts and feelings* so this may be a bit half-baked, but i think asterid is a fascinating case study in implicit submission. because she doesn’t start that way. and most importantly, she doesn’t end that way.

asterid can be analyzed by considering hume’s doctrine of implicit submission from his “of the first principles of government” essay iv, which says that while “force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.” hume extends the “opinion,” which can be understood to mean ideology (maybe not the best word idk), into two categories—opinion of interest and opinion of right. the former involves the idea that government in general is a good thing, and also this government isn’t really worse than any other conceivable form. opinion of right can be further divided into the right to power and the right to property.

right to property is somewhat self-explanatory, so we can look next at the right to power. that is largely about how a government in power gains a lot of its power from the idea that it (and by extension, the people in power) has always had power, so it will, and thus should, continue to have power. this concept is much like the heavensbees in the capitol—snow himself disdains but cannot refute the notion that the heavensbees embody panem, because the heavensbees have always embodied panem, and thus maintain the right to wealth and the sprawling mansions and the endless libraries. he tolerates it, largely because he, too, is among this class. he implicitly submits.

asterid, likewise, is among the privileged within her community. the “government” which affects her day-to-day life is, yes, the capitol, but more so its extension of the peacekeepers and the mayor in district 12. she doesn’t engage with the capitol citizens or its rulers, but she does engage with the peacekeepers that require her family to place a banner in the window and the mayor who reads the treaty of treason at the reaping.

asterid should subscribe to the “opinions” of government more than most—she certainly should have an opinion of interest, because, she is decently fed, has friends, and not the worst life. yes, she’s in the reaping, but so is everyone tangible in her world, and she’s in the bowl less than most. there’s no real reason for her to be able dream up a better system, or necessarily to want to.

as far as opinion of right, the government owns the property (see katniss and snow’s conversation in the study in cf, where she says “he has no right, but ultimately every right,” to occupy her home). but asterid has all the access she needs. and with the right to power, the capitol has always had power, true, but so has she—it’s understood through the physical features that the merchant class shares (blonde hair, blue eyes), which differs tremendously from the seam (lower class) people, that the privileged, “powerful” class in district 12 have always been afforded proximity to the government’s right to power and the benefits therein.

but asterid doesn’t. she, much like plutarch, rejects the submission which should come easier to her than to most of the people of district 12. why? because of the three limitations on the opinions which empower government—“self interest, fear, and affection.” hume emphasizes that these limitations don’t overthrow a government on their own; they require a lot of people to reject and/or utilize them accordingly. that said, an individual’s expression of any of the limitations can extend somewhat far in terms of their own autonomy.

asterid, of course, fears the government, and protects her self-interest (her life as described above). she doesn’t run from the reaping. she doesn’t step too far out of line, as far as we know. but she does wield her affection as a healer as a means of force. she treats those in the seam and takes no payment for her services. she falls in love with a man from the lower class and rejects the relatively comfortable life to which she was born entitled. in doing so, she sacrifices the right to extend such comfort to the future children she may have had with otho mellark. these actions are inherent objections to the stratification of the classes of district 12. in other words, our girl is a class traitor, and she commits.

however, embracing these limitations only goes so far. her fear for her family’s safety takes over when she bans the hanging tree, and when she silences katniss’ defiant speech at home. when her husband dies, asterid’s affection turns against her. she enters a catatonic state which endangers the life of her children. had she fallen in love with a man from town, she may have still gone into a catatonic state, but she would have the resources to treat herself and go on. because of her small acts of opposition, otherwise insignificant to the government and its power, she lost the privileges of her prior proximity to the government’s right to power. so, she implicitly submits.

but that’s not true anymore once her daughter comes back from the games. she returns to treating people with no payment. she’s in more danger than ever before, and yet, she brings gale to her home in the middle of the night. after that, she risks prim’s safety by allowing her to aid the steady stream of beaten bodies which arrive on her doorstep. she begins to envision a better world—in district 13, she does her part to help the rebellion. she models the same behavior for her impressionable little girl. a child best known for following in her mother’s footsteps in appearance and in behavior. a daughter whose life is blown to pieces because she, like her mother, refuses to submit.

while it’s true that asterid suffered far more from her small acts of defiance than was proportional, and certainly far more than she gained, i think that she stands as a extension to hume’s assertion that the limitations on the opinions of government can only achieve so much. his example is in collective action, like the rebels fighting the war. it’s true that asterid did not participate in destroying an arena or shooting a gun. but without her affection for a seam boy overtaking her fear and self-interest, we would never have had katniss. without her demonstration of love across stratified lines, katniss would not have prim to protect, or, if she did, a will to do so. without her healing, katniss would never have known how to save peeta (or herself) in the arena, and panem would have never seen the trick with the berries.

through her little acts of defiance, her incidental rejections of submission, asterid birthed a revolution.

[sangrefae]

i was talking w oomf about this a few days ago, but it's like... there's a very palpable difference in mentorship styles between mags in SOTR and haymitch in the og series, in that mags is outwardly kind and compassionate while still managing to be complicit, while haymitch is outwardly abrasive and can even be cruel at times but has always, ALWAYS advocated for katniss + peeta and their autonomy. like yeah you can cry comfortably around mags, but did she do Anything to shield or even warn haymitch about the more horrific parts of being a victor? did she do anything to prepare finnick for the capitol's grasping hands and try to mitigate that damage? i think it's a lot more interesting to see and discuss how mags, intentionally or not, was just as much of a perpetrator of the capitol's violence even if she was also a victim

my unpopular opinion is that Mags is a better character when people acknowledge she was probably purposefully perpetuating capitol propaganda about the honor of the games to get D4 kids to volunteer to spare the weaker ones and that moral grayness is way more interesting to me than the doting grandma people frame her as. she’s probably a very calculated woman who clearly had deep love for Finnick and i’m sure cared for her other victors/tributes but there’s a lot more that goes into forming a career district than people are comfortable mentioning. Finnick himself was probably perpetuating it for a while if mentors are as involved in training/picking tributes as I, and common fanon, imagine they are

(I’m sorry people are giving you a hard time on here lately I really enjoy your blog and the conversations that are started on here)

literally. like I’m sorry, Mags probably set up the training program which means she had a direct hand in grooming all those kids not just for unspeakable violence but for sex trafficking, and she then helped perpetuate that system for decades. I think she had an enormous hand in grooming Finnick into trafficking, which I have yet to make a post about and have never seen anyone admit, and she also most likely is the one who kept him in shape so that he could be continually trafficked. I’m sure she loves the victors and that she always thought she was making the best of a terrible situation, but she is morally grey at absolute best and that makes her way more interesting. so I agree!

(and thank you 💜 I’m glad you enjoy! sometimes I just have to make things clear)

hot takes

[thetimetraveler24]

“Oh my god we’re getting Haymitch’s games” “oh my god I can’t wait to see this from Haymitch’s pov”

Suzanne Collins doesn’t write unless she has something to say. With the current political climate, I can’t wait to hear what she has to say. It’s supposed to be about the power of propaganda and implicit submission? Consider me sat, oh my god this is going to be great.

[moonlightsapphic]

I will hold your hand as I say this. Sabrina is an adult woman who likes to make tongue-in-cheek music about luring and murdering men. Her persona since the last album cycle has been very femme fatale—feminine, pretty, cutesy, sexy, kinky, small, submissive in bed, wants a prince charming, also direct, non-conforming, frightening, intelligent, scheming, ruthless, might poison you, callous, player, comedienne. The man on the cover doesn’t even look like Sabrina’s general type, or particularly romanticised. He feels more symbolic of “posh rich old man who has no idea I’ll eat him alive”.

We’re circling back dangerously close to policing women’s sexuality as a political tool, both from the left and the right and it is not a good thing. Our implicit puritanical expectation of white women is already weird (and racist on the flip side when we regard BIPOC women as inherently sexual). Let women exist and own their sexuality in peace without politicizing it. Conventional femininity isn’t inherently unfeminist, even when it is performed for a masculine partner and not just “for the girls”. We can’t make this mistake again, we moved on from and built nuance upon the exclusionary principles of second-wave feminism for a reason. We’re not doing 4B. We’re not doing political lesbianism. We all have valid big feelings lately but we have to take a deep breath and stop projecting them onto minor media aesthetics and optics, and instead channel it into real community work. Read a book.

[coffeenonsense]

MASSIVE SPOILERS for SOTR but this book made me absolutely feral bc it's not a story just about implicit submission and propaganda, it's also one about the deeply personal cost of resistance and how that resistance is ALWAYS going to fail if you go in alone

haymitch's story isn't a tragedy because he failed to incite a rebellion or stop the games, it's a tragedy because he absolutely could have succeeded if different choices were made by the people around him

there are numerous ways this is illustrated throughout SOTR, but one of the most telling is through haymitch's interactions with plutarch heavensbee, particularly the last few conversations they have in the book, like this exchange during the victor's tour:

Here, both plutarch and haymitch are acknowledging that haymitch was unlucky, which he was, but it also showcases that the CRITICAL thing missing from haymitch's efforts at resistance was support.

(this isn't germane to this analysis but I would like to stress this is plutarch pitching resistance to haymitch pretty much immediately after the capital burned his family alive and poisoned his girlfriend, and I hope at some point during/after the mockingjay rebellion haymitch got to hit plutarch with a shovel)

after his reaping, haymitch is pulled into a plan for resistance by people who provide him with tools, and information, but then, crucially, step back entirely and wait to see if haymitch is successful. Like katniss, they pin the face of resistance (in the eyes of the capital) to haymitch, but make sure they themselves are out of the direct line of fire.

haymitch even points this out during another exchange with plutarch:

In keeping with the main theme, Plutarch's ability to create and distribute propaganda is thrown into the spotlight—as is his deliberate choice to create propaganda for the capital, and not the resistance. Not haymitch.

plutarch could have allowed footage of the true circumstances of haymitch's reaping, his protection of lenore dove, to be broadcast. He could have let the citizens of panem see haymitch lay louella's body at snow's feet, or haymitch running with lou lou's body, trying to protect ampert, or shown any of the other small acts of rebellion haymitch did throughout the book.

But he didn't.

Instead, he gave haymitch tiny hints, spun out just enough hope to ensure haymitch would try to disable the arena. Him and the other "conspirators" like beetee came up with a plan and instead of working alongside haymitch, chose to put the plan's success or failure entirely on the shoulders of a 16 year old kid, knowing full well the price of any failure, and in certain instances, not just failing to support his effort but actively taking steps to ensure nobody is ever going to know about it.

And when it fails, when the games end, haymitch is the one who pays the cost for what the capital sees as individual resistance. beetee and mags and wiress and the other district victors suffer alongside him.

Ultimately, though, as tragic as haymitch's story is, it's also a painful but crucial lesson in resistance. There is no katniss without haymitch. There is no girl on fire without the boy with the flint striker.

haymitch isn't a spark that failed to ignite. haymitch is a spark that people noticed, but nobody fed, and then snow stamped it out. and when katniss comes around, they know enough not to make that same mistake.

[fruitjuices]

what’s a more compelling story. like strictly narratively speaking not even considering the message collins was going for.

1. an incredibly intelligent and clever boy from one of the poorest districts who, despite being underestimated and treated terribly at every turn, managed to outsmart the gamemakers ON HIS OWN MERIT and win the games. who is then punished so severely for his own victory (because he didn’t win how he was supposed to/he wasn’t supposed to win at all) that his family is killed and he falls into a decades long spiral of guilt and anger that is only fueled by watching year after year of kids just like him getting murdered.

2. retconning everything THE AUTHOR LITERALLY PREVIOUSLY TOLD US as part of some propaganda angle (which is ironic, given how uncritically some people have taken this book…) and instead focusing on a boy who literally says he’s “not smart enough” and who goes along with the most half baked rebellion scheme. and then idk have him mourn not his FAMILY THAT WAS KILLED but his 16 year old gf and show his inability to let go as a heartwarming tale of love <3 instead of the sad reality it is

the more of sotr i read the more im convinced its just a money grab. and that saying people who criticize it are ‘falling for capitol propaganda’ is. hey. it’s so stupid.