| 1 | Following issues have their own Headscratchers: |
| 2 | [[index]] |
| 3 | * [[Headscratchers/TheHungerGamesTheGames The Hunger Games]] |
| 4 | * [[Headscratchers/TheHungerGamesKatniss Katniss]] |
| 5 | * [[Headscratchers/TheHungerGamesOtherCharacters Other Characters]] |
| 6 | [[/index]] |
| 7 | |
| 8 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 9 | |
| 10 | !!Reapings, Volunteers and Tributes |
| 11 | [[folder:Why don't more people volunteer for the luxury?]] |
| 12 | * If the tributes are really treated as well as they are prior to entering the Games, and there really is so many people starving in D12, why isn't there anyone volunteering? There has to be at least a couple kids dying of starvation and thinking something along the lines of "if I go in the Games, at least I'll get a taste of what luxury is like before I'm killed, it's better than starving to death in the streets"? |
| 13 | ** Katniss states in the first book that being a tribute from District 12 is synonymous with 'corpse'. When it comes down to it, most people would rather struggle against starvation and perhaps live to see things get better, than have two weeks of fantastic food and then be certainly brutally murdered on national TV. |
| 14 | *** Especially considering that a lot of young people in District 12 likely do things to support their family, or at least, intend to survive long enough to go into the workforce and support their family. District 12 is so incredibly poor that many families have to pull together to keep going, with older siblings taking out extra tessarae and so on. One sibling dies, that's one less person to help take care of the family. |
| 15 | ** The same reason Katniss had to pull herself together after losing both her father ''and'' (in a manner of speaking) her mother. Someone needed her. |
| 16 | ** In the book, it's clear that the tributes from D12 aren't all that aware of the process. It's possible they don't know about the week of luxury before the games. |
| 17 | ** They can also put their names in extra times in exchange for food. Why get luxury in exchange for certain death, when you can get luxury in exchange for only a slight elevated chance of death. |
| 18 | ** [[FridgeBrilliance They never had a winner before, who could tell them of all the luxury before the games?]] |
| 19 | ** Except for Haymitch. Then again, he was famous for being surly and drunk. He probably didn't get many people asking him relevant questions about his experiences. |
| 20 | *** They had two winners; Haymitch was the only one still alive. From what I've read, there isn't a lot of mention about D12's other winner. With all the experiences of the games, s/he might have hung themselves not too long after winning. |
| 21 | *** As detailed in Literature/{{TheBalladOfSongbirdsAndSnakes}}, their only previous victor was in the 10th games, which played out disastrously and was more-or-less wiped from the records. The victor either died or went missing within a year of the games, but a combination of the games themselves being wiped from the records and President Snow's hatred of her means that chances are the victor isn't well-known in the present day. |
| 22 | ** Your argument is far too rational to occur to someone who is dying of starvation. |
| 23 | *** Well that and the Games are yearly, you would have to have been starving and hit decline and willingness at just the right time to want to participate |
| 24 | * Even if you take away the aforementioned reasons: Why don't more older siblings volunteer? Anybody with young siblings would agree that Katniss decision is perfectly reasonable, if not self-evident. And even if the majority didn't go through with it, it still seems far-fetched that Katniss is the first tribute in the Games' 74-year history who volunteered to protect a younger relative from becoming obvious cannon fodder. |
| 25 | ** Because if Prim went she 'would' have died. With Katniss going she had a chance. But Katniss winning was something nobody predicted, so she was essentially condemning Prim and her mother to death by starvation, since it had been well-established Katniss was the only one who was keeping them fed to any degree. It's not that simple. And how many people with siblings would, when the moment came - and it would be in the moment, no preparing or changing your mind after - really step up like that? And what if Katniss had two younger siblings? Makes the equation even more complicated. |
| 26 | *** And because we don't know it hasn't happened. Katniss is District 12's first, but not the first. To volunteer for a sibling you need to be the same gender as the Reaped sibling, and to also be within the Reaping age bracket. That's true of Katniss but probably not all that many people. Older siblings like Katniss are likely to be taking tessara, making them more likely to be Reaped. Young kids like Prim, with their one name among the thousands of others, have a relatively small chance of being Reaped. Now, that doesn't mean it can't happen (that's the point of the Hunger Games, after all, the odds weren't in Prim's favour even though statistically she had a tiny shot) but it means that it would be even less likely for all the factors listed before to be in play. |
| 27 | * BystanderSyndrome is a very real thing. And most of the non-Career districts are far too used to seeing their tributes be brutally slaughtered on TV so they’re most likely too afraid to do so. Plus people forget about the “Freeze” reaction aside from the typical “Fight/Flight” response. (Though not volunteering could also count as flight.) |
| 28 | [[/folder]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[folder: Doesn't allowing volunteers let others cheat the system?]] |
| 31 | * The way that the lottery works is that for every time you put your name in, you get food and the extra chance for going to the Hunger Games. In a career district, then, you can submit your name as many time as you want and never get picked, since the career will volunteer. So you can get all the reward with none of the risk. And the Capital is ok with this? The Games are supposed to be a punishment, after all. Why do they allow volunteers? |
| 32 | ** They ''say'' the Games are a punishment, but in truth they are more a matter of control. The career districts have been conditioned to be loyal to the Capitol - probably helped by the fact that their children aren't randomly selected to be sent to their deaths every year. I doubt the career districts are in desperate need of the extra food in any case, and the other districts simply don't have the resources to start a career system of their own. The Capitol doesn't let them. |
| 33 | *** IIRC, career districts are the ones that make expensive stuff(luxury items, electronics, etc), so they probably aren't in dire need of resources. |
| 34 | *** Maybe I'm misremembering, but during the Victory Tour, doesn't Katniss realize that all the districts are equally miserable? District 12 only thinks they are the poorest, but it's about equal for everyone. Also, everyone says that it would be expensive to start a career system, but that simply isn't true. If you try to train the careers, yes, that costs money, but just finding/forcing someone to volunteer? That's free. The point of the having careers is so that everyone else can ask for max tessarae. Whether the careers live or die doesn't matter (although winning is a nice bonus, the Games are too random to depend on that to feed people.) A district would be better off forcing untrained 12-year-olds to volunteer than to leave it to the lottery. |
| 35 | *** [[SarcasmMode Brilliant idea.]] WhoWillBellTheCat |
| 36 | [[/folder]] |
| 37 | |
| 38 | [[folder: Why doesn't everyone in the District just take tessera?]] |
| 39 | * The entire tessera system. No matter how many entries are in, two people will be chosen. So if everyone is starting with one entry, every single person could take a tessera and nobody's odds would change. You'd think the districts would have caught on to this little loophole, considering that everyone is supposed to be starving and all. If everybody takes a tessera together, that's a pretty substantial amount of oil and grain going around. |
| 40 | ** Because of the [[PrisonersDilemma prisoners' dilemma]]: The people in any given dictrict have different wealth. Not all need additional food. A wealthy family could prevent their kids from signing for tessera to reduce their risk of being reaped. |
| 41 | --->'''Katniss:''' "The poorest people have to sign up more often for tessera, making it more probable for the poorest to get reaped. It's just another way of the Capitol to [[DivideAndConquer divide our people]]." |
| 42 | ** Except that a 12 year old who takes a tessera adds their name once, while an 18 year old that does the same adds their name 7 times. The minimum entries a person could have is (Age-11) and the max is (Age-11)*(Family+1). This is why Katniss has her name in the drawing (16-11)*(3+1) = 20 times, and Gale has his in (18-11)*(5+1) = 42 times. Therefore, if everyone took the max tessarae, the older kids with big families would have worse odds than they otherwise would. The real loophole is volunteering, since the careers let everyone in their district gets as much tesserae as they can. The starving districts should be forcing someone to volunteer to circumvent the system. |
| 43 | *** It’s the other way around, assuming that the 12 year old and the 18 year old are each signing up for the first time, and each are signing up for a single tessera. They each get the same allocation of grain and oil for the year. The 18 year old will have one extra entry in the reaping that year. The 12 year old will have an extra entry in the reaping that year, and in each of the following six years. |
| 44 | *** Ya wanna bet this is exactly what happens in the Career Districts (except instead of forcing, it's encouraging glory-seeking.) |
| 45 | ** 1) Starving people aren't the most logical and rational people you'll come across, and 2) the people in the Districts seem to think of "odds" as something equivalent to fate or [[Franchise/StarWars the Force]]. Katniss herself thinks Prim's odds ''weren't'' in her favor because she got picked. No, I don't think these people would have spotted that "loophole", not in a million years. |
| 46 | ** This is the old "Prisoner's dilemma" problem. Yes, if everyone took the tessera then everyone's odds would be the same as if no one did. However, if everyone else was taking the tessera and you didn't really need it so you didn't, then your odds would be better. And if other people were not taking the tessera, then you wouldn't want to either because if you did, your odds would be worse. Basically, the people of the districts could agree to all take the tessera, but they couldn't enforce the agreement, and there would be a strong incentive not to hold to the agreement if you didn't have to. |
| 47 | * Ok, so when you sign up for tessera, you are allowed one for each of your family members. How do they define who is in your family? Katniss has (16-11)*(3+1) = 20 tickets with her name on it, so that means that her family consists of herself, Prim, and their mom. She must have cousins, aunts, uncles, maybe some living grandparents if she's lucky... do they not count? She was in the process of starving when she signed up, so surely she would claim anyone she could as a relation to get more food. |
| 48 | ** It's possible, perhaps even likely, that the rules only stated direct family. Even then, there's no mention of Katniss having much extended family. District 12 is implied to have a pretty high death rate, what's more, large families might be uncommon. |
| 49 | ** The rules presumably have something for that. Perhaps they stipulated direct family--parents, siblings, and children--or perhaps they said "household". This seems a bit nitpicky. |
| 50 | ** Early in Catching Fire, it's noted that Katniss's official "household" is now her home in Victor's Village, while her old home is the official household assigned to her mother and Prim. Presumably any other members of Katniss's family lived in different assigned households, and I bet you're only allowed to sign up for tesserae for people in your own household. |
| 51 | * You can have one name in your 1st year. Another is added each year, but they're cumulative so by 18 you have seven names in the pot before you even start tessarae. This means that, statistically, older kids are more likely to be reaped. If you have tessarae you can add one name for yourself and one for each member of your family. So a 12 year old with their one name, one for themselves and one for each parent and three siblings has the same odds as an eighteen year old who never took tessarae. A 12 year old with one name, one for themselves, two parents and FOUR ssiblings has higher odds than that 18 year old. But these are still cumulative. If you want tessarae next year, all the names from last year are added THEN your new one for another birthday, another for your tessarae, another five for your siblings. An eighteen year old with five family members who always took tessarae therefore has incredibly high odds. Because there is always a different pool of people to reap (new 12 year olds in, 19 year olds out) and they have unequal families you can't say that everyone has the same odds if they all take their tessarae. |
| 52 | * In short, there is no way to have everyone's odds be equal. It's set up in that way: poorer families are more likely to be reaped because richer families are more content with the system as it is (why rebel against something that isn't bad for you?). Families with more members, and thus more angst, are more likely to be reaped (and it is stated that the siblings of Victors are still fair game: there are two siblings in 75th) and, more importantly, the odd LOOK to be in the favour of the younger children because if you exclude tessarae a 12 year old has less chances to be picked than an 18 year old. This makes it appear that the Capitol is trying to give the kids a chance, really just amping up the drama when a young child is reaped. And, let's face it, your odds mean NOTHING. Prim's name is in there once with 20 Katniss names, even without the rest of the female reapable population. She is reaped. Peeta, who probably didn't take tessarae because there's food to waste in his house, had 5 names (probably?) against Gale's 42 and the rest of the male reapable population. All statistics and odds are semantics: you can have odds of 1000000000:1 but there's still that one chance it'll happen. |
| 53 | [[/folder]] |
| 54 | |
| 55 | [[folder: Why allow tessera when the Games are a punishment?]] |
| 56 | * The Capitol likes to act like being chosen as tribute is a big honor, even though the Games themselves are supposed to be punishments. If that's the case, how do they explain giving extra food for people who put their names in extra times? That makes it pretty clear that you don't want to get chosen, because you effectively get paid to put your name in. |
| 57 | ** It might be more of a symbolic thing, in that it's making it so that the poor are more likely to die, like when you could buy your way out of the draft. |
| 58 | ** Kids see it as a price, but maybe the Capitol promotes it as an award. Brave enough to up your odds of fighting for your District's honor? Enjoy this reward of free food! |
| 59 | ** It's probably also a way to put further pressure on the parents. Basically, in the "you're so hungry and hopeless, you have to more or less sell your child to get food" way. |
| 60 | ** And judging by the situation in "Catching Fire", victors' families get a new house and all sorts of perks. |
| 61 | ** There's also the point that if everyone in a district actually starves to death, then that district is no longer producing things for the Capitol. They want people starving enough to be dependent on them, but not actually dead. |
| 62 | ** The tessera system serves the dual purpose of sowing discontent between slightly more prosperous families who can get by without their children taking tesserae and families who rely on tesserae for survival, and victim-blaming, in the sense that when a child with tesserae entries is reaped, the perception is going to be that they’re dying because their parents can’t provide for them. Had Katniss’ name been the one drawn instead of Prim’s, there would be a 75% chance that the slip drawn was one of her tesserae entries. |
| 63 | [[/folder]] |
| 64 | |
| 65 | [[folder: Why doesn't every District have a career system?]] |
| 66 | * It doesn't make sense for a District to NOT have a Career system. It gives their own children a better chance for survival and the prize that goes with it. And because every district knows in advance who's going, the rest of the kids can put their names in for extra food as much as is needed without consequence. |
| 67 | ** Not sure exactly what your complaint is, but not every district would be able to afford the system. Considering district twelve is essentially starving, they're not going to have the resources to train up tributes every year and it's doubtful they'd find people in decent enough condition to train. I imagine most of the later districts are the same, hence why numbers 1-4 are the only ones to have Careers |
| 68 | *** Actually 3 doesn't have a career system and, surprisingly, don't have as many victors as you'd expect them to, what with providing the Capitol with electronics and all. |
| 69 | ** But they wouldn't BE starving if they implemented a Career system. Knowing that someone was going to volunteer, and who, would let them enter their names into the drawing as many times as they needed to be properly fed because there's no risk. So as soon as they decide and agree, they can get food as they need it. Their Tribute also stands a better chance because even a little training beforehand for someone physically and mentally suited will give them a better shot than the malnourished 13 year-old who might get drawn. |
| 70 | *** Not necessarily. The tributes may stand a better chance if trained beforehand, but if the district does not have the resources it's not worth it. The Capitol probably gives out bags of rice because it doesn't actually do much to help a family out of poverty, and even after Katniss and Peeta become victors, their lives improve but not those of the rest of District 12. Furthermore, being a victor is better than dying in the Games, but as shown with Johanna it does not guarantee a better life. |
| 71 | ** That's great from a utilitarian sense, but are ''you'' rushing to volunteer your son/daughter? That requires someone to not only suggest this plan, but families to go along with it year after year. It's not clear how the "academy" was established in the Career districts, but it is a very tenuous system. If any "volunteer" gets cold feet and backs out, the whole thing collapses. Further, who is in District 12 to train them? They only have one champion, and he's a drunk. |
| 72 | *** Who says there's only 2 volunteers per year? Winning the Games is seen as a huge honor in the richer districts, remember. I'd imagine that D1 and D2 have a academy with multiple students, and the tributes we saw were the valedictorians that year. I'm sure that even getting into this career academy would be competitive, since you know that the district wouldn't let its future tributes or their families go hungry. |
| 73 | ** I still don't see how, after 74 years of the Hunger Games, the districts haven't used the "lottery" as a way of getting rid of unwanted children in the community. It's simply, really: tell them they either volunteer, or get executed after the Reaping. If they win, they'll be allowed to live once they get back from the Capitol. |
| 74 | *** It's easy to pick wanted children as tributes, but incredibly hard to pick unwanted children. How would you do that? |
| 75 | *** In a similar vein, I wonder if people use the games to commit suicide. This is a bit dark, but I could imagine somebody basically just allowing themselves some luxury before going out with a bang... probably literally by stepping off one of the platforms while the count-down is running. (Optionally, tell your partner about your intentions, step off at 2, and while everybody is staring, the other person runs, gets the best bag and is gone before everybody else has even moved a muscle.) But you know, maybe some people do it. There have been 74 games, there's a lot of stuff we don't know. That's why I wish there were prequels, not necessarily all written by Collins though for added diversity. |
| 76 | ** Is it ever stated how Districts 1 & 2 got their Career systems started? I always assumed they came up with the system because they were near starvation sometime in the past. Seriously, teaching children how to kill is probably a last resort. If your district is doing alright, there would be no pressure to start a Career system. |
| 77 | *** Possible, but that would still require them to have some surplus capacities to be able to just let a few of their children off the normal daily chores like working in a mine or suchlike. I would actually guess that they were somewhat better off from the beginning which gave their tributes advantages (better health, more presents bought by the district, maybe even spare time to do some general training like athletics in the knowledge it may come in handy) which gave them more victors and people started to see a way out of their miserable life. Considering how many parents in our world force their children to train special things they may not even want to (sports and music come to mind), it doesn't seem too far fetched to me that in this environment things like careers start existing due to parents seeing more the payoff than the dangers. |
| 78 | ** It's mentioned that 1, 2, and 4 get preferential treatment from the Capitol. It's likely that if any of the other districts, especially 12, tried to organize anything, there would be severe consequences. |
| 79 | * Why doesn't a poor District like District 12 take a boy and a girl and train them exhaustively for an entire year before the Games. Then every other kid in the district takes like 100 tessera and when the names are pulled, the two trained kids volunteer for the Games? |
| 80 | ** Basically, why don't they become a career district? Well, for one thing "training" for the games is nominally illegal. It's tolerated in the "career" districts because they are chummier with the Capitol, but for others training kids with martial skills looks rebellious. Secondly, it's a lot to ask of any family to just volunteer their kids for this meat grinder, and if the kid chickened out at the last minute and ''didn't'' volunteer (sending one of those 100 tessera kids in their place), then the whole system collapses. |
| 81 | *** I never got the impression that the career district gamed the tessera system. But I'm asking why no one is gaming the tessera system. Say I saw my little brother or sister die of hunger, and I wanted to save everyone in my district. Why couldn't I put my name in for a million tessera and donate all my food to everyone else? Why hasn't a district like 12 at least tried the rigging system I described above? |
| 82 | *** You can only get one tessera per family member per year. So unless you have a million siblings, good luck with your plan. Further, the amount of food is stated to be quite small, so you won't really be able to stretch it out that far. |
| 83 | * A lot of people seem to be asking why other districts don't have a career system but the answer to that is easy: it's actually illegal. But then, how did 1,2 and 4 get away with it? Does the Capitol turn a blind eye because they always give good tributes? Or because they're loyal? |
| 84 | ** The careers make the Gamemakers job a lot easier, since they seem to be the only people actually trying to kill. Also, they still would stand no chance compared to a Peacekeeper with a gun, so they are no risk. |
| 85 | ** It's pretty much outright stated that the Capitol turns a blind eye because those districts are loyal. |
| 86 | ** Also, favoring one (or three) districts is a good way to keep the districts opposed to each other. There's the unfavorites who resent and are jealous of the favorites, and the faves themselves who feel superior to the rest. And having a few kids who are obviously strong and capable might be a good strategy for keeping the Capitol citizens from thinking too hard about the 'children forced to murder each other' thing. If they seem competent, they seem less like innocent children and more like warriors. |
| 87 | ** A little bit of FridgeBrilliance: Turning a blind eye to Districts 1,2 & 4 having careers allows The Capitol to set up underdog stories in the games. Think of it like March Madness, every year there are high seeded big schools who are favored to win and low seeded "Cinderella Stories" that capture people's attention but have a very small chance of actually winning. That is exactly the sort of story Gamemakers would love to set up, so they tacitly allow the Careers to exist in the wealthy districts but prevent the poorer districts from doing the same thing. |
| 88 | ** Nothing illegal in Panem can escape the Capitol's notice. So if the Career districts are allowed to train, it's because the Capitol deliberately turns a blind eye, because it's to their advantage to have Career tributes. Why? Because, odds are, if you take 24 undernourished, terrified, untrained children and throw them into an arena, they probably will do everything they can to avoid killing each other. They'd help each other find food, survive the elements, and sure, one or two of them might react in panic. But actual murder? That takes some serious brainwashing. The Careers have been trained since childhood to be lethal and to have an appetite to kill. As a result, other tributes have to kill in self-defence. And then you have Hunger Games. Without them, the Gamemakers would be forced to set mutts or gamemaker tricks on the tributes to kill most of them each year, and that would defeat Snow's propaganda purpose of showing the district children killing each other. |
| 89 | * The Tessarae system allows you to add your name an additional time for yourself and for each member of your family. Katniss puts her name in an extra three times for herself, Prim and their mother’s extra rations. Gale is stated to have his name in many times more because he has lots of siblings. You can put in multiple children and claim for each other (Katniss says that she didn’t let Prim take tesserae, meaning she could have done if she wanted to) so using the tesserae to feed up a child to Career standards is only viable if you have lots of children who can claim for each other or every other member of the family is happy to go without the extra rations to feed this one child. The Career districts have the lowest amount of Tessarae claims because they usually win and because they have the most valuable resources. Not to mention, if every District had two well trained tributes every year, it would stop the entertainment value and the equal education means that they would have the same advantage… meaning no advantage. |
| 90 | * It’s also a simple way of enforcing the divide between districts. If they were all in the same boat they might have unified and rebelled much easier and faster. The Career system enforces the “us vs them” mentality and considering the valuable assets of the Career districts, the Capitol definitely didn’t want the districts getting their hands on the luxuries or military. |
| 91 | * Syndrome from Franchise/TheIncredibles puts it best too, “When everyone’s special, no one is.” |
| 92 | ** Actually, D-13 is the ''only'' District to ''not'' participate in the games in any way shape or form, which is because of somethin' that happened during the "Dark Days" and a treaty where they're more so an independent nation. From what's implied, it's a lottery type of system, though the Districts the provide the most for the Capitol and the Peacekeepers provide the fewest Tributes for the games. |
| 93 | [[/folder]] |
| 94 | |
| 95 | [[folder: Why would someone want to be a career?]] |
| 96 | * Why do the Career Tributes volunteer? I mean, there's only a low chance that any given Career Tribute will win, so volunteering is practically suicide. |
| 97 | ** I don't know where the idea it's a 'low chance' came from. Each Career has pretty good odds at surviving any non-Career and then they just have to outlast the five others. From their point of view, they're told probably from birth that they're the best, to train, to win and that victory will bring them glory and make life better for their District. When put into that mentality, with nothing to prove otherwise, they're probably not expecting a long life unless they 'earn' it by winning the Games. Whilst most people get to adulthood by simply not being Reaped, they are taught to take the chance of a better life. They are, after all, children. There are kids even now who make silly decisions to live up to parental and societal expectations, it's not hard to imagine that placed in a random death lottery with starvation being the norm you'd take the 'I might die but I might fix things' chance. |
| 98 | *** The problem with this is, if you make a list of every games and every known winner including background characters, it doesn't add up. Game #50 and onwards to #75, most of the catching fire victors can be accounted for or can be placed somewhere within this range, especially within the film when many of the unnamed victors from the other districts more or less default to being in their mid twenties to mid fourties. When you take all that into account, there ends up only being about a half dozen games where the winner was truly unknown. Even if you made all these unknown games have career victors, this only gives them a miniscule head over other disctricts. |
| 99 | ** Catching Fire mentions the Victor pool for the Career districts are quite large, so most likely Careers have won often. They know winning brings riches and glory and they’re often quite fan favourites, just look at Finnick or Cashmere and Gloss. |
| 100 | [[/folder]] |
| 101 | |
| 102 | [[folder: Why were the careers so incompetent?]] |
| 103 | * In the movie, the Careers are kind of incompetent. Firstly, there's the absolute inability to hit Katniss in the tree with the bow. These kids have trained for... what, about a decade in how to fight and survive. None of their group can hit a slow moving/immobile human-sized object that isn't that far away? NONE of them? Not to mention that they only shoot straight up instead of moving back from the tree to get a better profile. And then the booby-trapped food and supplies. It's a good idea. But it's set up so that when any single mine goes off, it blows up all of their supplies. I could see non-Careers forgetting to take that into account, or underestimating the explosives, but these guys are supposed to be smart and well taught in this stuff, aren't they? |
| 104 | ** The booby traps at the resources were NOT placed to activate each other. Katniss made several apples fall to the ground which caused several bombs to explode separately. Only after that, the entire heap exploded. |
| 105 | ** Bows and arrows are hard to master, especially old fashioned ones, but they aren’t that difficult to use. I remember using them in [=PhysEd=] when I was 12 and I could at least hit the target at a good distance. There’s no reason why the Careers shouldn’t be able to do the same thing themselves. I don’t get why they wouldn’t have had some basic training with bows and arrows any way. Distance weapons are amazing, especially in a situation like the Hunger Games. Hand to hand combat is a terrible strategy for this kind of thing because it’s too easy to get hurt. Once you're hurt your fighting is only going to go down hill, which results in worse injuries (unless you're Katniss and all of your problems are conveniently fixed before another one has a chance to arise) and more than likely death. Even if distance weapons aren’t offered often, they should be covered at some point during the nearly two decades of training the careers have. |
| 106 | ** Also, the booby trapping the food is fucking stupid regardless of who's doing it. Anyone should be able to see that 1. Using almost all of your supplies as bait is just begging for trouble, and 2. setting it as bait for exploding trap is going to destroy all your food. This makes me think that the districts are choosing the stupidest kids they could find to be careers and they really need to fire their trainers. |
| 107 | *** If you assume that one mine blowing up won't blow up the whole pile, then it's easy to assume that the pile itself is a trap: you just have to hope that someone will run up to the pile and kill themselves. Katniss messed up the trap by blowing up multiple mines at once. |
| 108 | *** A better question would be why the Careers weren't given survival training in addition to combat. Considering Katniss specifically recalls a previous Hunger Games where the Careers lost after losing their supplies, you'd think some of the districts would attempt to remedy that for the future. It's possible some of the Career districts lack the geography to practice certain survival skills, but we never hear any real specifics beyond District 4 being a coastal region. |
| 109 | ** Another point: They are looking up at Katniss, and fail to spot the giant wasp nest in the tree above her, even after they set up camp for the night. They also didn't sleep in shifts, leaving themselves open to being slaughtered in their sleep by Katniss or Peeta or anything, really. So yeah, they aren't the best at the whole "being effective" thing, but who knows, maybe this year's Careers are know for being idiots back home too. |
| 110 | *** Even Katniss doesn't notice the tracker jacker nest and she's right under it, so it's probably a PlotHole. And Glimmer was meant to be on guard, she just fell asleep. |
| 111 | *** Considering that the muttations came into being when Seneca punched them up on the display, it's possible that the tracker-jacker nest wasn't there when Katniss climbed the tree, and was added to the field after the Careers settled down for the wait. The possible reasons for this run from Crane wanting to give her a way to liven things up, to creating them as a method for driving her out of the tree, but either way would allow for it not to be there to be noticed until Rue spotted it. |
| 112 | ** Remember, it was the D3 boy who handled the explosives, so maybe he lied/was mistaken about the range that the bombs had. As for their incompetence with bows and arrows, isn’t it mentioned that they normally aren’t at the Games? I assumed the bow was only there because Katniss was good with one, and Glimmer only took it with her so Katniss couldn’t have it. (Although that means Glimmer took a weapon she wasn’t good with on purpose because... she’s just that confident?) I could see the trainers back at the districts spending a short amount of time on a bow to focus more on commonly available weapons and survival skills. |
| 113 | *** Except Katniss remembered about the District 7 girl who got blown up, which gave you a pretty good indicator of how powerful the mines were, and wouldn't the Careers have learned about past tributes and their mistakes? |
| 114 | *** Glimmer'a choice of weapon couldn't have anything to do with Katniss because she had no way to know that Katniss was good at archery. Katniss never used a bow and arrow during training specifically so they wouldn't know and the gamemaker test was secret. It's possible Peeta told the careers but seems highly unlikely that he'd betray her like that. Plus, if her whole goal was to keep Katniss from getting it, she could have destroyed it, stuck it on a dead tribute to be removed from the arena (like Marvel's spear was) or left it as bait with the rest of the booby trap. |
| 115 | ** It was stated that the Careers' downfall is usually their arrogance. Maybe they thought that Katniss would be so intimidated by their gang and so demoralized by Peeta's betrayal that she wouldn't be able to put up an effective fight. It still raises the question of why they trusted Peeta so quickly, but maybe they just thought he was too incompetent to be a threat. |
| 116 | ** On the mines: I don't think all of the supplies would have been destroyed if it had been one person setting off one mine. Because Katniss shot the bag of apples, apples tumbled all over and set off multiple mines, as opposed to a person, who would only be in one place. |
| 117 | ** On the mines again: It's possible that the D3 boy could have lied about it as well and told them it would only explode the person who stepped on it rather than the whole supplies in order to trick the careers and at some point destroy the food at the sacrifice of his own life. It's a stretch, but why not? |
| 118 | *** Hell, he was smart enough that he might have "foreseen" the careers turning on each other and one of them getting shoved onto a mine, blowing up the food and everyone in the vicinity. He himself would have been at a safe distance. (On the other hand, he wasn't much at seeing through social schemes - he let himself be intimidated by Cato - so maybe not.) |
| 119 | ** I got the impression that, while the careers are definitely trained, it hasn't been for their whole lives. Think about it: no one except for certain people in District 2 would know how the tributes from District 2 are trained. The same applies to Districts 1 and 4. These people have no reason to share their secret training techniques to anyone, so instead, rumors are created. And once the rumor of "trained from birth" is made, why would you stop it? It makes your district seem more terrifying to the other tributes, and it might get you some sponsors as well. |
| 120 | [[/folder]] |
| 121 | |
| 122 | [[folder: Why must victors have talents?]] |
| 123 | * What was the point of including the "Victors must have talents!" subplot in Catching Fire? Katniss worries for a bit, and then just puts her name on Cinna's clothes, and never thinks about it again. Peeta decided to paint some pictures of the Games, but he's an artistic guy, he doesn't need outside motivation from the Capitol to do that. Haymitch doesn't seem to have a talent at all (although a sick part of my mind hopes that long ago, it was wine tasting), and we never even find out what the other victors' talents are. It seemed like a waste of page space. |
| 124 | ** Simply to show consequence of fame and the Capitol's control over Katniss' life. Ultimately further contrasting Katniss's real persona and what the Capitol expects to see. It also sorta makes sense in universe, the Capitol wants to show the Victor's life after the games to be happy, successful, and productive to please crowds. |
| 125 | *** I agree with the last two sentences, but not the first. Katniss didn't have to face any consequences from the talent because she got Cinna to do everything. If the purpose of the talent is to control Katniss' life, then she should have to actually spend the time designing the clothes herself. Considering how the first part of Catching Fire was basically the Capitol hating Katniss and making her life a living hell, it's weird that the Capitol didn't do this. It just seems like a wasted opportunity in the narrative. |
| 126 | *** The consequence of FAME. The consequence of Katniss' fame is that she will be a [[SlaveToPR slave to the Capitol's PR]] forever. She will forever have to play a persona that pleases the whims of the Capitol population. They expect her to have a feminine talent like music, cooking or flowers. Katniss loves singing, but she denies the Capitol her voice for entertainment. Her other real talent poaching would shock the Capitol audience. It's a [[TakeThatAudience slap at our expectations in celebrities and gender roles]]. |
| 127 | ** My theory is that, since victors don't have to go to school or work, the mandatory talents are just another way to keep them busy and distracted from potentially using their status and influence to stir rebellion. |
| 128 | ** It may also be a crude attempt at occupational therapy - without doing anything so blunt as ''admitting'' that the Games are a mentally scarring nightmare. They want at least some of their victors able to show up on camera without being obviously drunk or drug-addled, or it ruins the fun. |
| 129 | ** Let's call a spade a spade. It is padding. It never shows up again. |
| 130 | ** I’d say that the “talents” are partly to give the Capitol audience something to ooh and ahh over, and partly to stir up resentment towards Victors by District citizens. People who practically have to work themselves to death to put food on the table are unlikely to think kindly of those who have the wealth and leisure to spend their time painting or playing the flute or arranging flowers. |
| 131 | [[/folder]] |
| 132 | |
| 133 | [[folder: Have no pregnant women been reaped before Katniss?]] |
| 134 | * In Catching Fire, the Capitol audience is shocked to discover that Katniss is "pregnant" and going into the Games. While this is sad, the audience reacts like this has never happened before. 74 years of taking girls to be slaughtered, and not one of them was pregnant? I realize that starving girls often get their periods later, but if Peeta can claim that Katniss, who is from the poorest district, is pregnant at 17 and be believed, then it must be possible for girls younger than Katniss from better districts to get pregnant too. |
| 135 | ** We don't know. It might have happened. What has apparently never happened is that the would-be mother and presumed father are together in the arena, for the second time. Hell, there probably have barely been any lovers either. What's the chance? Sure, the reapings are rigged, but bad stuff usually happens to those who oppose the capitol. Possibly, young people avoid getting together with someone for that reason and relationships are formed later on when they can't be reaped. |
| 136 | ** On top of which, if a pregnant girl was ever reaped before, someone else could always volunteer and save her. The possibility of that reprieve at least ''existed''. But with Katniss, there was literally no one else eligible --literally no escape. She was being absolutely, inexorably ''forced'' into the Arena -- for the second time -- against her own husband -- while pregnant. That's got to garner sympathy. |
| 137 | ** Katniss is closer to the "Oldest" end of the scale for tributes, and has also been being properly fed for a full year, making her "pregnancy" more believable. Given that a lot of the female tributes are either younger girls who haven't been fed very well and likely aren't menstruating yet, or Careers (who would either not be having sex or being really careful to use contraception for that reason) ... I doubt very seriously it's happened very often, if at all, before. |
| 138 | ** And it's not just that a tribute is pregnant - but that Katniss, the girl in the StarCrossedLovers is pregnant. The public was invested in their 'love story' and a baby is a [[BabiesEverAfter perfect happy ending]] for them. But it can't happen now because either Katniss and her unborn child will die, or said child will have to be raised without its father. |
| 139 | ** Katniss would have been the only tribute sent into the arena pregnant who didn’t know that she would be subject to the reaping. Peeta’s story placed the fictional baby’s conception before the announcement of the Quarter Quell twist. In the eyes of the Capitol, Katniss could reasonably have assumed that it was safe for her to have a baby. With a girl of reaping age going into the arena pregnant in an ordinary Hunger Games, I doubt that there would have been much sympathy for her because she would be seen as having courted the risk by becoming pregnant while subject to the reaping. Any suggestion of excusing pregnant girls was probably dismissed on the grounds that this would incentivise pregnancy to escape the reaping. |
| 140 | * A fanfic actually did explore this and theorized that if they really did exempt pregnant teens, there would probably be a lot more girls knocking themselves up to get out of reapings. |
| 141 | * Well...I had a horrible thought. If the Capitol doesn't think anything of throwing pregnant teenagers into the arena in the first place...would they really think anything of forcibly terminating those teenagers' pregnancies ''before'' they threw them in? |
| 142 | ** It doesn't make sense, why would they do that? To remove disadvantages? Unless the pregnancy is advanced, it won't affect the Game itself, aside from the added angst. Plus, terminating a late pregnancy is essentially giving birth, and you don't recover from that in the short time between the reaping and the start of the games. And it won't fit their storytelling, because either the pregnancy isn't noticeable and it likely can be hidden for the game's duration or it is noticeable, and everyone already saw it at the reaping, terminating won't change anything. |
| 143 | [[/folder]] |
| 144 | |
| 145 | [[folder: Why don't more tributes avoid the Cornucopia?]] |
| 146 | * How is the bloodbath at the start of the Games always so big? You know the careers are going to go for it. You have, at best, a 50-50 shot of living through it. Haymitch told Katniss to ignore it and run, and presumably most non-career mentors do the same. Shouldn't there be a large chunk of tributes just hightailing it out of there as soon as the Games start? |
| 147 | ** Katniss is not only a threat to the Careers' due to her 11 score, but also an experienced survivalist. Other tributes who aren't as good at wilderness survival really need to take their chances in the bloodbath because without supplies they will be dead in days. |
| 148 | *** Having no supplies will kill you within a couple of days, while the bloodbath will kill you within the hour. At least if you are alive, you have the chance of stealing something later. Also, while she is knowledgeable, I wouldn't call Katniss an experienced survivalist. She knows the woods outside of District 12, and that's it. Also, she goes to (presumably mandatory) school, so her time in the woods is split into short segments instead of long stretches. |
| 149 | *** The easiest time to steal is going to be when another dozen or so people are trying to steal from the same place. If they all hightail it, the Careers wind up with ''everything''. It's going to be substantially harder to steal anything valuable after the well-armed, well-fed Careers have had the opportunity to set up defenses around it. So really, grabbing a backpack and escaping the confusion is the best of their horrendous options. As for Katniss, what is your baseline for survivalist? Green Beret? Look at the things she does in the series: She can climb trees (harder than it sounds), find shelter to stay warm without a fire, identify poisonous berries and wildlife, set hunting snares, travel without leaving a trail, stalk prey, clean kills, do improvised first aid, travel for days without food or water, and she's a crack shot with a bow. |
| 150 | *** I'm not saying that Katniss doesn't have skills, just that she's extremely lucky that the arena she landed in was (pretty much) exactly like the woods outside District 12. |
| 151 | ** You’re forgetting these tributes are just teenagers from 12-18. Some of them are bound to forget and be reckless. |
| 152 | [[/folder]] |
| 153 | |
| 154 | [[folder:Is there only ever one volunteer for each spot? If not, how do they know and decide who goes into the arena?]] |
| 155 | * Obviously not applicable to Katniss as District 12 has no volunteers ever and nobody else would've done it for Prim. But it's said numerous times that ''many'' people in the "Career" districts are desperate to volunteer for the honour. And this brings up the potential plot hole of why Clove and Finnick would've volunteered and been accepted as young teenagers. It naturally would've made more sense for those spots to go to older kids, because of how much more developed 18-year-olds are. So, are there multiple volunteers in Career districts, does it go to the person who volunteers first, or something else? |
| 156 | * Katniss mentions in the first book that the rules around volunteering are pretty complicated and it can take a while to figure out who the actual tribute will be in districts where volunteering is a big thing. But we don't get any specifics. |
| 157 | ** I would think there is a "first come, first serve" deal going on, one person can Volunteer, if someone calls out to Volunteer after that, it is void. In the Career districts, I figure they hold their own lottery/vote before the Reaping, to save every single career going "I VOLUNTEER" |
| 158 | [[/folder]] |
| 159 | |
| 160 | |
| 161 | !! Panem |
| 162 | [[folder:Religion in Panem]] |
| 163 | * Is there a trope for when there's a setting like this where religion is just simply never mentioned at all? No churches, mosques, temples - ruined or whole, prayers, "God", "Lord", "blessings" - no religion of any kind. Not even ruminations on what an afterlife might be like. No made-up religions even. Possibly such things existed and Katniss simply never paid any mind, but somehow that seems unlikely. It's a nice change of pace for a novel, it just seems incredibly strange. |
| 164 | ** I think it's the part of the "lesson" of the hunger games, with regard to reality television, and celebrity. They've basically turned their celebrities into their idols. They've plugged the hole where religion might be with the hunger games' winners, the way people accuse the western world of plugging religion with celebrities. |
| 165 | *** The Hunger Games do seem to serve the same purpose as religion. Marx refers to religion as 'opiate for the masses' - something to keep individuals docile and from revolting against the regime. It falls in line with the 'bread and circuses', with entertainment taking the place of religion in their society. |
| 166 | ** Even with Katniss's limited perspective, we know that Panem arose out of a world wide catastrophe and a major war. These are the sort of things that would likely destroy any religious buildings/symbols that might have been around previously. In previous wars, religious materials contrary to the regime have been destroyed and as Snow clearly thinks of himself as god, the existence of any being higher than himself would be contrary to his regime. It might also make it more difficult for people to buy into religion after those sort of events. |
| 167 | ** There probably isn't any religion, at least in District Twelve (it may be different in other districts). While Katniss might ignore buildings and people going to Church, they would have come up with respect to birth, death, and marriage. There's no mention of religious custom with respect to marriages in Twelve, and there's no mention of funeral custom or any sort of last rites for the sick/dying (which definitely would have come up if they existed). |
| 168 | ** What novels are you reading? I've read plenty that don't mention anything religious and even more that don't mention anything "real-world" (a currently existing religion) even when I think they should. The complete lack of religion told me plenty about the society of Panem, none of it good. Completely getting rid of religion is impossible regardless of whether you believe in one or not. If removed something has to replace it, even if unofficially. That can get messy. It also makes it a good deal easier rationalize anything, such as having children kill each other for entertainment live on national television. |
| 169 | *** USSR statistics prior to Stalin indicate otherwise; it's not okay to make [in theory harmless] beliefs illegal, but it is possible and exceptionally successful. Also, your implication that atheists have no moral codes is nonsensical, to say the least. |
| 170 | *** Firstly, yes Stalin got rid of ''existing'' religions, but, like most dictators, he effectively if not literally became their religious leader in his own right. Secondly, of course atheists (can) have moral codes, but without a cosmic reward system (such as heaven and hell) there's no certainty of consequences for doing immoral things, therefore it is easier to rationalize. |
| 171 | *** Certainty and consequences can come from other places, such as conscience. Non-religion is not the danger, it is the forced removal of it. |
| 172 | *** Certainty can come from other places, and so can consequences, but certainty *of* consequences can't. |
| 173 | *** Religious people don't have certainty either. They don't have proof, only faith. That may be enough "certainty" for the believer but it's fallacy to think that it's enough to condemn everybody else with. |
| 174 | ** I didn't pick up on anything odd with the lack of religion - if the Capitol wants them to feel hardship and suffer in a manner that keeps their spirits low though, they probably don't want buildings with some guy in them telling them that after they die they get to go to FluffyCloudHeaven. |
| 175 | *** True, but there are plenty of countries in real life that try to keep 'unapproved' religions out, but they have never been 100 percent successful; beliefs are very hard to stamp out entirely. You'd think it would at least be mentioned in passing by someone like Katniss, who, like any religious persons (assuming atheism is the approved way of thinking), is one misstep away from being caught and suffering either death or something worse. |
| 176 | *** Well atheism would fit Panem's current state of tyranny and hedonism. Peter Hitchens did say atheism is a license for ruthlessness and appeals to the ruthless. |
| 177 | *** Peter Hitchens is also a loony and has some ''very'' personal reasons to say that (*coughhisbrothercough*), so I don't see why his opinion on the matter is an objective statement on atheism. |
| 178 | *** Where are you getting the impression Katniss is religious? If anything, she seems agnostic by default of being uncaring. Protagonist =/= religious. |
| 179 | *** Uncaring does not mean non-religious. Non-religious people do have morals and emotions like everyone else. If Panem is non-religious, the overall society is pretty awful, but there are people who recognize that, and those people are also non-religious. |
| 180 | ** It's likely that whichever tyrannical regime founded Panem in its current state looked to stamp out religion. In real-life, several tyrannical dictators have attempted this (Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro to name a few) and historically nations that have tried to stamp out religion have been ones ruled by tyrannical dictators (North Korea's Kim Dynasty are a modern example). It's likely most of the characters living do not know of anything about religion (though Plutarch mentions the idea of a Republic, which Katniss doesn't understand). Otherwise a violent decadent society like Panem would be full of [[TurbulentPriest turbulent priests]] who would've either curtailed some of Panem's atrocities or mobilized a resistance. Whatever one's views on religion, or a particular religion, the fact remains that most promote good values and are a major part of regulating behavior in society. Since Suzanne Collins (the author of the Hunger Games) is Catholic, it's not out of anti-religious sentiment. |
| 181 | ** In the films ''Catching Fire'' and both parts of ''Mockingjay'', an angel statue is seen on the fountain between the victor's houses, so at least some religious references remain. |
| 182 | [[/folder]] |
| 183 | |
| 184 | |
| 185 | [[folder: Religion in Panem]] |
| 186 | * I've done a few text searches on the novels, and as far as I can tell there's no mention of any religion, and even religious-based words (hell only appears 3 or 4 times in the first book)are pretty rare. Is this the norm for young-adult fiction today, or is there some subtle point on the author's part? I'm an atheist myself, but it just seems an odd omission. |
| 187 | ** I assume as follows: Collins depicts a society in Panem that supresses awareness, compassion, conscience and solidarity. Spirituality would be a major hindrance to the success of such suppression because it would establish a ruleset independent of the President. It would create conflicting rulesets, conflicting authorities. The government most probably therefore exterminated spirituality. Metaphysically, we can interpret President Snow as satanic archetype and the second rebellion as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon#Christianity battle of Armageddon]] because |
| 188 | --->'''Katniss:''' "We have one enemy. President Snow - he [[TheCorrupter corrupts]] everybody and everything." |
| 189 | ** Are you American? I know the author is so I can't argue the same way I'd argue if we were talking about Harry Potter, but to be quite honest, I didn't notice because religion isn't a big deal where I live. I don't think that it's odd that there's no mention, but come to think of it, perhaps it is intentional. Or probably just convenience. |
| 190 | ** Yes, I'm American. I mainly picked up on it because it's absence in a series that's largely (IMHO) social commentary seemed to stand out. After a little web browsing, I'm not the only one to notice this. I don't think the author has made any official statement with regard to the lack of religion. It may have just been convenience, as you said, for marketing a young-adult series. Publishers step very lightly around hot-wire topics in that age market. |
| 191 | *** I think that the problem is that there are already some heavy moral issues addressed in this series. Imagine adding religion to that. It might be interesting, but I think that it would be a bit too much for a YA novel. Also, maybe Katniss just doesn't care. I can't see her as religious at all. The only thing she cared about before she got reaped was getting food on the table. Everything else was irrelevant. I guess it's also possible that practising religion was forbidden. |
| 192 | *** It's most likely that Katniss and the other people from the poorer Districts are concentrated more on surviving. No time to pray, or worry about what God thinks or worry about eternal damnation, when there's such a high risk of family members starving. |
| 193 | *** Personally, I'd think it would be the other way around. Being consistently close to death would give one reason to consider the spiritual more than if death isn't even worth a second thought. Thinking and praying are not exactly energy-intensive activities. |
| 194 | *** There are different things to factor in, and would depend on how much exposure the people have had to religion as well as the mindsets they've developed in their upbringing. For all we know, religion could be a more common occurrence in other districts. But District 12 citizens grow up with a very heavy hardship (moreso than many of the other Districts) and a bigger focus on survival. It could simply be a mindset thing: don't hope for anyone, not even a higher divine being, to help you. |
| 195 | *** As said before, it is far from unheard of to all but forget about religion. We're not quite so far gone as to have this on a social scale, but in many places it doesn't really play into politics as anything but a fringe conservative group. It is entirely possible that Collins just didn't think about it. |
| 196 | ** The Capitol's entire plan behind the Hunger Games is to separate the districts and pit them against one another. They would certainly stamp out religion, which would act as unifying force and an alternate source of authority. Besides, all religion is about underdogs, and as Snow says in the movie - he hates underdogs. |
| 197 | ** In Communist states, which Panem is at least partially, religion would be seen as an unnecessary distraction by the leaders, as it is more materialistic, like the Capitol. Also, if you're a dictator, you don't want your people to think there is anyone more powerful than you, like {{God}}. |
| 198 | *** Panem is a Communist state? Where did that come from? Aside from the fact that "Communist state" is an oxymoron, Panem is the embodiment of Fascism. Everything about it reeks of Fascism, not Communism. You need to do some research. |
| 199 | *** US Americans call every political system they don't like "communism". Panem is actually feudalism. In feudalism, wealth creates political power and gets accumulated in families. In fascism, wealth also creates political power but is accumulated in corporations. There are no corporations in Panem. All economic activity except black market is controlled by President Snow's government, which is shown to have ministries in Mockingjay. Therefore one can assume that Snow acquired his wealth and power from family heritage - or that he founded a feudalist heritage. Coin's government is an extreme leftist military dictatorship like Stalin's USSR was. |
| 200 | *** The USSR and the entire Cold War would beg to differ that Communist and state are oxymorons, though I agree that Panem doesn't seem very communist. Very dictatorshipish, though (obviously). Marx's idea of communism is a rather stupid pipe dream that ignores human nature in favor of wishful thinking. The USSR was modifying that idea so a state still existed and its greatest population (which was not Marx's source of revolution) would be utilized the most effectively. Hence Communist (with a capital 'C') normally refers to the USSR and similar governments, a key feature of which is an official lack of private property. |
| 201 | ** I second the idea that it's probably banned. Dictatorial states tend to either enforce strict adherence to a single religion, usually warped to fit the value of the tyrants (Nazi Germany, some of the more oppressive Islamic states) or no religion (Communist Russia, Mao's China) for the reasons mentioned. When you're ruling a country with an iron fist, the last thing you want to do is give the people anything that might make them realize you are doing a lot of things horribly wrong. (Of course they realize it anyway, because holy cow, there's an annual murder of 23 children, but the Capitol would want to stomp out anything corroborating the wrongness.) |
| 202 | * If there is no religion in Panem, why would Katniss say "Damn you, Gale?" - a reference to the Judeo/Christian/Islamic concept of Hell? |
| 203 | ** A phrase that has existed past the context in which it can be placed? Like the hundreds of examples of this we have in modern English? |
| 204 | ** Peeta also says "God, it's hot" in the ''Catching Fire'' movie. |
| 205 | [[/folder]] |
| 206 | |
| 207 | [[folder:Is there a world beyond Panem?]] |
| 208 | * We never find out what happened to the rest of the world. (Or did I miss it?) |
| 209 | ** Nope, you didn't. I wanted to find out about the outside world too. Well, there's always fanfic. |
| 210 | ** I actually thought that the rest of the world was doing quite okay but has decided to completely isolate North America because of the Capitol's tyranny and insanity. While Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, etc. might find what's going on in Panem barbaric, they don't want to bother with it because they fear triggering a nuclear/biological war, while the Capitol knows the rest of the world would kick its ass if it tried to expand past North America. |
| 211 | ** Seeing the film, I was reminded of 1984, where they don't know if the world even exists outside of Airstrip 1 (Britain). If there is something like a German Federation, New British Empire, or a Chinese Hegemony, they're probably too wrapped up with their own survival to care what is happening in North America. Also, for all we know, Capitol is in contact with the outside world, but does not share this with the twelve districts because telling them they're the only humans left is a more effective means of control. "We're what's left of humanity. Do you really want to rise up and destroy our final chance?" |
| 212 | ** It's only mentioned briefly a couple of times, but it appears that a combination of natural disasters and terrible wars did in fact destroy all humanity and modern civilization, except for a few thousand people in the US territory; "He tells the story of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America." Furthemore, throughout the books, various characters mention their "ancestors", people long gone who had incredible technology such as high-flying planes, lived in a republic (a concept that now generates doubtful looks) and, according to Katniss, left behind a dying and deserted world when they annihilated one another. |
| 213 | ** I personally think that there are other nations out there, likely in Asia, Europe and Africa at the very least, but they're all located far enough away from each other that they've never really made any effort to establish contact. It's possible that the leadership of each nation is at least aware of the existence of the others, but they just don't have the desire, need, or resources to establish trade routes across continents. |
| 214 | ** The Capitol lied about the existence of District 13 for nearly a century, so it's not a stretch that the entire "story of Panem" could be complete horseshit. Sure, people mention things about ancestors, but with all the propaganda they're surrounded with it's equally likely to be true or false. Maybe the rest of the world is fine and are silently judging Panem's actions; maybe they're all in situations similar to Panem and don't have time to worry about other countries; maybe Panem is the only place left. It's not like Katniss, a peasant girl who before volunteering had never even left her district, could ever know for sure. |
| 215 | [[/folder]] |
| 216 | |
| 217 | [[folder: How does Panem function?]] |
| 218 | * How could a nation such as Panem possibly exist and function? In the first book, it is stated that District 12 is in the Appalachians and the Capitol is in the Rockies. However there are only 12 Districts. Spread out across the entire continent of North America. District 12 also only has a population of about 2,000 people. Even with the hyper-advanced technology, it seems like it would be impossible for a nation to function with such a low population base spread out in small pockets over such a large area. It would make sense if all the districts either a) had a significantly larger population or b) were located closer to the capitol, but they're not. How could a nation like that even come into existence? |
| 219 | ** Well, I think it's mostly with a lot of networking between the Peacekeepers and the Capitol. I saw Panel as a bunck of colonies of varying sizes. The Capitol probably used older habitable areas to corral the people into. |
| 220 | ** Um...it says specifically in the book that there are about 8,000 people in 12. Where did you get such a low number? |
| 221 | *** Wait, but even with a population of 8,000-- roughly ⅓ the enrollment of UC Berkeley-- how is District 12 not ridiculously inbred? Especially if there's very little gene flow between the town and the Seam. I keep forgetting Gale isn't actually Katniss's cousin-- because I feel like he must be her cousin! |
| 222 | ** It's said that District 12 is a relatively small district. Some, like 8, are massive. What is slightly suspicious is that the main town is so small, yes - but I don't think numbers are ever mentioned. This might just be a case of WritersCannotDoMath as there is pretty much no way that a society requiring so much power (especially in the Capitol) could mine sufficient amounts of coal to meet its energy needs with so few miners, especially after District 13 - and with it all the nuclear resources - were destroyed. You could assume they have special technology to enable them to mine faster, but the impression is given that the Capitol doesn't care about either safety (all those accidents) or ease of extraction, and, even then it doesn't make that much sense. The "There is no District 12" thing doesn't really make sense when there is no indication anywhere other than the town even existed, and there are no refugees from anywhere else in 12 who've fled to 13. Considering that, enough Peacekeepers arrive to fill entire trains when there's such a tiny population? Isn't there going to be like a 1:2 Peacekeeper:citizen ratio when there's that small a population? I get the feeling Collins didn't realise for the first book, then tried to make up for it by exaggerating the population of the other districts book by book. |
| 223 | *** Coal mining is probably more a distraction tactic than an actual economic thing. The coal probably powers District 12, maybe a small part of another nearby district, and that's it. The Capitol obviously gets their power from somewhere else, probably wind/solar or gas, because there were no qualms about bombing 12 to the ground. |
| 224 | *** I always got the impression that District 12 was the district for people nobody wanted early on. Like inmates or something. The mining was pretty small. Also, people are keeling over from starvation all the time, so... |
| 225 | *** Not to mention that in Mockingjay, it's revealed that District 2 does mining as well. |
| 226 | *** Remember when Katniss reflected on how different Rue`s home was from hers. I see that as an (oversimplified) social commentary on how the Capitol and the rest of the country need District 11`s products more than they need those of District 12. The Capitol keeps very close tabs on District 11 and other Districts in charge of highly necessary industries. District 12 is basically ignored which means corrupt and inept law enforcement is able to go unnoticed (good from the point of view of the narrator who is a criminal) but also no leverage to make anyone address the extreme food shortages (yeah, I know other Districts have food shortages but that could be for a number of reasons) and no reason that the country could not quickly adjust to functioning without coal. |
| 227 | *** Maybe the coal from district 12 is used as a cheap way to power the other districts. You need coal coke to make steel and the plebs would need something to heat their hovels with. The Capitol probably derives most of his power from District 5 (which, going by the movie, uses nuclear power). |
| 228 | [[/folder]] |
| 229 | |
| 230 | [[folder: Homosexuality in Panem]] |
| 231 | * I'm hoping that I'm reading too much into this, but did anyone else notice that the only time sexual relations aren't noted to be between a man and a woman, this is during Finnick's recounting his sexual slavery? This could've been an oversight, but there's a glaring "strange sexual appetites" that I really can't overlook. If it's several decades/centuries into the future, why aren't gay marriages legal/acceptable? Even if marriage isn't recognized by the Capitol (but I think it is), people still get married in the districts. But Katniss ''always'' specifies it's between a man and a woman. Would this mean that the only place homosexuality would be socially acceptable was in the Capitol, which is already expressed as [[UnfortunateImplications depraved and morally bankrupt]]? |
| 232 | ** Katniss does not specify sexuality as heterosexuality. The only examples given by the story, including Katniss' own "hunger that only grows stronger with each kiss" happen to be heterosexual. Finnick mentions incest as one of the "strange sexual appetites" he has learned to happen in the depraved Capitol. The Hunger Games is no [[GayAesop Gay Aesop]], sexuality plays a very minor role, one major Aesop is love, among many others. It's about what one feels in the heart/soul, not in the sexual organs. E.g, the love of Katniss for Rue. |
| 233 | ** To be blunt, you're suffering from EaglelandOsmosis. To date, there are only 11 countries on the PLANET where gay marriage is legal -- the US (in some states), Canada, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, and Argentina. (if you include civil unions, the number goes up to 23 countries). In the current day, in most of the Arabic world, simply BEING homosexual is looked upon as an extreme perversion, and in some countries carries the death penalty --- never mind MARRIAGE. What exactly makes you think a dystopian, tyrannical dictatorship would grant people MORE liberty than they have today? I'm kind of surprised that marriage exists at all and the Capitol doesn't have some sort of enforced breeding program. |
| 234 | ** The fact that this is the future doesn't mean society as a whole has progressed --- if anything it's regressed, at least in the Districts, where it's likely being gay isn't even a 'thing'. Those in the Capitol enjoy the same protections their money and influence afford them as upper classes did in our own past, so even if homosexuality is taboo, they have the means to feed their appetites regardless of what they may be. It's possible that gay people are sort of an open secret in the Capitol, and everyone looks the other way. But 'strange sexual appetites' could mean absolutely anything. |
| 235 | ** If Katniss had specifically mentioned anything to do with homosexuals, it would've seemed like a political statement by the author. There's just no good way to casually mention that in a book like this. If Katniss had noticed it in the Capitol and been repulsed, Suzanne Collins would've gotten a ton of flak. If Katniss had noticed it and acted like it was normal, it would've seemed strange (considering the way society seems to have regressed in District 12), random, and a blatantly obvious Gayesop. |
| 236 | *** acknowleding that it exist without throwing condamnation on it is only a Gaysop if you're one of those people who think that homo- bi- or pansexuality is something we should pretend it doesn't exist. Such an easy thing it would have been to put in "girlfriend or boyfriend" when wondering about significant other or have Haymytch lose a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend - one word, completely inconsequential to the plot. By specifying everything as heterosexual, Collins isn't avoiding the issue, she's making it worse by implying that isn't even allowed to enter people's minds anymore. |
| 237 | *** That's true, but an easy way to have side step this would have been to not specify genders during the marriage ceremonies' descriptions. You could use things like 'the engaged' or something. If she specified genders when Finnick was talking, this wouldn't have been so bad because then it would be clear that heterosexuality is the norm. |
| 238 | ** You're making that classic mistake, assuming time somehow makes things better. History says otherwise. Things simply shift. No matter what you think is good or bad, you will never find a society entirely to your liking. It just doesn't exist. Plus, this is a dystopia. With the way society is there, I'm surprised the concept of marriage survived in any form in the Capitol. |
| 239 | ** In addition to all this, there is the matter of being the last few thousand people in the world. Not that the Capitol cares who dies, but you'd think it cared some about repopulating the country. |
| 240 | ** Is it specified that it was men who were his customers? Because I was under the impression that it was, at least, mostly women, being as Katniss thought that he was just a womanizer and they were his lovers. If you mean what he said about people having "strange sexual appetites", that could mean any number of things. I assumed they were weird kinks. |
| 241 | *** There is a line in Catching Fire, when Kat is pondering the unexpected in Annie being his "true love" so to speak, where my translation explicitly states that there were lovers of both genders. I don't have it in english, but maybe it's there too. |
| 242 | ** Upon checking, it's indeed never specified, or even hinted, that his clients were men. It's noted that he has a ton of fangirls all over Panem, and later revealed that at least some of the fangirls in the Capitol were customers, and nothing's ever said beyond that. |
| 243 | ** To be honest, I find this assumption bit silly. An explicit example given of one of the "strange sexual appetites" is incest, giving an indication that it's stuff that even in that culture would be regarded as {{Squick}}. In no way does it indicate that homosexuality is considered strange. Even if it did, assuming that because it's in the future it would be considered acceptable is a bit naive, especially when A) The known world is under an evil dictatorship and B) The human population (in some areas, at least) is terribly low. |
| 244 | ** Katniss thinks of him as a womanizer when she first meets him, which would imply that she thinks it's only women he's sleeping with. That means that Finnick either isn't sleeping with men, is sleeping with men but keeping it secret, or that the districts aren't being told of his trysts with men. Either way, it seems that homosexuality isn't openly talked about in Panem. |
| 245 | ** Because heterosexuality is more common than homosexuality, and it's just a general assumption that fictional characters are heterosexual unless stated otherwise. |
| 246 | ** I'm going to suggest the term "womanizer" gets used because "manizer" is not a word. |
| 247 | ** One fanfic, whose name I cannot recall at the moment, hypothesizes that most of the non-Career districts (including and especially D12) are extremely homophobic, for no other reason than that homosexuality is associated with the Capitol, and as far as they're concerned, everything associated with the Capitol is evil. |
| 248 | [[/folder]] |
| 249 | |
| 250 | [[folder: Mental illness in Panem]] |
| 251 | * Why is everyone with a psychological issue basically helpless in the series? Katniss's mother, Annie is basically "the poor, mad girl", the morphlings, etc. I think the only people who get to function more or less normally are people with PTSD from the Games. Everyone else just seems... pathetic. Why????? |
| 252 | ** If you feel like being Darwinistic then you could argue that everyone has some mental hangup in this CrapsackWorld but the tributes who had to survive or die are the only ones capable of functioning because they would be dead otherwise |
| 253 | ** Mrs. Everdeen is responsible for the health and wellness of the entire District. Granted, it's about the only thing she's good at, but it's pretty considerable. As for the morphlings, keep in mind that they've been addicts for ''decades'' and haven't had a fix in a decently long time. Haymitch gets grumpy when he has to go so much as half a day without booze, and that's exponentially less addictive. And overall, do remember that this is a dystopian world without psychiatrists where starvation is a fact of daily life. People with problems like that are not going to be able to find solace or comfort much of anywhere. |
| 254 | ** PTSD, depression, and mental breakdown are all conditions that can be devastating without proper medical intervention. Since the Capitol has a vested interest in keeping these people isolated and oppressed, it's highly unlikely they're receiving necessary care. Barring that, anyone who's lived with or known a victim of PTSD can vouch that medical care is not always guarantee they'll overcome it. |
| 255 | [[/folder]] |
| 256 | |
| 257 | [[folder: Panem's economy]] |
| 258 | * [[Tropers/{{aishkiz}} I]] know I shouldn't [[MST3KMantra get distracted by these things]], but ... the economic system of this country makes no sense. This is a country that's implied to have existed for centuries and certainly has existed for 75 years, and yet... each district has only one major industry, presumably having to import everything else. The government is quite repressive, so districts should be revolting left and right -- and indeed in the series almost all of them are very easily convinced to do so. Each revolt would cut off the rest of the country from whatever resource that district has. Hell, even without revolts... say there's a hurricane, or a fire, or an earthquake, or the main agrarian district is hit with a blight: there's no indication that any of these districts have surpluses, due to their poverty, so even if the capitol survives thousands of people on whom it depends will die. There's no way it should have lasted this long. |
| 259 | ** It appears very much as though only Districts 1, 2, 3 and 4 really provide for the Capitol in a major way, and the Capitol itself seems to be producing its own things, or potentially just shipping them in from other places in the world in exchange for what their poorer Districts are producing. Unfortunately because Collins failed to adequately "flesh out" the rest of the world, there's still no reason why Panem should be getting away with having such a massive percentage of its population forcibly under the poverty line, as they aren't providing anything to the Districts in return. EG, Rome operated on a very large scale quite successfully because they could promise protection to underlings that they treated like crap. Twelve is the biggest anomaly, though, seeing as the Capitol obviously doesn't need the coal (they firebomb the place to the ground over a teenaged girl) yet they hardly bother to feed anyone there. |
| 260 | *** This a world that hasn't revolted in 75 years even though they're all dirt poor and the only thing keeping them in line is the threat of death and....having 2 of their children killed every year? There really isn't any reason for the status quo. |
| 261 | *** Panem works like the Soviet Union in many ways: Each District does one thing, and must import everything else it needs, and so no District can go it alone. The Capitol controls transportation, and thus distribution of needed goods, ensuring that each District only keeps enough of its own production and gets enough of the others' to survive, with the Capitol retaining everything else. Coal goes mostly to the industrial District for making coke and coal tar, for example. It's also very possible, indeed probable, that the definition of "enough" has steadily dropped over the years, so that originally, the Districts were mostly operating at a modestly over-subsistence level, rather than the near starvation we see in District 12. |
| 262 | [[/folder]] |
| 263 | |
| 264 | [[folder: Travel ban in Panem]] |
| 265 | * One flaw in the system: if people from different districts are not allowed to travel to other districts, wouldn't that be an enormous waste of talent? |
| 266 | ** Considering that the Capitol wanted to keep the districts down, well, spreading talent in the districts would be a bad way to do that. |
| 267 | [[/folder]] |
| 268 | |
| 269 | [[folder: What is the rest of the world doing?]] |
| 270 | * Where is the rest of the world? If there was a nuclear war or something, there ''should'' be parts of Europe, South America Asia, Africa, Australia, etc. left. And these guys have invisible hovercraft things that can fly ''at least across the continental United States''. Why hasn't the Capitol gone exploring to go see what's up in the rest of the world? Nobody would have touched Australia, there ''must'' be SOMEONE left alive in China or India, Africa's probably completely untouched, South America is very close to North America even if the land bridge submerged, Europe probably has a couple hundred thousand left alive... There must be at least one civilization still sitting around there–probably with a [[ArtisticLicenseEconomics much better economic and political system]] then Panem. |
| 271 | ** Maybe Panem was practicing isolationism, like what China and Japan did. They wouldn't want to risk discovering another country that might ignite a rebellion. |
| 272 | ** They also wanted to stress how everyone was dependent on that specific governing system. If people think no other state exists that message is easier to send. Besides it`s not like today where we have news from all over the world. Most people wouldn`t know if there was anything else left and those in the government that did know would want to keep it that way. |
| 273 | ** "Nobody would have touched Australia"?! I'll have you know we actually have highly desireable resources - land, uranium, etc. Maybe we're a little more isolated than most countries, but there's no way we would have remained untouched by war - let alone nuclear war, the efects of which would have spanned the whole globe. |
| 274 | *** Why would anyone go for your desirable resources [[Website/{{Cracked}} when they'd die within seconds of touching the ground?]] |
| 275 | ** We ARE getting all this history through the eyes of a 17 year old who admittidly has a lot of better things to do than spend her time thinking about the rest of the world. The rest of the world might be fine, but struggling, and Panem probably wouldn't have taught kids in schools that in other countries things are better. Katniss might KNOW there's other countries, or she might not, but she definitely wouldn't really mention it. |
| 276 | ** Well, a US government "simulation" of a 1980s thermonuclear war ends in the 2040s with the most powerful and nuke-untouched countries being Indonesia, Japan, and yes, Australia. It just seems bizarre that there aren't any Australian/African/Japanese traders or soldiers or politicians going around in Panem, or at least trying to get entry. Especially since it's likely that any civilization that ''survived'' the nuclear war instead of being rebuilt after it would have had a technological head start on Panem, I'd have expected Panem (Panemite? Panemi? Paneman?) kids to be living in fear of the deadly hordes of laser-rifle-wielding Indonesian supersoldiers gearing up to invade California. |
| 277 | *** Being a military history buff, I've read and even discussed the subject with people that have actually worked in nuclear targeteering. A lot will change based on the premises of any simulation. You can't really take any one simulation or scenario as the one true model. Who the starts the fight, why they're fighting, and what they're fighting over changes things a lot. It's easy to forget with out the Cold War just how depressingly easily an apocalyptic a nuclear will get. Most cases result in even the "winners" being reduced to a pre-industrial state at best. And it's entirely possible for some, or even all, to be reduced to little better than Iron or Bronze age levels. It would be very easy for Panem (or any predecessor states) to be the only civilization left with an appreciable tech level. It many ways, it's more surprising that as much survived at all. |
| 278 | ** A war/catastrophe capable of wiping out the entire civilized legacy of North America would most certainly be capable of doing the same to the rest of the world. Maybe there genuinely isn't anyone else. When we say "surely someone must have made it," we have to take into account the scope of things--the entire United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, everything we've ever built or accomplished is gone without a trace. We're talking destruction on a massive, nigh-inconceivable scale. Global (and I do mean global) annihilation. There is absolutely no guarantee that anything else survived. |
| 279 | *** As stated further up the page, Panem could be using the same methods as [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Oceania and Airstrip One]]. We don't know what happened to other countries. They could be destroyed, totalitarian dictatorships or unaware of what's going on - think of Panem like North Korea is today - the rest of the world may know it's there, and bad things are happening, but they're not exactly sure what's going on. |
| 280 | ** Building on the statement above, maybe there are people out there, but because technology has regressed maybe they just can't find each other. |
| 281 | [[/folder]] |
| 282 | |
| 283 | [[folder:Panem's Flora and Fauna]] |
| 284 | * How does Nightlock kill you before reaching your stomach? If I'm not mistaken, most poisons need to be absorbed into the bloodstream before taking effect. |
| 285 | ** It could contain extremely potent acid which burns a hole in the oesophagus, leading to oesophageal rupture. Basically any serious trauma to the oesophagus is going to lead to rapid death if not treated. |
| 286 | ** She could have been exaggerating the potency; death is quick once it reaches the stomach. Some snake venoms can kill in eight minutes, it's not unimaginable that berries could be that fast. |
| 287 | *** Snake venom works that fast because it's injected directly into the blood stream or in body tissue with the snake's fangs. To work as fast, the berry would need to similarly bypass the slow digestive system (see next point for suggestions) |
| 288 | ** The mouth is lined with mucus membranes. You can absorb poison right into the bloodstream. Just like if you're having a heart attack you put aspirin under your tongue, you don't swallow it, so it gets into the bloodstream faster, or you die when you crush a cyanide capsule in your mouth. |
| 289 | * How the hell did they get corvids to breed with mockingbirds? It's like having lemurs have children with human beings. |
| 290 | ** They didn't. The jabber jays aren't true jays, and very probably aren't corvidae at all; remember, they're artificial life forms. Their vocal abilities would need equipment closer to a mockingbird or even a lyrebird than to any corvid. |
| 291 | ** Mockingbirds are actually corvids themselves. |
| 292 | *** Er, no, they're mimids. |
| 293 | [[/folder]] |
| 294 | |
| 295 | [[folder: Size of Panem]] |
| 296 | * Why do people think Panem is as big as North America? |
| 297 | ** Because Panem "rose from its ashes". That does not make it necessarily as big as North America, but it's a bit unclear what exactly is going on. |
| 298 | ** Additionally, the Capitol is in the Rockies, District 12 in the Appalachians, and District 13 has to be in a particular part of Canada because that's where NA's only graphite mine is. So Panem is already pretty big. It probably doesn't actually stretch into most of Canada / any of Mexico, however; various spots across the continental United States. |
| 299 | ** Most fan maps depict Panem as being from coast to coast with some altered shorelines. I don't think this is the case. I don't picture the districts as vast provinces. I see them as outposts, which are expanded as necessary to get new resources, but are most, if not all, smaller than 100 miles. In "Catching Fire", Gale is flogged for "poaching on the Capitol's land", which suggests that everything outside the district boundaries belongs to the Capitol. Besides, the arenas are supposed to be as remote as possible so that no one helps. |
| 300 | ** Doesn't it say somewhere that the Capitol is west of the Rockies specifically to shield itself from the districts? That implies that Panem only exists on the eastern half of North America, stretching to the Appalachians if D12 is the farthest. |
| 301 | ** On the train ride to the Games in the first book, Katniss mentions that the mountains separate the Capitol from the eastern districts, so presumably there are some western ones too. |
| 302 | ** Either it's coast-to-coast/scattered or there are western districts: if the capital is really the only district west of the Rockies (read: on the west coast of America), then District Four would have to be the east coast, which is thousands of miles away. |
| 303 | *** It's possible that Panem doesn't comprise only post-U.S. lands, so the gulf coast (current Texas down into Mexico) or the Mexican Pacific coast could be where District 4 is located, and both would be closer to the Western Rockies than Appalachia. Also, if the books don't specifically state that District 4 is on a saltwater coast, it could be against the Great Lakes. |
| 304 | ** There are several maps which show Panem is spanning all of the USA or North America, albiet with different coastlines, from both fan-made and from other official sources. The stuff shown about the Districts and Capitol shows they at the very least control territory in the Midwest and possibly the former US Pacific states. However, I personally thought this was all territory the Capitol ''claims'' as its own while in reality the territory they actual control might just be limtied to a few enclaves in the middle of the districts and maybe close to ideal locations for work, and there really just is no one outside the Capitol's controlled territories that isn't 13. |
| 305 | [[/folder]] |
| 306 | |
| 307 | [[folder: Child labour laws in Panem]] |
| 308 | * In Catching Fire, when Johanna finds an axe, Katniss mentions that she's probably been handling axes since she was a toddler. Then Katniss rants about how D12 is disadvantaged since you aren't allowed to work with pickaxes in the mines until you're 18. Earlier in the book, she mentions that Finnick was good with a trident during his Games because he'd been on boats his entire life. So, child labor laws only exist in District 12 then? If anything, the Capitol should be forcing kids into the mines, since they are smaller than adults. |
| 309 | ** She mentions only that they're not allowed to use pickaxes, not that they aren't allowed into the mines to work. There's plenty of other jobs that younger miners could perform. |
| 310 | ** That wouldn't really make for any kind of sustainable industry, since the children would be dying off faster than the adults could have them. Granted, it would have been surprisingly non-decadent for Panem to build something that could last; then again, the government was very good at avoiding directly inviting revolution, which sending children into mines might have accomplished. |
| 311 | *** Actually, during the nineteenth and at the beggining of the twentieth century, children would commonly work in coal mines from the age of ten. Granted, they weren't the ones using pickaxes, but still. |
| 312 | *** Exactly this. Also, it still doesn't explain why the children of Districts 4 and 7 work while the children of 12 do not. It's not like the Capitol cares about their safety. |
| 313 | *** Mining is pretty dangerous, especially for children. Children are also not likely to be strong enough to be much help in the mines. District 4 is fishing, which is a lot more reasonable for children to take part in. Though District 7 is lumber, which is also pretty dangerous, but it's not as bad as a coal mine. |
| 314 | *** Maybe it began as "adult takes his kids to work to show them the family business" and the Capital just kinda latched on to that and made it mandatory? |
| 315 | ** I get the impression that the Capitol doesn’t actually use coal, as they have District 5 to generate power for them, and Snow had no qualms about obliterating District 12. District 12’s industry, at most, serves the Districts, not the Capitol. Quotas are increased in response to misbehaviour, not need. It’s possible that children aren’t allowed to work in the coal mines because there is a limit to the number of mining jobs, so employing a child would take away a job from an adult. Keeping the adults working means being able to keep a close eye on their movements. |
| 316 | ** Katniss mentions at one point that only people over 18 are allowed to work in the mines because [[EvenEvilHasStandards even the Capitol considers them too dangerous for children]]. |
| 317 | ** I want to add that Katniss isn't all-knowing and that while she thinks that Finnick and Johanna have been working since they were children, they could have simply be taught the skill without outright working, or in an apprenticeship of sorts, while working in the mines doesn't need any particular training. She could only be extrapolating from their ease and her own imagination of what's going on in other districts that people from District 4 are on a boat from birth, those from D6 cut wood as soon as they walk etc... Whilt it's not what's happening in real life. |
| 318 | [[/folder]] |
| 319 | |
| 320 | [[folder: Why is everything so expensive?]] |
| 321 | * Why is all the stuff they could get sent so goddamn expensive? Especially food. Of course, it would be expensive from Katniss's point of view. But from Capitol people's point of view? Or is there some huge freaking tax on sponsoring gifts? Do you have to pay 200 times the price? Because I can't imagine that a tiny pot of cream is almost priceless when were talking about the capitol that has built 74 arenas for Hunger Games. |
| 322 | ** It’s never explained why the gifts are so expensive or why they get more so as time goes on, so I’m assuming it’s like this just to add tension to the story. It would have made more sense for there to be a limited amount of money that each district could spend, or a limited number of gifts the tributes are allowed to receive. That would explain why they can’t send food every time a tribute gets hungry. |
| 323 | *** It makes sense that the gifts would get more expensive as time goes on. Sending a burn cream to someone when there are thirteen other tributes standing is obviously less worthwhile than sending it when there are three. When you get down to fewer tributes, each gift brings your tribute much closer to winning, whereas earlier in the game they could be taken out at any moment. |
| 324 | *** Especially since a lot of people bet on the outcome of the Games. If supplies were cheap and could be sent in whenever why not just "buy" yourself the winner? Besides, it wouldn't really be The HUNGER Games if the contestants could be saved from starvation that easily. |
| 325 | *** Exactly that. And the book mentions that Finnick's trident was the most expensive sponsor gift ever made. |
| 326 | ** The Capitol probably charges an exorbitant tax on gifts, otherwise everyone could just send in every single thing the tributes could ever need or want. |
| 327 | *** It wouldn't be necessary to say that the gifts are so expensive (from Collins's POV.) I guess it would have been nice to get some behind the scenes information. Possibly in the form of a prequel about the first Hunger Games. (Unlikely, but I'd just love to read it.) |
| 328 | *** You have to buy the gifts within the game system. The gifts are part of the game. The Game makers are the only ones who can get things in and out of the games so the Capitol/game makers can set what ever sliding scale price they want on gifts. Charging more for items in general and with an increased cost as the games progress only makes sense from the viewpoint of making the games interesting. Reality TV shows already work like this. Ever watch Big Brother (US or UK versions)? Things that were relatively cheap for the contestants early on get increasingly more expensive/harder to earn as the game goes on. |
| 329 | ** Sponsors probably have to buy gifts from a specific vendor, who then forwards those gifts to the mentors. Obviously there's a huge surcharge on purchasing gifts. |
| 330 | ** The Capitol wants the games to be exciting. If it was easy for sponsors to send gifts to contestants they like, well, contestants could receive food and medicine whenever they needed it and they'd be able to avoid getting killed for a longer period of time. I imagine that sending stuff to contestants cost a LOT of money, or there may have been other limits on it, forcing sponsors to think wisely about who to send stuff to, what to send and when to send it. |
| 331 | ** FridgeBrilliance: They aren't paying for the gift, they're paying for the all the crazy things in the games. For the sponsors, it's self-promotion ("I, Sponsor X, helped the winning tribute, so buy my stuff!") and the game makers have money to make more crazy stuff next year, so win-win! (except for the tributes and districts, of course). |
| 332 | [[/folder]] |
| 333 | |
| 334 | |
| 335 | |
| 336 | !!Districts |
| 337 | [[folder: Why haven't the districts learnt to play the system?]] |
| 338 | * Maybe this is a case of overthinking, and maybe I won't be able to get this out very clearly, but the gravity with which the Games treated, they seem like a relatively new thing (certainly not something that's happened 74 times). Why do I say this? Well, Collins herself got the idea partially from reality television, and there's a certain effect that happens to reality TV shows: after the first season of any reality show, the contestants start playing with an "awareness" of how things fall out over the course of the season. Well, okay, that seems to be reflected somewhat by Careers, but over 70 years, you'd think Districts would have learned to "game" the system the way, for instance, pro athletes are groomed from high school (i.e., there are always volunteers). In other words, that there would be a whole subculture dedicated to Careers in each District; even that there might be ways for each District to turn a profit from it. It's not that I think this isn't a compelling idea (I haven't read the books, but the movie looks pretty appealing to me and I'm willing to ignore plot holes as long as I'm entertained), it's just that the dynamics of the Games don't hit me as something that should be the way they are after 74 years as they would after say, 5 years. |
| 339 | ** Gravity, no. Strategy, yes. A good example of this is Series/{{Solitary}}, where it only took until the third season to produce their own 'Career' - a player who had trained in a simulated pod, had studied the last two seasons to the point of memorizing what happened to each previous contestant, and did DAMNED well as a result. Aside from the obvious issue of trying to keep the Capitol from getting wiser, I'd imagine similar strategies (such as mini-games or at least {{LARP}}s) would crop up, if not outright manipulation of the system (using the games as a way to eliminate "problem" youth and spare the rest, victory and training be damned)! |
| 340 | ** It isn't just the Career tributes. Haymitch, the landmine boy from Katniss' Games, and arguably Foxface were all gaming the system. Haymitch and the landmine boy both leaned on the fourth wall: they took the arena forcefield and the landmines, artifacts intended by the Capitol to control the tributes, and turned them into genuine ''weapons'' they could use in-game. Meanwhile, Foxface just flat-out refused to play ball. |
| 341 | ** A headscratcher I've noticed along these lines is District 4 in general, especially Finnick and Annie. If D4 is a Career District as Katniss claims, has has a good amount of volunteers, then why did Annie (who doesn't seem like a Career to me) end up going during the 70th Games, and what was Finnick doing competing when he was only 14? |
| 342 | *** I don't know what the deal with Finnick was but it's mentioned that Annie went insane ''after'' she saw her district partner get decapitated. We don't know what she was like before that happened, but presumably she wasn't quite as weak as she was afterwards. Also it seemed to me that the Careers from 1 & 2 were a bit more dominant than the ones in 4. |
| 343 | *** It depends on how you define "career". For all we know, D1 and D2 have academies where all they do is teach future tributes how to kill, while the kids in D4 handle spears instead of playing dogdeball in P.E. class. Katniss would consider both of these career districts, since they are both still better than her. |
| 344 | *** We don't really know about Finnick's or Annie's games. For all we know, the year Finnick was reaped there was an earthquake and their training center was ruined, and no one volunteered because they didn't have a fighting chance. Or maybe, they thought he had a chance, being able to get sponsors or maybe her was muscled even then. He would have trained beforehand, either way. And remember, Annie's games were held in a time when Katniss couldn't possibly care, due to her father's death the spring before. Maybe her little sister was reaped, and Annie volunteered. And this is all saying that they never trained. Finnick knew how to use a trident and killed pretty efficiently with it, and I doubt Annie didn't kill anyone. As a previous troper said, Annie became unhinged after seeing her district partner's head being cut off. Who knows how she was before? |
| 345 | ** While certain aspects of the Hunger Games remain constant, the way the arena can change radically with each Game means a strategy appropriate for one Game may not work in the next. Also, the Games are run by Gamemasters whose only interest is in spectacle of the Games, not in providing a fair contest. If someone seems to have hit upon a winning strategy that gives them an edge over the other tributes, the Gamemasters can and will throw a manufactured disaster their way in order to keep the Game interesting (or, at the very least, alter the next game so that repeating that strategy won't work). |
| 346 | [[/folder]] |
| 347 | |
| 348 | [[folder: Unnecessary districts]] |
| 349 | * It seems that a few of the districts aren't really necessary for the Capitol to function. First, there is the obvious one: District 13. Capitol's been doing fine without them for 75 years. Next, there is District 12, which got burned to the ground. Presumably D5 took over the slack. District 9 deals with grain, but that really seems like something D11 could/should be handling. And finally, District 6 handles transportation, even though D2 makes trains and D3 makes electronics. The reason this matters is because Katniss makes this big speech about how the Capitol can't afford to kill anymore of the districts, because they are all so vital. From my perspective, there are at least two districts that can be killed off without problems. |
| 350 | * I get your point about 9, but I disagree with 6. I don't remember 2 making trains at all, at least in the books, and there's a pretty big difference between making a computer and a TV remote and a car or train or hovercraft or whatever. The sheer difference in required infrastructure and just general scale of products means that I find 6 nessecary. |
| 351 | [[/folder]] |
| 352 | |
| 353 | [[folder: Riots in District 11]] |
| 354 | * Why did District 11 erupt into riots over Rue's death? I get why that one guy (presumably her father) was angry, but given that District 11 isn't one of the districts that spawns careers, then they've likely been having their tributes killed many, many times before. What made Rue so special? |
| 355 | ** The death of Rue, a kind 12-year old girl, might have been the last bit of insult and pain which unleashed subtly growing tensions. Much like the self-immolation of one street vendor ignited Tunisia in 2010. |
| 356 | ** Not just Rue's death, but Katniss (someone who barely knew her) going out of her way to ring the body in flowers and give the District 12 farewell salute. That additional act of kindness and sadness was the straw that broke the camel's back. |
| 357 | ** Who said it was the first riot ever anyways? Seeing how the area was surrounded by peacekeepers I would bet that riots are a fairly common occurence during the hunger games. |
| 358 | ** Rue was pretty well known in District 11, she was the one who called in quitting time everyday, so it stands to reason that most of the workers in her area would at least know her as that whistling girl who tells them when they can stop working. I got the feeling that Rue was loved by most of the district because of that and how bright and happy she seemed to be, whistling a jaunty tune at the end of a long work day. Sort of like how most of District 12 adored Prim, Rue was the golden child of District 11. |
| 359 | ** There's also the fact that Katniss showing clear remorse over the death is an in-universe CerebusRetcon. Before Rue was just another contestant in the games. When Katniss does this, the people watching are suddenly reminded that a kind and innocent young girl has just been senselessly killed - and that Katniss has just had to watch a friend die. |
| 360 | [[/folder]] |
| 361 | |
| 362 | [[folder: Children not taken into the community home]] |
| 363 | * Katniss mentions a Community Home, orphanage-type deal in the first book, and how her desperation to feed her family was in part so her sister wouldn't be sent there. In the second book, she mentions how many children were sickly/on their death beds because the parents couldn't afford to feed them enough. Why weren't those children taken to the Community Home if their parents weren't feeding them? I get that in some situations, even the orphanage might not have the resources to feed the children, but in that case, it makes no sense to pull kids from their parents' homes on the grounds of neglect. |
| 364 | ** Because the orphanage is not a child services department, it's an '''orphan'''age. Your parents have to be dead for them to take you in. Children with living parents are left alone, regardless of neglect or abuse (just look at Peeta's situation.) If Mrs. Everdeen dies, there isn't much that an 11-year-old Katniss can do to stop the orphanage from taking a 7-year-old Prim away, so her only other option is to keep her mother (and herself and Prim) alive. Maybe if Katniss had been older, she could have just adopted Prim away from her mother instead. However, as an aside... |
| 365 | *** Why is it that if Mrs. Everdeen dies, Katniss and Prim are going to the orphanage? Do they have no other family willing to take them in? District 12 is a pretty crappy place, so I'm not surprised that it's a {{World of No Grandparents}}. But, for perspective, remember that Peeta has two older brothers, Gale has three younger siblings, Katniss has Prim, and if we want to extend outside of D12, Rue was the oldest of 6. I find it hard to believe that both Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen happened to be only children, considering that no one else seems to be. |
| 366 | *** Well, maybe they're dead already. |
| 367 | *** I can see this happening with the father's side of the family, since they are poorer (and hey, maybe they were all working when the cave in happened), but Mrs. Everdeen came from the merchant class. It's mentioned that it was a bit scandalous that she married a coal miner (so it must be rare). If she can survive long enough to give birth to two children while being married to someone beneath her economically, her siblings (or cousins!) should be able to do the same. |
| 368 | *** It's possible that her family disowned her. |
| 369 | *** Except that after Katniss wins and gets to live in the huge house in Victor's Village, no one tries to get back into her good graces for the chance of living there. Distant relatives that Katniss has never heard of should be flocking toward her in hopes of getting some of the riches. Also, Gale claims to be her cousin during Catching Fire, which doesn't make sense unless Katniss has an aunt or uncle somewhere. |
| 370 | *** I'm really not sure I'm getting your point. Of course, if Gale ''were'' Katniss' cousin, she would have to have an uncle and aunt (his parents apparently). But he isn't - it's just a cover up for having somebody so close to Katniss when Peeta is supposed to be the only (non family) male in her life. At least that's the story the Capitol wants to tell. So maybe she just hasn't any living relatives apart from mother and sister. Certainly not "distant ones she never heard of" within a community of only 8,000 or so. |
| 371 | *** The point is that it's a really bad cover story if it's obviously a lie. Gale pretending to be Katniss's cousin implies that Katniss can have cousins, which implies that her parents had siblings or cousins that reached adulthood. None of these people ever showed up when Mr. Everdeen died. |
| 372 | *** It is only a cover story for capital residents really. The President knows it was all fake between her and Peeta (and even tells her she better do a good job playing the star-crossed card or she, him, and their families are dead) and everyone in the district who knows them knows that it isn't true, or that they are so far apart that them being cousins means next to nothing in that any common relations are so far in the past no one can directly remember them. Most of the district probably knows they hunt together and have been good friends, such good friends that they would look like a couple to outsiders if they saw her spending all her time with a male friend instead of her supposed true love. The cousins gambit was for the benefit of continuing the star-crossed lovers routine to those in the Capital. |
| 373 | *** I guess my main complaint about the cousin thing is about my suspension of disbelief. I didn't even think about Katniss' lack of other family when her dad died until the author pointed it out by making Gale pretend to be her cousin. |
| 374 | *** If, like someone above says, Katniss' father was an only child with no living parents, they could just say Hazelle (Gale's mom) was his sister or even his cousin, since it's also easy to buy Gale as a second cousin. The people in other districts and in the Capitol aren't THAT terribly interested in Gale. Katniss' team just needed to reassure people that no, he was not a boyfriend of hers, and have him do some interviews about how she was good in archery or loved her sister. The Capitol fans are honestly kind of stupid and would buy that easily since Katniss and Gale look alike; Snow and his associates didn't care if he was really her cousin or not, but breaking up the Peeta-Katniss love story wasn't in their best interest, so no reason to bring that up; people in the other Districts have no way of learning the truth — maybe some won't believe Gale is her cousin, but nothing they can actually do about that, and besides, unlike the Capitol fans, they don't like Katniss solely for the love story with Peeta, but for other reasons (what she did for Rue, etc); the people in the 12 know Gale isn't her cousin, but they actually like Katniss so they won't say anything about it; and the people in the 13 understandably didn't really care about Katniss' personal love life at that point. They even ask if she wants to drop the cousin angle altogether. |
| 375 | ** It could very well be that the orphanage is an even worse place to be than Katniss' home. And maybe things changed from when Katniss was young to the second book and the orphanage had even less food. |
| 376 | *** I doubt the orphanage somehow got worse the year after Katniss won. Food is literally falling from the sky. They mention that each family gets an allotment of food, and an orphan is a family (of one), so unless for some weird reason they are excluded, the orphans should be getting free food. |
| 377 | *** Food falling from the sky? Are you reading a different book? |
| 378 | *** It doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with food. Residential schools in Canada (indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families and put into boarding schools), for example, were and are infamous for the abuse and assault that occurred. It's already clear that authority figures prey on children in District 12 (Katniss mentions young girls being forced into prostitution), so it wouldn't be surprising to find out that it was a similar situation at the orphanage. |
| 379 | [[/folder]] |
| 380 | |
| 381 | [[folder: Why so few hunters in District 12?]] |
| 382 | * Why didn't more people in District 12 try hunting and foraging? It's established that the Peacekeepers in that district don't really enforce a lot of the rules very well, and Katniss and Gale manage to do better than most of the other citizens by hunting and trapping animals. Several of the other citizens seem to know this, so why don't they ever try? |
| 383 | ** The Peacekeepers might be lax at enforcing the rules, but they couldn't tolerate a massive amount of people sneaking off without risking their own necks. There's an ostensibly electrified fence around the entire district, and even if you get over it then hunting and foraging is still dangerous. Remember the tracker jackers? Katniss says they were placed in the wilderness by the Capitol and god knows if there's worse out there. Plus many of the adults have jobs so they may not have the energy to risk all that after the shift is over and most of the kids didn't have survivalist parents to teach them. |
| 384 | *** And because hunting takes a lot of practice, which Katniss received from her father. And because the wilderness contains savage animals likes bears, wolves and tracker jackers. |
| 385 | ** Lack of hunting weapons, primarily. In Chapter 1, Katniss says that her bow is a rarity crafted by her father and that most people aren't bold enough to go out into the woods with just a knife (presumably a kitchen knife). |
| 386 | [[/folder]] |
| 387 | |
| 388 | [[folder: Lack of interbreeding between city and town people within districts]] |
| 389 | * I've never understood why all the people in the Seam looked the same (Dark haired, gray-eyed) and all the people who lived in town looked the same (Blond, blue-eyed). Obviously, it probably isn't likely that EVERYBODY who lived in those two areas looked the same, but the way Collins writes it, it seems like it. Were Seam people only marrying Seam people and townspeople only marrying townspeople? District 12 is pretty small, after all. This mess-up in genetics has always bothered me. |
| 390 | ** It's only been this way for 74 years, and it takes several generations of inbreeding to get bad enough to cause birth defects. Also, it seems that marrying your cousin is frowned upon in Panem (since Katniss pretends to be Gale's cousin to remove any hint of romance between them), so that would help a bit too. |
| 391 | ** At this point everyone is probably distantly related but not so much that it's considered incest. |
| 392 | [[/folder]] |
| 393 | |
| 394 | [[folder: How is District 13 making hovercrafts?]] |
| 395 | * How is District 13 manufacturing its own hovercraft? Where are the factories, where are they making the parts? How does all of Penem manage all this slick technology anyway? |
| 396 | ** My guess is the same way 13 exists and has such a giant arsenal: they made it on their own or inherited it from the Dark Days. |
| 397 | [[/folder]] |
| 398 | |
| 399 | [[folder: Why does cake decorating exist in District 12]] |
| 400 | * Peeta is a cake decorator... in a society in which the population is kept on borderline starvation. How is anyone baking cake, let alone decorating them, let alone creating enough of a demand that the highly specialized skill of cake decoration is taught as a matter of routine to someone working in a bakery? |
| 401 | ** He learned it from his father. He bakes the cakes mainly for the Capitol, rarely for locals. |
| 402 | ** I'm guessing peacekeepers and various government officials bought the most of the cakes. They have a mayor and they must have people working in the Justice Building keeping administrative stuff running. Also it's implied that the merchant class were better off, not well-to-do but not necessarily starving either. Alternatively, or additionally, it could have been a PR thing they were required to do on behalf of the government. Keep pretty cakes in the windows to make it look like things are much better than they really are, no starvation in Panem, no sir. |
| 403 | ** He decorates cakes as a hobby and a way of making art, but his family's bakery makes many things, like bread, a more necessary item. |
| 404 | ** Also, even people on the verge of starvation try to make an effort for special circumstances. Saving ration cards to buy a decorated cake for a birthday (especially the last birthday before a reaping) seems like something people would do. |
| 405 | ** You can either have an entire District kept on borderline starvation, or you can have enough excess confectioner's sugar, eggs, butter, milk, spices, and food coloring for someone to take up cake decoration as an artistic hobby. You can't have both. |
| 406 | *** Not true. Panem uses currency (Katniss sells the game she has to spare and gets money as part of her prize for winning the Games) and it's fairly clear that what nearly kills the Everdeens isn't just lack of food: it's lack of money to buy it. Mr Everdeen is the sole breadwinner when he dies, Mrs Everdeen zones out for a while and there is no money coming in. At her lowest ebb (when Peeta throws the burned bread) she is starving because she can't buy any food but other people still can. The Capitol limits what food is available (the flour for the bakery is presumably from 11, and they're going to make sure that the Capitol have all the cake they need before they allow shipments to be diverted elsewhere) but they're not doling out an equal amount of food to all citizens. Much like now: there are people who can drop $1000s on a wedding ccake and people who have to choose between paying their bills and buying food. |
| 407 | ** Maybe they aren't the same type of decorated cakes we have (like, super colorful creations of 4+ floors); maybe to our standards they'd be quite modest cakes (perhaps even smaller than ours tend to be) decorated with some fruits and stuff like honey or condensed milk. Not like Katniss has anything to compare them with till she gets to the Capitol. Peeta's thing is that he's so talented that he makes the cakes look really artistic and fancy despite that. |
| 408 | [[/folder]] |
| 409 | |
| 410 | [[folder: Why is hunting illegal in District 12?]] |
| 411 | * Why is hunting illegal in District 12? Back in feudal times it was illegal because it meant less meat for the lord. In the first book it's implied that they have an over abundance of wild life, to the point that courage's and bears are wandering into town despite having a thick, lush forest filled with animals to hunt. So why would hunting be illegal? |
| 412 | ** Well, for one it takes people outside the wire where they aren't being watched. (Supposedly, Snow does somehow learn about Katniss and Gale kissing) Also, Hunting requires weapons and martial skills, which are strictly verboten. But also it subverts the tesserae system. The kids are supposed to trade entries in the Hunger Games for food rations, but if they are outside the wire earning their own food then no one has any need to sign up and it takes away the giant FUCK YOU from the Capitol. |
| 413 | *** It wouldn't hurt the Hunger Games at all though. The names are add every year whether the people want them to be added for not. They don't need volunteers because entry is mandatory. The worst thing that would happen is that more of the competitors from district 12 would be well fed and better able to compete. Besides, why would the capitol want to keep these people permanently starving? It only fuels the desire for rebellion. The Capitol is clutching their IdiotBall pretty hard if they think it's a good idea to intentionally piss off their subjects. They aren't really giving anyone any reason to not rebel. |
| 414 | *** Part of it is to keep the poorest of the poor dependent on the Capitol. While many of the people in many of the districts are very poor, some are still worse off than others. In the book, the mayor's daughter, Madge was mentioned. She was fairly well off (by District 12 standards, anyway) and never had to take out any tessarae. The ones who take out the most tessarae are typically the ones who have siblings and whatnot they need to help care for. |
| 415 | *** ''It only fuels the desire for rebellion.'' Yes, the Capitol does things which are ''on their face'' intended to piss off and antagonize the Districts. Just to show that they can. They're saying 'Not only can we take your kids any time we want and make them march around our city naked and die for our amusement buuuuut we will also keep you on the brink of death and force people to risk their very lives for the crappy food you do get.' You're not the first person to note that the Capitol is playing with fire by antagonizing the Districts, but that's just how they roll. No one claimed they were particularly smart and it does lead to their downfall so what's the Headscratcher? |
| 416 | *** It's very difficult to imagine that the government would be that stupid, especially one that knows it's on the brink of rebellion like Snow suggests in the second book. I don't think the government is saying anything here, I think Collins is a just a very poor world builder. It seems much less like the Capitol is a big bad villain intentionally antagonizing the districts, and much more Collins has no idea how to write a tyrannical government. |
| 417 | ** Hunting being illegal makes sense to me. The Capitol needs the citizens of the Districts to work for them so they want to keep them subjugated. Food is a large part of that. Most of the Districts produce something other than food, and the Capitol controls the movement of supplies between Districts, in addition to encouraging dependence on the tesserae available to those in need of it. It's not in their interests to allow people and Districts to become more self-sufficient. If hunting was allowed, they'd run the risk that more and more people would discover that they had a knack for it, and those people could begin to consider the idea of leaving the District (depriving the Capitol of some of its workers) appealing. |
| 418 | ** It's possible that the Capitol didn't want District 12ers wandering into the forest, getting lost, and accidentally coming across the supposedly destroyed District 13. |
| 419 | ** It could also have to do with ruins. They didn't want anyone stumbling across the ruins of any Appalachian cities, libraries, etc. |
| 420 | ** Also, if people are starving, have no training with weapons, no forest that they can use for guerrilla warfare they're not going to be able to fight well enough to overcome a trained and well-fed army. That's why only the districts most friendly to the Capitol get academies, wealthiness and jobs that would ensure that they are wealthy. |
| 421 | [[/folder]] |
| 422 | |
| 423 | [[folder: Why did District 13 not suspect Peeta was brainwashed?]] |
| 424 | * The only thing that pushes my WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief too far is most of 13's GenreBlindness regarding Peeta before he's rescued. Given that these people not only know how frequently the Capitol forces people to lie and act contrary to the truth before cameras but know of the practice of hijacking, wouldn't the ''first'' assumption upon seeing Peeta calling for a cease fire not be "Traitor!" but that he's being coerced or {{brainwashed}}? |
| 425 | ** They didn't want Katniss to know that he was being tortured whenever she released propaganda, so it's possible that the ones who did figure out the truth kept it from her. They've all been shown to be perfectly willing to lie to Katniss to get her to do what they want. |
| 426 | [[/folder]] |
| 427 | |
| 428 | |
| 429 | !!The Capitol |
| 430 | [[folder: How do the death traps help the Capitol?]] |
| 431 | * The death traps. They show the capitol being cruel and sadistic. Forcing the children to fight would have worked so much better without the Deus Ex Machina of walls of fire. Other elements could have been used to goad recalcitrant Tributes into killing each other, but to really set the Districts against each other it would have worked so much better without the chance of a tribute being killed by someone other than another tribute. I also found the pods used to "protect" the Capitol to be insane. No one protects their city by installing traps twice as likely to kill their own population as themselves. Sure, Snow's a bastard, but he relies on support from others in the Capitol, people who'd be unlikely to be sanguine about him protecting their families by installing giant pits of flesheating monsters outside their houses or full of swarms of Nightmare Fuel inducing wasps. The who theme of man's inhumanity to man really suffers from these rather impersonal, almost videogamesque, elements. |
| 432 | ** I'm not sure about the Capitol traps, but the Games traps seem to add more drama than death (in the 74th Games, we don't see a Gamemaker trap being the direct cause of death to anyone). I suppose again, that if you had nothing but Tribute fights and none of the dangers in the Arena, the Capitol audience would probably complain that it was boring or something. |
| 433 | ** I was under the impression that the Capitol traps would not go off unless they were activated. If I recall correctly, it is mentioned that the pods were really only on in places that had been evacuated. Also, they didn't turn the pods on in populated areas until the government got desperate, and Snow cared more about himself than the refugees. |
| 434 | [[/folder]] |
| 435 | |
| 436 | [[folder: How do all the arenas of current and past Games fit inside the Capitol?]] |
| 437 | * There's no significant travel time between all the games-preparation in the Capitol and the launch into the actual arena. And then we learn that arenas are kept up forever afterward as tourist attractions. Does that mean that ''all 75 arenas'' (plus any future ones they've already started building) are contained within the Capitol itself? Even though several of them are so huge they take multiple days to cross on foot? |
| 438 | ** To expand on this, some super-rudimentary math: I'm no professional hiker and neither are they, so let's pretend that we travel at about the same rate. Once, as a teenager, carrying my own stuff, not using trails, and in no particular hurry, I went 20 miles in 2 days. They could probably go faster, but they also have to hunt/forage/hide and deal with the complications of hostile terrain/predators/injuries/exhaustion/thirst/hunger, so let's just assume it's close. And let's imagine that in a standard arena they'd let you walk maybe 3 days before getting bored and funneling you to the center. So, a 30 mile radius. That's an area of about 188.5 square miles. Multiply that by 76 (surely at least one additional arena has been begun) and you get over 14,325 square miles. That is about 92 times larger than the current area of the city of Denver. (28 times bigger than Los Angeles, if you want a more impressive city.) And yes, this takes place in the far future and the capital is obviously humongous, but this is for arenas ''alone''. Even if the arenas are all a third that size, with a 10 mile radius, they're still taking up 30 times the space of modern Denver (9 times LA), ''just'' for this very specific form of tourism. |
| 439 | ** Also keep in mind that travel to the Capitol is illegal, so literally all of those tourists already live in and spend their money in the city. And what do the tourists actually do there, with all that space? Go for hikes?? Or, given what we know about their natures, just buy some binoculars at the gift shop, giggle at the view for a while, and go home? |
| 440 | ** Maybe the 74th and 75th are in the Capitol, but not all have been...? |
| 441 | ** For that matter, this is a psychotic amount of money to be throwing away, even for the Capitol. |
| 442 | *** Proposed answers: The arenas may be in South America, Europe or Asia - anywhere, really - as it is strongly implied that only the North-American continent is actually populated. The rest of the world would be up for grabs. As for size: the Game Makers seem to have learned their lesson for the 75th Games, as it took about a day of walking to get from the center to the forcefield. I doubt anyone was ever supposed to be going there; the kids were supposed to fight it out somewhere within the limits of the arena, without reaching the limits themselves. Possibly the fact that it was closer, and itself a weapon, in the 75th was meant as an ironic slight to Haymitch, who was in fact the one to get reaped. |
| 443 | ** The Capitol clearly has perfected faster-than-light travel. It's too expensive to use for mundane tasks, but just the right price for carting soon-to-be corpses to far-off arenas. On a more serious note, why are the arenas so big that someone can wander in one direction for 3 days before running into anything? That just smacks of horrible game design. |
| 444 | ** I personally always thought that the arenas were actually located in the districts, in areas where the Capitol would prohibit people from going to. Maybe now there's the reason why the Districts on the maps are so doggone large... |
| 445 | [[/folder]] |
| 446 | |
| 447 | [[folder: Why does the Capitol starve the districts?]] |
| 448 | * Why does the Capitol starve the districts? In history, many revolts and rebellions were triggered because there is a food shortage or famine of some kind. Being starved angers people. It drives them to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Even worse. starving people make for a pretty shitty work force. If you want to have borderline slaves you have to keep them healthy so they can work. Having a bunch of malnourished, unhealthy, half dead workers is going to give you really shitty results. Besides, if the people can rely on the government for food, why would they need to break the laws to eat? |
| 449 | ** Part of it is to keep the people dependent on the government. It's either get food from the Capitol, or starve. But since getting food from the Capitol does have consequences, people still look for other ways like illegal hunting. It should also be noted that the Capitol does do other things to keep the people down, like banning weapons. It's why Katniss had to hide her bows and arrows. |
| 450 | *** As I said above (though admittedly posted after you posted) "This a world that hasn't revolted in 75 years even though they're all dirt poor and the only thing keeping them in line is the threat of death and....having 2 of their children killed every year? There really isn't any reason for the status quo." |
| 451 | *** Really? 1 out of 4000 people dying once a year is relatively low odds. Given the other, more conventional police state tactics, more people than that are almost certainly killed by the Panem Regime. It's easy to say people should rebel but it takes more than just not liking the system to see it fall. Police states, even horrifically badly managed ones like North Korea or Zimbabwe, often survive for a long time because individuals don't want to individually fight the system. It takes a lot to get real, popular movements for change going. |
| 452 | ** If they're kept hungry, their lives are going to be centered around finding food, not leaving much time for them to plan rebellions. It was the same way in Rome; they created steam engines, but didn't implement them, because they didn't want their slaves to have too much free time. |
| 453 | *** That's completely wrong. The steam "engines" of the Roman world were not the sophisticated machines of the industrial age. They were little more than toys and weren't capable of doing worthwhile work. |
| 454 | [[/folder]] |
| 455 | |
| 456 | [[folder: Why make Avoxes?]] |
| 457 | * The Avox. Every year 24 children are thrown into an arena to fight to the death, but known traitors to the Capitol and criminals are ... made into household slaves. Where they could easily set fires, smother important people in their sleep, poison food, plant bombs sent by traitors who ''weren't'' caught and made into Avoces or overhear information to pass onto traitors. Is there some kind of brain-chip keeping them in line? I've only read the first book, but that part really stuck out to me. |
| 458 | ** The means by which they keep captives in line are explained in depth in the third book. In short, by various horrendous, torturous means. |
| 459 | [[/folder]] |
| 460 | |
| 461 | [[folder: Why do the Capitol people enjoy the Hunger Games]] |
| 462 | * I don't get the Capitol's reactions to the Hunger Games. They're encouraged to get to know the tributes, learn about their lives, see them talk on television, observe their most private moments, and even send them gifts and supplies (for a huge price). Then they go and dehumanize the tributes so much that they not only accept but actually ''enjoy'' watching them be brutally killed. How does that not create massive amounts of cognitive dissonance? |
| 463 | ** It does in some of them. But "such thoughts are strictly forbidden" explains Effie. And the Capitol people live in a [[SinisterSurveillance surveillance state]]. |
| 464 | ** The tributes are never really seen as people, more like glorified pets. And the Hunger Games, while obviously not actually necessary, are seen sort of like a war or a natural disaster. Dying in the Games is seen as honorable and good. |
| 465 | ** The tributes get to talk during a 5 minute interview the night before the Games. That's it. The Capitol is encouraged to know them because otherwise it's just complete strangers getting killed, which isn't as entertaining. It's a lot like how horror movies will give the characters interesting personalities and quirks before killing them. And yeah, you'll root for your favorite to live, but that character only became your favorite in the first place for superficial reasons, and if they die, you're not going to be sad over it. |
| 466 | ** The Capitol population are definitely not encouraged to see the Tributes as people or get particularly attached to them. Look how much backlash there was during the 75th games when they put the existing Victors (who the Capitol citizens had had much more time to get attached to) back into the arena. Particularly Katniss and Peeta... the 'star crossed lovers' who had won over the crowd the year before |
| 467 | ** In addition to the above, one mustn't forget that the Hunger Games are essentially a modernized human sacrifice ritual. The Capitol citizens are taught to believe that the Hunger Games are what keeps the Districts from starting another violent rebellion. In the movie we see several Capitol citizens talk about the Games with an almost religious reverence, using words like "sacrifice" and "bravery" and so on. Not to mention the fact that the participants in the Games are referred to as "Tributes" rather than "contestants" or "players". The goal of the Hunger Games isn't to see any of the Tributes win. The goal is to see them '''die'''. Allowing one of them to "win" the Games is little more than a motivation for the Tributes to kill each other. |
| 468 | [[/folder]] |
| 469 | |
| 470 | [[folder: Why not starve out the Capitol?]] |
| 471 | * Why did the rebels feel the need to storm the Capital? (I mean the rebel army as a whole, not just Katniss' unit.) Why deal with all the traps and defenses when you can just besiege the place and starve it into submission? Or shell it into submission? |
| 472 | ** It's impossible to tell because there's no definitive landscape or plan of the Capitol, but it might not be easy to besiege. If it's large, you need to man a constant barrier to keep supplies getting in and people getting out. That takes man-power. There are also hundreds of subterranean tunnels: those would have to be watched. Supplies aren't just a concern for the besieged people, the attackers need to be constantly getting food, water and ammo as well. A long siege in the wrong circumstances can end in the attacking force giving up from hunger and going home historically. Coin isn't stupid: a shock attack on the unarmed, untrained population of the Capitol works better than keeping the morale and impetus up when all you're doing is waiting for the other side to die. |
| 473 | ** ''The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes'' addresses it, and it appears that they had already tried to starve the Capitol out and it failed after the Capitol broke through the siege and District 13 seceeded. My guess is that Coin didn't do it because A: she wanted to seize power as soon as possible, B: Coin wanted to kill off opposition to her future rule during this assault, and C: perhaps she feared the Capitol had some kind of preparatory measures and perhaps that they'd just outright destroy Panem to ensure 13 couldn;t have it. |
| 474 | [[/folder]] |
| 475 | |
| 476 | [[folder: Why does the Capitol require soldiers?]] |
| 477 | * In book 1 those GMO wolves were precise enough to perform surgery. Why do they need people to mine coal? Or be soldiers? |
| 478 | ** I have no idea what you are talking about. The Wolf Mutts didn't do any surgery on any case and are probably too dumb to be able to do complex orders. |
| 479 | [[/folder]] |
| 480 | |
| 481 | [[folder: How is the Capitol so luxurious?]] |
| 482 | * How did the Capitol citizens get a luxurious lifestyle? It is mentioned that a lot of people are swamped in debt in the Capitol. |
| 483 | ** It's relative. Most Americans live a comparatively luxurious lifestyle on the grand scheme, yet the average American also has over $10 000 in debt. |
| 484 | [[/folder]] |
| 485 | |
| 486 | !!Peeta |
| 487 | [[folder:Is Peeta as good as people say?]] |
| 488 | * Why does no-one in-universe realise how manipulative Peeta is? He's well-meaning, sure, but he hides so much from Katniss, tells huge lies about her on national TV without even warning her first (e.g. the pregnancy thing), some of which don't even do her any favours in the long run. This is barely touched upon in the books, and when it is it's in a positive way - he's "great in interviews". I don't think it even goes as far as calling him a "good liar". If anything, it's almost made worse by the fact that it's for Katniss's own good - throughout the books there are people controlling her because she can't be trusted to do anything for herself. This is a key point of the series, but for such a trait to manifest itself so strongly in her ''future husband'' is just...ugh. |
| 489 | ** The fake engagement and pregnancy did not backfire, only the fake romance did, because it lead to Katniss saving Peeta's life with the berries trick, which lead to Snow getting angry at Katniss which led to Katniss not being allowed to romance Gale, which lead to Gale getting whipped, which lead to the victors getting reaped in the 75th Games, which lead to the revolution war which lead to end of friendship with Gale and death of Prim. If Katniss would not have saved Peeta in the 74th Games, She might have died or won anyways depending if she could have defeated Cato. If she had won alone, Peeta would be dead, Gale eventually married Katniss, Prim survived and Snow would hold his grip on Panem until his natural death. The books Catching Fire and Mockingjay would not have happened. Katniss decision to play along the fake romance and the berries trick backfired horribly and set in motion a chain reaction of events. that led to revolution and Prim's death. She could have refused the fake romance and no war, no dying of Prim would have happened. |
| 490 | ** The first book seemed to imply that Haymitch didn't want him to warn her about what was going to happen in her interview, and then it was some sort of unspoken rule thereafter because Katniss is a lousy actor and her reactions had to be genuine. He doesn't really hide that much from her, though, aside from the fact that he made a deal with Haymitch to get Katniss out alive, although she figured that out on her own. The only other time he hid something from her (his playing the MagnificentBastard card and joining the careers) he didn't have much of a chance to talk it out with her, and we don't know how he got himself into the situation to begin with... |
| 491 | ** Peeta basically changed Katniss to fit what he wanted. He thought that she was pretty, but her personality at the beginning of the series was not to his liking. She was a hunter, and absolutely not a romantic. He wanted a romantic. Then they get put into the Hunger Games, and Peeta starts manipulating her, surprising her, catching her off guard with things like his declaration of love, then throws in an ultimatum by somehow convincing the Gamemakers to "allow" two tributes to survive. (I put that in quotes because the Gamemakers try to undo it later.) By the end of the Games, she is beyond confused, because she has had to pretend to be Peeta's Romantic Katniss for so long but she really ''isn't'' Peeta's Romantic Katniss. Gale loves Real Katniss, but Real Katniss has been so warped by the end of the series, and Gale himself has been warped by the war, and the thought that he may have aided in killing Prim, that they can't be together anymore. "You love me. Real or not real?" Not real, Peeta, but you made it happen. |
| 492 | *** Actually, it was Katniss who changed herself. It's called CharacterDevelopment. They're all warped by the war. |
| 493 | *** I (the original poster) agree with you on this. I've just been re-reading the books with my little sister, and Peeta's always forcing her into situations involving the two of them that she didn't want before. We're lovers, we're married, she's pregnant...the list goes on. It's like he's using her to live out his fantasies until eventually she becomes so confused she decides she must like him. The ending was basically a case of him being the only convenient male around after she told Gale to never see her again. The Katniss/Peeta romance could have been done well, but it really wasn't. |
| 494 | *** But was all this really his intention? Is it a worthwhile price to pay in exchange for continuing to live? Did he really intend to come out of the first games alive in the first place? |
| 495 | *** I don't think so. Besides, if you were Peeta, a teenage boy whose own mother said he would die in the Games and knew he had no chance of surviving, wouldn't you declare your love for the girl you would die to protect? Aside from that, he was always looking out for Katniss from the start. |
| 496 | *** I hate to bring sexism into this, but would you be so upset if their genders had been reversed? Think of how many romances involve a woman changing a man, whether it's because he's a big womanizer or because he's more like Katniss, with the whole "I will never fall in love" thing. Besides, a fair amount of the reason why Katniss didn't want to have children was that she was afraid of them having to become Tributes. With the Games over, it's not so crazy that she might change her mind. |
| 497 | *** Katniss played up the whole StarCrossedLovers thing almost as much as Peeta did. In the first book she went out in search of him after the Gamemakers' announcement that two victors could survive if from the same District (and where on earth are you getting that ''Peeta'' somehow convinced the Gamemakers to pull that, the Gamemakers did that on their own in order to rescind it later for the more dramatic final kill) and in order to get them food and save Peeta's life she started playing along with the whole pretend romance, kissing and cuddling and generally playing on the audience's sympathies. Everything they did from then on was pretty much joint playing to the cameras. I seriously doubt Peeta liked the fact that he and Katniss were basically forced to get married because Panem expected and wanted it-he wanted Katniss to love him of her own volition, which is why they decided to start from scratch and be friends in the second book. Everything he said in the TV interviews was him keeping up the charade, and making the citizens of Panem feel an injustice on their behalf, to incite a mood of rebellion in them. Katniss just rolled with the ball and then spent so much time supporting Peeta in and with the illusion that she started BecomingTheMask and fell for him for real. Not to mention that, even if he did put her in those situations, Peeta was also pretty darn determined to ''die'' so that Katniss could live and find comfort and a future with someone else. What good is manipulating a person if you're not planning on being around to reap the benefits? |
| 498 | *** I agree with this. I don't remember the exact wording, but I'm pretty sure I remember the first thing that Peeta did when their marriage was announced was sulk in his room for several hours because he was upset over the fact that it wouldn't be real. And again, it's really hard to make an argument about Peeta being manipulative to this extent because he's in a situation where he knows he could die at any time, and in fact expects to, which is why he continuously tries to urge Katniss to worry more about her own survival. And as far as the whole thing about playing up the "lovers" angle... It has to be added that Katniss's first reaction to the pregnancy ploy were feelings of ''empowerment''. She was ''happy'' with that lie, hell, even happy that he didn't tell her he was going to drop that bomb before he did so. Not only that, but to an extent it worked. The Capitol ate the whole thing up, and allowed both of them the chance to beat the Games. |
| 499 | *** [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation I read Peeta's manipulations as a defensive mechanism.]] Think about it; he's just been conscripted into a gladiatorial bloodsport with a 99% fatality rate. He's the son of a baker, unused to lifting anything heavier than a sack of flour being asked to compete against hunters and fishers for his survival. Much like Katniss's multiple traumas helped contribute to her icy exterior, Peeta is diving into a fantasy to protect his sanity. His whole relationship ballyhoo with Katniss was both A) falling back on his romantic fantasies as a means of coping with such a bleak situation and B) exploiting the spectacle of the games to guarantee his and Katniss's survival and C) attaching himself to a stronger competitor to ensure his own survival. Honestly, I think Peeta could have fallen in love with anyone because he needed to form whatever superficial attachment he could to stay alive. |
| 500 | *** [[ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne 95.8%, actually.]] |
| 501 | *** Excuse me? Peeta didn't love Katniss for who she was? He had been in love with her and had been trying to work the nerve to confess to her since the age of five. |
| 502 | *** Well, that's what he says... And he ''is'' an excellent liar... |
| 503 | *** Except for the fact that he could remember the same schoolday events as Katniss could and talk about his love story. His love was genuine. |
| 504 | *** There's no getting around the fact that Peeta had a highly idealized version of Katniss in his head. Given his history of familial abuse, it shouldn't be surprised that he latched onto a fantasy born of the one time his father made such an emotional and wistful observation about her mother, perhaps the one time Peeta ever witnessed his father expressing such a sentiment. (This is actually goes a long way to explaining how manipulative he can be, too - abuse victims have to learn to placate their abusers and work around their outbursts.) This troper thought it was pretty obvious he was still clinging to the image of her throughout the first book and even throughout the second, until it all crashes down on him around the third and everything falls apart for both of them, forcing them to separate and rebuild from the ground up. Is Peeta and Haymitch's plan in the first novel fair to Katniss? Not particularly - and if it ocurred under ordinary circumstances, that kind of manipulation would be horrifying. But they're not in a typical situation - they're going into a government controlled battle arena with the odds already against them because of their district background. Peeta and Haymitch understand that manipulating the system is essential to survival; Katniss can be angry all she wants, but the two of them are doing what is necessary for at least one of them to get out of the situation. Katniss eventually realized the significance of this ploy and played into it for the camera. They both screwed up there - Peeta mistook fantasy for reality, while Katniss failed to realize the power of her actions to impact others. What keeps Peeta sympathetic and out of creeper territory is how he responds to the fallout. He's hurt and sulky for the first few months after the first Hunger Games (which is okay - he's a teenager, they're allowed to make mistakes), but then he OWNS up to the fact that he's being ridiculous and tries to be friends, backing off and respecting her boundaries for the most part. The crowd manipulation we see in ''Catching Fire'' is done mutually - even Peeta's pregnancy announcement is understood by Katniss to be a last ditch effort to cancel the games, much as the tributes before them did. As it stands, they'd likely be drawn to each other regardless, romantic or otherwise, simply because they shared a rather intense life experience together. Is it necessarily the healthiest relationship there is? Probably not. But that's possibly what Gale meant when he said Katniss would pick who she needed to survive. Sometimes, there are no happy endings. Sometimes, it's about picking up the pieces you have left to keep going. |
| 505 | *** As mentioned above, Peeta didn’t intend to survive either of the two games they were thrown in. Up until the 74th games, there could only be one winner. He was going to sacrifice himself for her. The StarCrossedLovers gambit was only to ensure that they got sponsors. He knew that she would have a lot to return to as a victor. In Catching Fire, this point is manifested in the locket he gives her, and Gale isn’t thrown in for no reason. He was planning to die so that she could return to Twelve, be with her family, and marry Gale. Before the Quarter Quell started, he didn’t make any romantic advances towards her. If he died in either of the games, then Katniss’s on-screen romance would have been nicely resolved for her. She would’ve been free to publicly be with Gale after. It’s just that he unexpectedly survived, forcing them to keep up the charade because of Snow and the unrest in the districts. But honestly, she isn’t with Peeta in the end because “he made her.” Katniss has her own agency, and she acknowledges that her relationship with him has been tainted by the games. That’s why they start from scratch as friends, doing normal things. |
| 506 | *** And what made Katniss at the beginning of the series Real Katniss? She was only what, 16? A person changes a lot from that age. Yes, she is a hunter. In the end of Mockingjay, she states that everything returns to normal. Haymitch drinks, Peeta bakes, and she hunts. She hasn’t stopped. On being a romantic, it’s made clear that she never had time to be so since she was so focused on ensuring her family’s survival. She also states that her mother stopped living when her father died. She doesn’t want to experience the same thing, so that’s a block. In addition to that, Katniss declares that she doesn’t want to marry and have children because her children would have to participate in the reaping every year. That definitely prevented her from even entertaining the notion of romance, because it seems so detrimental to her concept of survival. And let’s not get started on why Real Katniss and Real Gale would have never worked out anyway, with their inherent ideological differences. |
| 507 | *** For what it's worth, ''Katniss'' most certainly doesn't feel like she chose Peeta in the end because he was the only eligible guy around. In fact she says that the two of them ending up together "would have happened anyway". The only guy trying to pressure her in any way or guilt her into anything was Gale. Peeta told her (and everyone else) that he had a crush on her, then he thought she reciprocated her feelings, then he was heartbroken when he learned she didn't, then he withdrew, then he only carried on with the fake romance because he had no other choice. Then he was hijacked and forced to get to know her all over again, eventually falling in love with who she truly was. Katniss ends the series in love with Peeta and convinced she would have fallen in love with him no matter what. And let's not forget that after the hijacking (and months thereafter) Peeta no longer cared for her. There was nothing there to build a relationship on, yet Katniss remained devoted to him (to the point that she would rather die than be with Gale or live alone without Peeta). Both of them had their feelings for one another put to the test and their choice, in the end, was one another. |
| 508 | ** This is the troper who put the "Real or not real?" line at the end of her previous post on this topic. I just finished rereading the first book, and I've found that Peeta has really ''no reason'' to think that Katniss actually loves him! From her agreeing that it had been a good sponsor tactic early on, to him having to say "remember, we're supposed to be in love, so kiss me whenever," to her going right back to her normal personality the instant they get out of the cave... Katniss even has a bunch of lines ''the morning of the mutt attack'' about how she thinks that Peeta's just lying to convince the world that he loves her! And then at the very end, when she tells him that it wasn't real, he gets all pouty and makes her feel guilty. Peeta manipulates. He works to get the girl that he wants, no matter what the emotional cost to the girl. |
| 509 | *** What I think he was upset about was the fact that she kept it all up after the Games were over, which is what made him think it was real. Haymitch had told her that she had to pretend to be crazy with love for Peeta so she wouldn't get in trouble for her rebellion, but he never told Peeta the same thing. Obviously, Peeta knew it wasn't real in the very beginning, but it's hardly inconceivable for him to think she hadn't developed feelings throughout the Games, especially when she came up with a suicide pact so she wouldn't have to be without him. |
| 510 | *** Yeah he knew it was an act at first, but he probably just expects kissing and cuddling and stuff like that, he doesnt expect her to nearly die for him. She chose to risk her own life to save his and then came up with the suicide pact at the end because killing him would be too hard. then he probably started thinking hey if she cares enough to do that maybe the stuff before wasn't fake either and then he's thinking she's in love with him too. at that point Katniss really did come to care about him, but Peeta misinterpreted her actions as acts of romantic love instead of friendship. |
| 511 | ** Wasn't Katniss pretty much the first who noticed? I think it was after Peeta tried to take care of Haymitch while they were still on the train. That's when she pretty much decided to not get too close to him (she even threw away the cookies his father had given her). Also, until after Peeta was attacked by Cato, she firmly believed that he was one of the bad guys, who had been manipulating her all along and was more than ready to kill him. I think it doesn't come up later that much because she realises that he is genuinely a good guy. |
| 512 | ** Katniss demonstrates throughout the book that she's just plain ''not that good'' at reading into the motivations behind people's outward behavior, except in a very few cases in which she's either known and spent time around them forever (Prim and Gale) or recognizes that they think the same way she does (Haymitch) - and even then she's still sometimes blindsided by them. She doesn't understand a lot of what Peeta does early in the trilogy, and when the Games get underway she tends to assume that his actions, like hers, are calculated towards getting him out of the Games alive. She assumes that Peeta's lying because she's lying, and because she knows that Haymitch is trying to encourage her to keep up the act. It's illustrated pretty clearly near the end when she asks if Haymitch has given Peeta the same warning about the post-Games interview that he gave her: she takes "I don't have to, he's already there" to mean that Peeta already intuitively understands the danger and will keep up the act without being prompted, when what Haymitch really means by it is that for Peeta, it's ''not an act''. In this respect, Katniss may be considered something of an UnreliableNarrator; the reader must read between the lines of her assumptions to fully understand what's going on. |
| 513 | *** In support of the above, Haymitch seems to be very good at reading people. If Peeta's romantic interest in Katniss was some manipulative act, he'd be the one to see through it. That he recognises that Peeta is "already there", supports the genuineness of Peeta's feelings. |
| 514 | *** There's my problem with all this: New reader on the first of the series, and I'm more than a little miffed at Haymitch for all this shit he's pulling. Drunkard, useless and unwittingly angry against young teenagers fighting to the death for NO REASON, it is when he tells them to stick together the whole time that really gets my goat. These kids are trying to kill each other, or will be soon. There is absolutely no tactical advantage associated with keeping them close. In fact, its a tactical disadvantage: keeping them that close creates an emotional attachment that neither can afford to have in the Games when one of them dies. They can't fight in a team-against the rules of the games. Not to mention he has done nothing in terms of helping with their preparedness at all. Punch Peeta, and make some overly-aggressive remarks. That's what he does. Isn't he the best mentor? Shithole. |
| 515 | *** Haymitch was never angry with Katniss or Peeta while driving to the Capitol. At first he was aloof because he assumed it was not worth his emotions and effort into kids that would die soon. He had been there, done that, cue his [[DrowningMySorrows alcoholism]]. After Peeta hit Haymitch' liquor glass out of his hand and Katniss stabbed a knife close to his hand he realized that Peeta and Katniss are fighters and had a realistic chance to win. From that moment on he did his best to help them. His strategy was to create a (fake) bond between Katniss and Peeta to gain sponsors. It succeeded brilliantly and he even got them both to survive by nudging the head game maker to allow for both to win. |
| 516 | *** Who said he was the best? He ''is'' a highly flawed individual. |
| 517 | *** Sorry. Meant to say that he's their mentor and not the best one. The point I mean is that, considering the poor tactics and rather strong wish to push himself straight under a desk with that drinking, he really doesn't strike me as someone they should be relying on. |
| 518 | *** Disagree strongly that Haymitch has no reason to be angry. He's projecting his anger at the Capitol, and his anger about FORTY-SIX DEAD TEENAGERS that he mentored in between his Games (the 50th) and Katniss and Peeta's. He is District 12's only living Victor, so he is its only mentor, and that, and the horrors of actually fighting his Games, is what made him the angry alcoholic he is.\ |
| 519 | He is angry because Katniss COULD be a good competitor, but it's not just skill that wins games, you cannot win without gifts of food and possibly weapons from sponsors. Look at how Finnick won his Game!. Katniss gives the audience no reason to sponsor her. Peeta's confession of his love for her gives Haymitch something to work with, and playing up that angle is his only hope at mentoring either of them (likely Katniss, because she has had to fight for survival, whereas Peeta's life was ''relatively'' easy) out of this alive. |
| 520 | *** You do realize that the reason that, from my perspective, that he has those forty-six dead teenagers on his conscience is because he is truly as incompetent as he appeared to be? Drinking yourself into a stupor doesn't help anyone. A young boy and young girl willing and able in their own ways to fight is. And Kat 'cannot win'? Perhaps I'm the only one who remembers her actual ability at hunting in a large natural field. The governmental body may be able to control a lot, but they cannot control an outside environment nearly as well as they think they can. The gifts are momentary bonuses at best for a competitor based on that implication. It has to come down to the skill of the resulting child. |
| 521 | *** Statistically speaking, every mentor loses at least 1 tribute per year, and 11 of the 12 mentors lose both tributes in a given year. Even if Haymitch were the best mentor in the history of the games, he'd still have at best a 50% tribute survival rate. And yeah, Katniss couldn't win on her own--that's made abundantly clear. Her burns would have led to infection, and if that didn't kill her then the burns on her hands would have made hitting anything with a bow difficult. It was because there were people willing to sponsor her that she managed to live, and it was because of Haymitch's advice, his efforts on her behalf, and Peeta's star-crossed lovers story that she was able to get sponsors. |
| 522 | *** Haymitch was the mentor to the poorest and least favored District. The Stylists in the past had terrible ideas for District 12, the District 12ers are viewed as barbarians, and they have no resources and no other winners... Even if Haymitch were Obi Wan Kenobi, he wouldn't be able to do much. |
| 523 | *** Haymitch was only the second winner from District 12, and he competed in the 50th Games. As in his year, four tributes were sent, there were 102 from District 12 in total; that means that less than 2% of the tributes from District 12 won. Before he won, District 12's win rate was just barely over 1%. Considering his district's disadvantages, it's unlikely that he'd manage to get more than one or two winners in 23 years no matter how good a mentor he might be. |
| 524 | *** First off, not only Haymitch is described as a drunkard, many of the surviving victors apparently fell to vices to drown their traumatic experiences. And "Get your acts together" is not helping with severely undertreaded PTSD (or something that amounts to the same). So while he might be doing a shitty job, I wouldn't really like to blame him. Secondly, the government can control the environment a lot. They use fires and water shortages to draw the tributes to the place they want them to be. It would be no problem at all (except for some bad television) to disallow for any advantage a tribute has (remember the mentioned games where every animal was inedible? Good luck with your hunting skills to survive). The arena in the 75th games also clearly is no "outside environment" as you seem to understand it, but a planned area with invisible borders holding fog or suchlike in place. Thirdly, in a field of 24 contestants in a free for all, nobody can be secure of victory, even if (s)he excels in all aspects. There's a reason for the twelves Peeta and Katniss get at the 75th games - make the others team up, you're basically out of the game. Fourthly, it is made abundantly clear that the gifts can be absolutely game breaking, way more than "mere bonuses". Fifthly, while Katniss may be incredibly good at hunting with bow and arrow, do not forget that others may have talents too, especially the career tributes. From the training scores it is implied that Katniss indeed has the best potential to win, but there's a lot of unknowns. And - coming back to Haymitch - it is very much implied that the average tribute from 12 is just an underfed kid with maybe some strength due to working in coal mining, but normally Haymitch would have not much material to work with. |
| 525 | *** Additionally, it is implied in Catching Fire that Haymitch is not well-liked by the Gamemakers/Snow because of how he won his Games. Any tributes he mentors probably already have the Gamemakers gunning for their death because of who he is (as punishment for his Games), so he has no chance of bringing the kids home while they're being targeted like that. His tributes need to get the Capitol on side in order to survive, so unless the tributes get the Capitol's attention right off the bat (which they rarely do thanks to their crap stylists) the odds are against them/him. |
| 526 | * Peeta always struck me as a liability, especially when he and Katniss start working together. Unable to move for four days, has to be put to sleep so she can get the medicine, then still unable to help after he moves around. Yeah, he's got a great way with words and a good heart, but this is absolutely infuriating because he should be effective..somewhere. Clearly Katniss is seeing something I'm not if she claims he saved her..somehow. I know he has skills and abilities from the training he went through, not to mention that determination clearly matters to some extent in the Games. |
| 527 | ** Physically, he is a liability and is such through basically the entire series. But he did save her. Without Peeta playing up his crush on Katniss, the public's enthusiasm for her would have faded and she would not have been able to A) get food and medicine from Haymitch for playing along or B) convince them to do the whole 'double winner' thing at the end of the first book. |
| 528 | ** Yeah, my problems with Haymitch are well-founded; letting his charges starve when he has the power to do something for them-and has had it for some time, if we're led to believe that feast cost so much that he had to build it up the entire game, when they could have used that food at any other point. I have no respect for that guy. My thought, though, was that Katt's incredible skill and ability in the games that would get her support and boons from that sicko. |
| 529 | *** I don't think he can just give them things when he wants to. Maybe there's some kind of bar running next to each tribute's name, and once it's filled, you can send them something. We don't know much about what mentors actually do. But I have an entirely different problem with the entire thing, which I'll discuss below. |
| 530 | *** Haymitch didn't send the medicine for the Feast at the end. It was a bribe from the Gamemakers. I don't remember the wording from the books, but in the movie, the voice-over guy says something like "You each need something, and we intend to be generous". Haymitch could only send things when money or items were donated. It is never expanded on in the books, but in my head, I figure it might be Kickstarter-like - fans can donate money to the "Send Food to Tribute Katniss" fund. In the movie, we see Haymitch trying to convince wealthy Capital people to fund things. |
| 531 | ** He did help her out by being a part of the Careers' alliance. It was him who suggested that they just wait her out when she was stuck in the tree; Cato and Glimmer had both failed at getting to her, but most likely, they would have managed to get her eventually. He also was implied, if not outright stated, to have fed them false information about her, which might have helped her evade them, and he held Cato off her when she was stung by the tracker jackers (which also seems to say that he was not totally physically incompetent, as Cato is supposed to be a killing machine; he got wounded, but he didn't die and he at least managed to get away, even if he didn't wound Cato in return. Admittedly, both of them were probably not totally in their right minds because of their stings). |
| 532 | ** Peeta's strength was always outside the actual arena. Suzanne Collins makes it very clear there are two aspects to the games: The fighting/survival skills in the arena and winning over the audience and sponsors. Katniss was very capable in the first aspect but struggled in the second. (And vice versa for Peeta). Without him manipulating the audience, pulling off the star-crossed lovers angle, she'd just be a poor, socially-awkward girl who was good with a bow. They needed both their skills, her fighting and his charisma, to survive. |
| 533 | * What's with the whole 'Peeta is a better person than all the rest of us' thing the books have going on. He doesn't show himself as being that much better. He was willing to team up with the Careers, who the books portray as evil, and then kill a defenseless girl. His reason for all this is that it was to protect Katniss, which really doesn't really excuse anything, because that girl was no immediate threat to Katniss, and HELLO, YOU'RE STILL KILLING PEOPLE, PEETA, so how is he so much better. Would it have been alright if he killed Rue in order to ensure Katniss's survival? He's also rather manipulative. I'm not saying that he has no good qualities (he has plenty), but for goodness' sake, he's not Jesus. |
| 534 | ** Peeta did a [[MercyKill mercy kill]] on that girl, because the careers had stabbed her and believed her dead initially. When they realized there was no cannon fired, they asked someone to finish her off. Nothing could have saved that girl. Peeta shortened her pain. |
| 535 | ** Sorry, but I'm not sure where you get the "he's a better person than all the rest of us" vibe from... |
| 536 | ** Pretty sure OP is getting it from the scenes in the second book where Katniss specifically says stuff like, "Maybe they see what I see. That Peeta is better than us..." It's pretty blatant that Katniss believes that for the majority of the story. But yeah, I forgot about Peeta killing that girl. I think it was left ambiguous at the time to throw off the reader's perception of him, but in my mind I wrote it off later as he killed her to put her out of her misery later on. I'm sure he apologized to her a lot. |
| 537 | *** Well, also to be fair, he did participate in her maiming as she screamed at first for mercy and then in agony. The way book presents the Careers' and Peeta's attack is that they caused a lot of suffering to her. But really, I think they drop the idea because it would be inconvenient to bring up that Peeta participated in the maiming and murder of a child. |
| 538 | *** Was he necessarily involved in the maiming? Because from what the Careers said, it seemed that he was kind of a tag along more than anything. He finished her off, and he didn't stop the torture, but that could have been the extent of his involvement. Besides, [[UnreliableNarrator Katniss is telling the story]], and Katniss didn't actually witness any of that, so she didn't think it was that important. |
| 539 | ** The books are written from Katniss's point of view, and the only other person who says that Peeta's such a great person is Haymitch. They're both pretty self-centered, so Peeta being so willing to sacrifice himself for someone else looks pretty good to them, even if it was for the fairly selfish reason that he loves her. As for everyone else, they seem to think Peeta is likable and charming, but not necessarily some moral paragon. |
| 540 | ** Besides, Katniss has plenty of blood on her hands, herself. Far more than Peeta ever even comes close to. The idea was never "Peeta's a saint." It's "Peeta's better than the rest of us." |
| 541 | *** Arguably, Katniss has less blood on her hands, especially from her perspective. The only people she killed were terrible monsters in her eyes, whereas he killed an innocent. From her perspective, his murder should be far more heinous than hers. |
| 542 | *** Actually, he had to make the Careers trust him and believe him to be on their side - and the intention was clear: so did the readers - and it's not like she wouldn't have died slowly instead if he hadn't gone back. |
| 543 | *** Something important to consider is that Katniss isn't horrified by the Career's murder of the girl. While she eventually comes to despise the Games and wish that no one else would die, she wasn't thinking that at the time. On the contrary, Katniss herself goes from saying she "wouldn't have a problem taking out [her] new neighbor" and then goes on to actually plan/fantasize about doing just that. Peeta, on the other hand, shows up with the Careers (which he's doing to save his life), stands around with the rest of them while Cato stabs the girl, then goes back to finish her when it's fairly clear she's going to die but is suffering. Under the circumstances, that's a relatively moral action. |
| 544 | *** He did not have to make the Careers trust him, he chose to do that for selfish reasons - it is not okay to help torture someone so that you can save someone else. That makes him a bad person. Also, joining in on a bad activity is not alright, even if it was going to happen anyway. If five people beat someone and one of them says "Well, the rest were going to do it anyway and I wanted them to trust me," that person is still a bad person. |
| 545 | *** ^It is not okay to help torture someone so that you can save someone else.^ Yes, Peeta is a bad person for doing that, but Katniss is definitely not objective in this case. She has no reason to care for that girl, and benefits from her death. It makes sense that she would forgive Peeta for finishing off a torture victim that was going to die anyway since it helped her survive. It may be selfish of her to ignore that girl's pain, but I can understand why she would feel that way. |
| 546 | *** I feel like that might be a fair interpretation if not for the fact that Haymitch also believes Peeta is better than the rest of them. So, unless Katniss is so delusional that she imagines Haymitch saying those things, it seems that this is a view shared by at least one other person. And there is not really any good reason for him to ignore what Peeta did, especially since he probably saw everything. Now, I suppose that could lend some support to the argument that Peeta actually didn't do anything, but then why wasn't that explicitly mentioned? Also, I could see forgiving him for that, or flat out not caring, but instead saying, "He's better than us all," is taking it not just a step farther but in some weird other direction. |
| 547 | *** The way I see it, it's similar to when your cat presents you with dead animals: it's annoying, and you wish he would stop, but you can't really blame him for it since it's expected to happen. Tributes are SUPPOSED to kill each other for their OWN survival. Peeta didn't do that; he killed for Katniss's survival instead. That's why he's a "good" person: he killed for someone else rather than himself, which is pretty selfless and rare during the games. And who is Haymitch to judge? All of the victors are murderers, after all. Besides, killing that girl WORKED. Katniss lived, and Peeta got lucky and survived too. |
| 548 | *** Well, that's looking at it one way. The other is that he killed people so that he would have a chance to get laid by the girl he had been fantasizing about since he was ten (or so) and who he would later force to pretend to love him (granted, he was not aware that this was happening, which does not make it alright, but is a mitigating circumstance). This would not just mean his killing was selfish (in the way Cato or Clove killed to live), but a bit creepy. |
| 549 | *** I know guys are accused of thinking with their dick, but seriously. Peeta's only chance of getting laid at this point is in the Arena (since the rule change hasn't happened yet.) In order for this to happen, he'd have to sneak away from the careers without notice while being injured, and then find Katniss in the Arena. Even if he succeeds, I think it's safe to say that he probably wouldn't want his first time having sex with the girl he loves aired on national television (and this is assuming Katniss is even willing to not kill him on sight in the first place.) Also, it was Haymitch's idea to continue the love charade after the Games, not Peeta's. IMO, they should have faked a nasty breakup a month after the Games were over. |
| 550 | *** Here's how I interpret it though - Peeta participates in the torture and murder of a (presumably) defenseless girl so that he can keep his cover so that he might be able to save the girl he loves if the opportunity arises. Also, his love of this girl is completely based on her singing voice and hotness (from what I could tell). So how is that not an incredibly immoral act? It's not like he killed a person trying to kill Katniss: it was all so that he could stay undercover and maybe have a shot at helping. |
| 551 | *** I think we are overstating Katniss's importance in his decision. Remember, he is both injured and outnumbered by trained killers. If Peeta tries to do anything, he's dead. Peeta's only chance of living through this is to play along and hope an opening arises. |
| 552 | *** Even if that is the case, all that can be said is that Peeta killed a helpless person out of self-preservation. That's not a moral act, it's selfish. So how does that make him a good person compared to Haymitch (who didn't kill anyone in his games) and Katniss (who killed three evil, armed people in self defense and mercy killed another dying person)? And I understand that he should probably be forgiven for killing/torturing someone so that he might live, but just because he was in a difficult situation and the reader can understand why he does it, it is still an evil act. |
| 553 | *** For one thing, we don't know that he tortured her. It didn't even seem to me like any of them did to me (the movie was a bit less amiguous, though, but still). And even if he just stood by, what exactly was he supposed to do? Tell the 4 ruthless murderers to stop? For another, if the girl was in such a state that they were sure she was dead, she was probably going to die anyway. If I were in such a situation, I can honestly see myself going back and performing a MercyKill rather than let her get eaten by some muttation or something. I doubt he did it thinking "Sweet, I can get one for the scoreboard", he was probably more like "Oh geez, she's still alive even though [list horrible injury here]. Better volunteer to MercyKill her before Miss Cuts-Up-People does." |
| 554 | *** Most tributes in the Arena are trying to keep themselves alive. Peeta is unique because he is trying to keep Katniss alive, ENSURING HIS OWN DEATH in the process. No one else in the Games has ever chose another person's life over their own. That makes Peeta really selfless and unique, and that's what Katniss and Haymitch are commenting on. |
| 555 | *** As already stated Haymitch is the only person other than Katniss who has that idealized view of Peeta. On Haymitch's part I saw it either as him seeing a gentleness and kindness in Peeta that he hasn't seen in any of his other tributes, or recognizing qualities in Peeta that reminded him of the tributes he's liked the best over the years. I'm leaning more towards the latter. Haymitch probably mentored several kids who were selfless and sweet but Peeta is the first one to survive the games. Thus he attributes to him qualities that he might not necessarily have or ignores his bad qualities because he's a reminder of good people who came before him. On Katniss' part I thought her idealization of Peeta was a huge hint as to which one of the boys she actually had feelings for. She's in love with Peeta long before she realizes it or acknowledges it and [[FridgeBrilliance people tend to be blind to the faults of those they are in love with.]] |
| 556 | *** Panem is a society that celebrates and rewards murder. While regular day-to-day murders might be looked down upon, victors are celebrities in this society. Peeta being a murderer isn't something that people are going to hold against him. |
| 557 | *** I saw Peeta killing the girl from Eight as a MercyKill. Cato and the Careers had pretty much tortured her and then left her to die, and Peeta went back to her, in order to kill her as painlessly as possible. If he had not, she would have slowly died as she bled of whatever injuries the Careers inflicted on her. |
| 558 | *** On the surface, killing the Eight girl was grossly immoral - that's how we naturally view murder. But as horrid as killing is, not all killing is blameworthy. (1) Death was inevitable; (2) death would be slow and painful if no one put her out of her misery; and (3) if Peeta didn't do it, one of the sadistic Careers would. Arguably, Peeta's conduct is doubly self-sacrificial because he has to live with having killed someone, regardless of the mitigating factors. Sure, he would benefit incidentally from the killing. But that alone doesn't make it entirely selfish, provided mercy was his primary motivation. In this situation, Peeta had no good options. He could only make do with the least bad option. |
| 559 | *** He kills only out of necessity, and that’s the best you can do in something like the Hunger Games, which is all about killing. He killed that girl out of mercy. The girl was dying, and suffering greatly from her injuries. It’s heavily implied that Cato and Clove had sadistic streaks in them, with the former being more brutal, but possibly quicker. So did you guys think he should have let one of the other Careers finish her off, or try to nurse the girl back to health (illogical and impossible at this point)? He relieved her suffering, that wasn’t out of self-preservation. Considering what evil can be, that’s not a completely evil act. There were many factors and stressors at play. |
| 560 | *** It wasn't an evil act at all. What kind of insane moral theory are some of the above people subscribing to in which it is in any way immoral to kill someone who would otherwise die slowly? Or in which it's immoral to allow someone to be tortured when you have absolutely zero chance of stopping it, and trying would only serve to get yourself killed and prevent you from doing any good at all? Also, for people saying every victor is a murderer...it's the HUNGER GAMES! You can kill or be killed, and any innocent people you kill would almost certainly die anyway. Are you people seriously going to say that a man conscripted into a war is acting immorally for shooting an enemy conscript instead of letting himself be shot? |
| 561 | *** We don't witness the scene, so it's open to AlternativeCharacterInterpretation. There is still an open possibility that Peeta did ''not'' kill the girl at all, but found her near death and comforted and held her hand as she died, perhaps then wiping some of her blood from her wounds onto his knife to fool the Careers into thinking he'd killed her. |
| 562 | ** In context of the war and the games, Peeta is technically “a better person than all the rest of them.” Morally, he and Beetee are lighter shades of grey compared to many others. In Mockingjay, Beetee votes against a final Hunger Games because it will set a bad precedent-- one he’s lived through and experienced personally. He knows that it will only sow the seeds of conflict. But Beetee’s opinions are more utilitarian, and he’s willing to engage in immoral means for an overarching good end. He’s involved in building weapons that prey on the enemy’s empathy so as to bring a quick end to the war. He understands that if it’s dragged out, more lives will be lost. In Game of Thrones, Tywin Lannister uses this reasoning to justify the RW. Peeta, on the other hand, emphasizes that people’s lives shouldn’t be thrown around as collateral. When the rebels are debating over what course of action to take against the Nut, Katniss wishes that Peeta was around because he would’ve been able to articulate why it would be wrong to attack people trying to escape the Nut during the siege. He staunchly votes against Coin’s Hunger Games as well, indicating a distaste for vengeance. Peeta and Beetee both see the big picture, but in different ways. |
| 563 | [[/folder]] |
| 564 | |
| 565 | |
| 566 | [[folder: Peeta's portrayal as The Load]] |
| 567 | * Did anyone else get the impression that, after the first book, Peeta wasn't really portrayed as anything other than Katniss's BerserkButton? Katniss is the only one to acknowledge his charisma and powers of persuasion, and in fact immediately identified him when she was pondering who might be able to talk people into rebellion. Everyone else, however, presumably only tried so hard to keep him alive during the second book because they thought Katniss would have gone off the rails without him. Perhaps it was because of his perceived status as TheLoad (although this troper never saw him that way), but it just seemed like Peeta's obvious attributes were glossed over in favor of some of Katniss's more [[InformedAttribute informed ones]]. |
| 568 | ** I also thought it was strange that only President Coin wanted Peeta. Katniss's idea about her dying in the Games and becoming a martyr, while Peeta became the mouthpiece of the rebellion, being both a charismatic speaker and in mourning over his dead wife and unborn child, seemed like a really good one and I don't know why no one thought of it. Haymitch even acknowledges multiple times that people didn't like Katniss all that much, they liked the way that Peeta portrayed her. |
| 569 | *** Haymitch told Katniss "You could live a hundred lifetimes and never deserve that boy." Haymitch was aware of Peeta's amazing personality qualities. But he also knew, like Plutarch, that Katniss was the one who inspired the rebellion and she would be followed by people. Coin also saw Peeta as an excellent charismatic mouthpiece for the revolution, not the least because he could be controlled by Coin, unlike the rebellious and stubborn Katniss. |
| 570 | [[/folder]] |
| 571 | |
| 572 | [[folder: The practicality of Peeta's camouflage]] |
| 573 | * Going by the film's depiction, how does Peeta's extremely elaborate camouflage make any kind of practical sense? It would take a team of professional makeup artists hours to cover an entire person with something that complex, and he's a lone guy doing it to himself in the wild. Not to mention that he would have to carry a hefty amount of additional supplies for that or that the camouflage we see him using only works against very specific surroundings... |
| 574 | ** It's implausible in the film, but not in the book: There he camouflages himself at the bank slope of the river with mud, soil and leafs. |
| 575 | ** I could be wrong, but I got the impression that he made the camoflague as a last-ditch effort out of the stuff he had around him. So that explains both the supplies (he had mud and weeds and stuff on hand, and that's what he used) and your point about how the camoflague only works against very specific surroundings (he couldn't move at all, so it only ''needed'' to work for those specific surroundings. |
| 576 | ** It's actually not that difficult to make site-specific camo out of items you find. His was a LITTLE more effective than some stuff I've personally made and used, but we aren't sure what technology he has available to him-- the conucopia might have things in backpacks other than food, water, and weapons. We know there's rope (Katniss finds some in her pack.) and there could be a full camo kit he might have lucked into. |
| 577 | [[/folder]] |
| 578 | |
| 579 | [[folder: Why did Peeta volunteer for the Third Quarter Quell?]] |
| 580 | * Why would Peeta want to volunteer for the Quarter Quell, and why would Haymitch let him? Peeta had to have realized that, if he went, there was a decent chance Katniss would have to ''kill'' him, which would completely destroy her. The fact that he did go in wound up getting several tributes killed in order to protect him, which wouldn't have been necessary if he hadn't been there in the first place. Plus he's a NonActionGuy, whereas Haymitch is even more ruthless than Katniss. |
| 581 | ** Because he was willing to lay his life down for Katniss and as soon as it was declared either he or Haymitch would be in the games he went straight to him to say they have to get Katniss through alive. He was willing to die for her and knew that Haymitch would be better than him sorting things out on the Capitol side (sending packages and possibly stopping the gamemakers going nuts on her [although that last one is pure speculation on my part]) |
| 582 | ** Peeta's never been a mentor before, but Haymitch has. It makes sense for Haymitch to mentor again, which leaves Peeta as the tribute. Also, why would Katniss have to kill him? Sure, it might happen, but it's a lot more likely that another tribute or a trap gets to him first. And yeah, Katniss will be destroyed by his death, but she'll be alive. You can get over trauma eventually, but you can't get over being dead. |
| 583 | * In the second book, Katniss describes each District as being able to pull together one male and one female Victor for the Quarter Quell. The Career districts obviously have more Victors, but each district has at least one of each gender. It's implied by the books and movie that over half of the Victors are from Career districts. Seventy-four years of Hunger Games means there are a total of Seventy-five Victors, taking Katniss and Peeta's co-Victory into account. So that's thirty-eight (at least) from Districts 1, 2, and 4. Add the four from District 12, and you've got thirty-three Victors left amongst Districts 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Makes sense, that averages 4 per district. But then you take into account the fact that a number of Victors are deceased, from suicide, Capitol manipulation, or just old age. What are the odds that all eight of these districts would just happen to have at least one Victor of each sex, and even if they did, how could this really be called a "pool" as Katniss described it? |
| 584 | ** Catching Fire, Ch. 14 mentions that there are 59 victors currently alive. 3 of them are in D12, which means that assuming an even split, all the other districts have an average of ~5.1 victors to choose from, and about ~2.6 victors per available tribute spot. Of course, the career districts will have more victors, and there will be more male victors than female (notice that Katniss and Johanna are both the only females available in their district, and that no males are mentioned to be in the same position). |
| 585 | *** The AnthropicPrinciple at work here: there just happened to be (at least) one tribute per gender per district, so the games could be held this way. It might have been improbable a priori, but it turned out this way. |
| 586 | *** Doesn't Katniss mention that she thinks Snow did it on purpose somewhere? |
| 587 | *** My personal headcanon is that it was ''not'' Snow's machination, that seventy-five years before the book starts, the third Quarter Quell was decided to have this particular twist. That said, if one district didn't have a living victor of a particular gender, they might have simply sent two of the same gender, or reaped directly from the families of past victors. |
| 588 | * Isn't it kind of lucky that the Games in Catching Fire involved previous victors? How would the rebellion have worked if it was normal tributes in the Arena? |
| 589 | ** It's heavily implied that it was set-up that way to kill off the popular tributes. |
| 590 | ** Yes, I realize that. The rebellion must have had a Plan B before the announcement, though. Remember, it has always been 12-18 year-olds in the Arena before then. So, with that in mind, how was the rebellion "supposed" to play out? Would they have bothered breaking into the Arena at all? |
| 591 | *** I think what actually happens is the "Plan B". We don't know Plan A, but possibly, it might have taken a bit more time, because it didn't involve saving Katniss from the arena. I assume they wouldn't have broken into the arena. |
| 592 | ** The Head Gamemaker was in the rebellion and presumably had something to do with the decision. |
| 593 | *** Confirmed by [[WordOfGod the deleted scene]]: Snow demanded the victors and especially Katniss to be eliminated and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7LAfehwn6s&t=46s Plutarch proposed the all-star Hunger Games for that purpose]]. |
| 594 | * What would they have done with the 75th Games if one of the districts didn't have both a male and female victor? There are two options: the rules were created to set Katniss up or it's just a coincidence that those rules came up that year. Either way, it's possible that one of the poorer districts would have been in trouble--one year earlier, and District 12 wouldn't have had a female. Surely some other districts had not too many victors. |
| 595 | ** It's pretty likely that the Quarter Quell was designed solely to get back at Katniss and Peeta, there was probably a different set of rules intended for that year's games. It's too much of a contrived coincidence that the victors of the 74th games get sent back in the arena the year after they won, it was probably Snow's doing. If the other districts didn't have any surviving victors, they probably would have opened up the pool to include surviving relatives of the winners or something. |
| 596 | [[/folder]] |
| 597 | |
| 598 | [[folder: Peeta: the boy on fire]] |
| 599 | * Katniss becomes known as "the Girl on Fire" thanks to the costume she wore during the chariot ride. So how come nobody calls Peeta "the Boy on Fire"? He wore the same costume as she did. True, Cinna keeps emphasizing the fire theme with Katniss which Portia doesn't do for Peeta but Katniss seemed to have that moniker even before the interviews. Additionally, given how everyone seems to be playing up the "star-crossed lovers from District 12" thing you'd think they'd make good use out of the many connotations there are between fire and love/passion and use it for the two of them as a pair but that never happens either. |
| 600 | ** Well if they wanted to call them "star-crossed lovers", they wouldn't want Peeta to be seen as [[CampGay flaming.]] |
| 601 | ** The revolutionaries weren't betting on Peeta; they must have known that Katniss was the rebelious kind, and Peeta really was very obedient to whatever rules there were. |
| 602 | *** Until the engagement party, where learning that [[MoralEventHorizon Capitol people puke to eat more while people in 12 starve]] made Peeta tell Katniss "We were wrong about trying to calm down the riots." |
| 603 | ** Also, Katniss seems to be called that by the host and have the monicker pushed by Cinna. I think it is in part due to her being pretty aloof and coming across as boring otherwise. Peeta is shown as having a great personality and one that is open and charming. Having Katniss be seen as fiery and dangerous in combat (and shy and absorbed in love later) work with her withdrawn personality. Basically, they created an image for her that worked with her aloof and fierce personality rather than try to make her more charming like Peeta. After the first games, the fire monicker made more sense because she had proven her defiance and fierceness in the game and became even more of a symbol of uncontainable rebellion. |
| 604 | ** Everyone in Panem is a HUGE Music/AliciaKeys fan. |
| 605 | [[/folder]] |
| 606 | |
| 607 | !!Technology |
| 608 | [[folder: Peacekeeper weapons]] |
| 609 | * What weapon do the Peacekeepers use? One of the books describes them as using something very similar to a laser (some type of solar powered beam weapon), which is stolen off of one - but in the movies, and in the rest of the books, they're said to be using bullet firing machineguns. |
| 610 | ** Some variety of assault rifle, for the most part. If memory serves, that solar-powered beam weapon was noted to be comparable to a bazooka, and as such is not standard-issue. |
| 611 | ** The books don't go into detail about specific weapons used, but ''The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes'' mentions that the standard Peacekeeper’s rifle could fire a hundred rounds before reloading at the time. I have no idea how a weapon of that description is considered a rifle since most weapons of that magazine size are light machine guns (like the M249 SAW, Ultimax 100 or some Bren Gun variants), but that's what we have. Personally I headcanon them to just use M-16s since Panem evolved from the ruins of the USA. |
| 612 | [[/folder]] |
| 613 | |
| 614 | [[folder: Hover planes]] |
| 615 | * Why use hover planes to bomb places? Why not regular planes? |
| 616 | ** Explained in the books: regular planes do not work anymore due to a changed density in the atmosphere. Complete rubbish as it is written, but consistent. |
| 617 | *** Always remember that everything we get for information is filtered through Katniss, who for all her virtues is a scientific and technological know-nothing. |
| 618 | ** Hover planes (VTOLs) are more usefull in the sense that they don't require runways / catapults. |
| 619 | [[/folder]] |
| 620 | |
| 621 | [[folder: Safety of explosive arrows]] |
| 622 | * Katniss's bow shoots explosive and incendiary arrows. Explosive and incendiary arrows that she keeps in a quiver. [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment A quiver on her body. A quiver stocked with explosive arrows. That explode.]] I know that some modern soldiers do this with [=RPGs=], but isn't it kind of a bad idea to store such a potentially dangerous munition on someone who's both a national hero and in close proximity to ''other'' national heroes? Aside from the potential dangers of basically telling Capitol troops to shoot her InTheBack, if she ''does'' get shot in the back, has a bomb or grenade go off nearby, steps on a landmine... goodbye Katniss, hello squad-killing fireball of death. |
| 623 | ** Her Mockingjay bow has "special properties", among them voice control and the ability to override the type of arrow. One can assume that one of the "special properties" is the ability to activate the explosive charge on launch. |
| 624 | ** Well, I feel like you're overestimating the explosive abilities of the arrows. And, frankly, I think if she's in a situation where the enemies are able to take aim at her that kind of precision, anyway, they're all basically screwed to begin with. Besides, Coin didn't really care if Katniss died. If worse came to worse, they'd just spin it for more tear-jerking propos. |
| 625 | *** The explosive arrows are powerful enough to blow up one of those hoverplanes. I would say they're pretty explosive. |
| 626 | ** Weren't they supposed to be high-tech arrows or something? I just assumed they were advanced enough that unless they were actually shot by that specific bow (which sounded like it had freakin' ''AI'' intelligence, so not much of a stretch), they would behave like ordinary arrows. But they don't really give many details other than "this starts fires and this one makes a boom", if I remember correctly. |
| 627 | *** That brings up another good point - what use is there to having an AI in a bow? |
| 628 | ** Presumably the arrows are like current explosive technology, where the explosion is only triggered after it has shot a certain range - just like the current M204 grenade launcher in US service. The explosive tip doesn't arm until it travels 15-20 meters, if it hits something before that it just bounces off. Current military explosives are extremely stable - despite Hollywood portrayals, grenades do NOT explode when shot (in fact, I have a buddy that had a bullet ricochet off a grenade he was carrying in his vest), bombs do NOT go off at the drop of a hat or the touch of a wrench. Do you know what happens if you put an open flame to C-4? It burns - like firewood. If you shoot C-4? Nothing happens, it just sits there. |
| 629 | [[/folder]] |
| 630 | |
| 631 | [[folder: Katniss's tracking bug]] |
| 632 | * What happened to Katniss's first tracking bug? Didn't they put one on her the first time she went into the arena? They make a big deal about taking the bug out in the 2nd book, so that she can't be tracked, but what about the first one? If if wasn't taken out, was that how the Capitol was able to easily track Katniss' movements in the woods after the first games? Perhaps not (since they have silent, invisible hovercraft) but it's strange that it's not mentioned. |
| 633 | ** The first tracker was probably removed once the games were over. |
| 634 | [[/folder]] |
| 635 | |
| 636 | [[folder: What was the forcefield?]] |
| 637 | * Movie: In ''Catching Fire'', what was the deal with the forcefield? In the training room and in the Hunger games control room, it appeared to be just an electromagnetic field that shocked people who touched it. However, when Katness blows it up at the end, girders and other structure start falling out of the hole as if to show it was a physical structure with a fake sky the whole time. |
| 638 | ** I assume Plutarch cut the hole into the hull from the outside after Katniss destroyed the forcefield inside. When considering meta-plausibility, the introduction of a physical hull in the movie was a mistake: The (stealthy) Hovercrafts of the Capitol could not have flown out of the Dome if there was a hull (without it being visible to the tributes). But they did so to haul away the dead tributes. They also brought in gifts from sponsors. If there were only a forcefield, it could have been deactivated locally to allow the hovercrafts to fly out. The structure of the dome is the most irritating implausible part of the story. |
| 639 | ** Electromagnetic shield, paired with a giant illusory sky. It seemed like what the coworkers had in mind was, the entire arena is actually in a controlled, covered dome. But you need to block the tributes from touching the "sky" and finding a way to escape from it, without the help of a massive electrical surge. |
| 640 | [[/folder]] |
| 641 | |
| 642 | |
| 643 | [[folder: Explosive collars]] |
| 644 | * So why didn't the Capitol toss in explosive collars as part of the whole deal? It would have ended Katiness rebellion by reminding every tribute they will die if they try to bend the rules. |
| 645 | ** Because the comparisons with Literature/BattleRoyale would be even worse than they already are. Also, the only rule-bending Katniss did was trying to kill herself and Peeta, which could be done with berries OR collars, so not much change in there (unless they only killed HER and not Peeta for giving the idea. Knowing Peeta however he'd swallow the berry immediately anyway, so my point still stands). If you're talking about the Games in the second book, however, it only worsens the situation. People were already mad that they sent the old victors to kill each other (including a pregnant woman), imagine if they explode them all and give the people 24 martyrs. It just helps no one whatsoever. |
| 646 | [[/folder]] |
| 647 | |
| 648 | |
| 649 | !! Meta |
| 650 | [[folder: What's with the Humans Are White?]] |
| 651 | * What's with the HumansAreWhite here? If Panem is the US in the future, it should be at least 50% [=PoC=], as the US is projected to be majority minority by 2050. |
| 652 | ** There isn't one: District 11 is the largest District, and its residents are implied to be mostly descendants of modern day African Americans. People from the Seam are ambiguously beige, and there's a certain degree of segregation between them (Katniss's parents and Katniss herself being exceptions). Aside from the aforementioned and District 4 (green eyes, brown-auburn hair) there's no racial descriptors for any other districts. It bears mention, however, that Panem is a post-apocalyptic (global warming?) nation that, although located in what was once the USA, probably received a certain influx of people "heading to high ground" when most of North America went underwater. This means that the majority-minorities of both Canada (Asians) and Mexico (caucasians) should be considered, neither being particularly dark skinned. |
| 653 | ** I think it's the eye colors and hair colors that throw me. Grey eyes aren't very common in most races, and since Rue and Thresh are mentioned specifically as dark skinned, it seems that they stand out. |
| 654 | *** Grey eyes could have been a trait that was spread over time. I kind of thought that 12 was the district for people nobody wanted, so they got a mishmosh or races that probably had Mediterranean origins of some sort, or possible Hispanic origins, plus some white people, plus some grey-eyed people that spread the genes. |
| 655 | *** Thresh and Rue have brown eyes. Katniss has grey eyes, but since "olive" is a very broad range for skintone (she could be quite white with a "winter" complexion, or she could be dark) it's not implausible given the recessive nature of both blue and grey eyes (her parents' eye colors). Same issue was handled better with Katniss and Peeta's children, by pairing his dominant eye color with her dominant hair color in their daughter, and her recessive eye color with his recessive hair color in their son. |
| 656 | *** I take it gray eyes means North European, especially Russian, Finnish, Samii. Also, the blonde and blue-eyed look of Katniss's mother and sister remind me of Icelandic women, and I find it plausible that there may have been refugees from Europe during the original Apocalypse and that they got integregated into the "lowliest" Districts, what with citizens of District 13 also having gray eyes. |
| 657 | ** Rue and Thresh are explicitly described as having brown skin and eyes and hair, as is everybody else in their district. Wiress and Beetee are both described as ashen with black hair, and in the audiobooks their dialogue is spoken with an Asian accent of some sort, so I would hesitate to describe them as white. Katniss and others from the mining district are described as having olive skin and dark hair and eyes, so while you can't rule them out as being white that doesn't mean they might be some other ethnicity, either. |
| 658 | ** It's also not as if we can apply contemporary racial projections to a post-apocalyptic crapsack world, either. It's not a world of white people, but we also have no reason to think our current predictions of US ethnicity would hold up in this scenario. |
| 659 | ** Essentially, there is no HumansAreWhite. Collins has stated that everyone in District 12 is likely to be mixed race because humans bred so much that [[InTheFutureHumansWillBeOneRace races didn't really matter anymore.]] In District 11, Rue and Thresh are definitely black ([[FridgeBrilliance which makes sense when you realize that District 11 has a lot of parallels to slave plantations]]), and the Betree and Wiress are both AmbiguouslyBrown. So it's really not that bad a case of the trope. |
| 660 | ** In the films, many of the actors are Caucasian. It is possible that those in charge of casting the characters did not choose a properly diverse group of actors, or that people today in general don't look like how people would in Panem. |
| 661 | *** When it comes to live-action adaptations, actors get cast ''close enough'' to the characters' descriptions. As far as ethnicities go, with the vague enough descriptions, they could be any ethnicity, as skin color and eyes can imply anything. To answer a point of about accents, well, like skintones, those aren't too indicative either, considering how this takes place in some distant far-off time. |
| 662 | [[/folder]] |
| 663 | |
| 664 | [[folder: Focus on romance]] |
| 665 | * Am I the only one who thinks it's strange that a lot of fans are focusing so much on the romance aspect of the story, even though it's not the main plot? At least it made sense with ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' since the romance was the focal point of the book, but why do the same with ''Literature/TheHungerGames''? |
| 666 | ** Well, the first book take a major time-out from the action so that Katniss and Peeta can have an extended forced make-out party and a huge amount of time in the second book is dedicated to her deciding whether she wanted to be with Peeta or Gale. And then even more time is taken in the second book with her thinking "I need to die to save Peeta because he's the best person ever." So, it seems like Collins/Katniss is also pretty focused on the romance plot. |
| 667 | ** It's probably because the film came out after a whole series of YA paranormal romances that imitated ''Twilight'''s style. Some people just assumed that this was the same. |
| 668 | *** Yes. Also, the ''Hunger Games'' trilogy contains a lot of love, but very little erotic. Many media people may have confused erotic with love. |
| 669 | [[/folder]] |
| 670 | |
| 671 | [[folder: Why didn't the books receive more backlash?]] |
| 672 | * This troper often wonders how this series managed to avoid the MoralGuardians. ''Literature/BattleRoyale'' had a similar premise, and its American remake has been put on hold because of that (and Virginia Tech). |
| 673 | ** They didn't. The ''Hunger Games'' trilogy is indeed [[https://ew.com/article/2012/04/09/the-hunger-games-ala-challenged-books/ among the most challenged books]]. |
| 674 | --->In 2011, all three books occupy the number three position, and the complaints have grown more varied: “anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence.” |
| 675 | ** I have been wondering that too, and the only thing I can come up with is the fact that ''Battle Royale'' is gorier and has sex and rape in it and is clearly aimed at an adult audience while THG are aimed at young adults, with less gore and some relationship issues thrown in for good measure. |
| 676 | ** Also, ''Battle Royale'' uses guns, while I'd be hard-pressed to see someone shooting up a school with a bow and arrow/throwing knives/etc. |
| 677 | *** There was a case a few years ago where some students in Germany planned to shoot up a school using crossbows [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/21/germany.schoolsworldwide]]... |
| 678 | *** Well, a friend of my mom's ''did'' try to have the books removed from her daughter's school's library... |
| 679 | ** Before I read the books, I was skeptical as to whether I would enjoy them going off the dark premise, but it helps that killing people in the Games is never presented as something easy or fun from Katniss's perspective. In both of the Games she's in, she only kills out of self-defense or mercy, never in cold blood. She becomes a bit more ruthless in ''Mockingjay'', but her actions are mostly justified and she still suffers severe PTSD. I'm not very familiar with ''Battle Royale'', but the major draw of Hunger Games is in watching Panem overthrow the corrupt government and the system of the Games, not in the entertainment value of the Games and the violence that goes along with them. However, it is still impressive that there hasn't been much outcry to ban them from people who haven't bothered to read the books (along the lines of people wanting to ban the ''Harry Potter'' books because they supposedly teach children witchcraft). |
| 680 | ** Well books simply don't have to get past the moral guardians in most cases. As for the movies I think the big difference is that while the ''Hunger Games'' does have children it seems to focus on teens that we mostly identify as young adults and not specifically children. Also I think an argument could be made that the ''Hunger Games'' makes a stronger effort at a story and ''Battle Royale'' at times slips straight into the ''Saw'' styled violence porn. |
| 681 | [[/folder]] |
| 682 | |
| 683 | |
| 684 | !!Misc |
| 685 | [[folder:Birth Control]] |
| 686 | * So Mr. Mellark was in love with Mrs. Everdeen and she apparently broke his heart when she chose Katniss' father. How is it that Mr. Mellark managed to have two children before Mrs. Everdeen had her first? The book makes it seem like Katniss' mother ran off and married Katniss' father, causing a bit of a scandal, and that it broke Peeta's father's heart but he either moved on and married Peeta's mother or he settled for her/married his rebound. Either way Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen would have been married for a while before Mr. and Mrs. Mellark got hitched. It's also heavily implied that there is no safe method of contraception in District 12 other than not having sex. So did Katniss' parents wait like four years into their marriage before they had sex? I'm not saying it's a plot hole (they could have waited, used primitive birth control methods such as pulling out, maybe they had fertility issues) but it seems a little odd that the loser of the love triangle would move on and have two children before the winners have their first in an environment with only primitive methods of birth control. |
| 687 | ** There probably is some kind of birth control. Remember, at the very end of the trilogy, Katniss and Peeta agree to have children 15 years after the events of ''Mockingjay''. I doubt they went that long without sex. |
| 688 | *** The Capitol most likely had birth control but I doubt the districts did before Snow was overthrown. The whole point of having the Games kind of goes out the window if people can simply opt not to have children. Plus Katniss mentions she doesn't want to fall in love and marry because she doesn't want to have children. If reliable birth control was available she could marry and have all the sex she wants without worrying about getting pregnant. |
| 689 | *** There are plants that help with birth control (or cause miscarriage). They aren't as reliable as modern medicine, but if anyone in District 12 would know what they were, or be able to get them from the woods, it would be the Everdeen family. But it may not be the kind of thing her mother would talk about with Katniss. |
| 690 | *** Even without birth control, it's not as if biology works like "All right, married, sex, SHAZAM! You're pregnant!" Especially since being even not-chronic-starvation-level underweight/malnourished can make it very hard for a woman to conceive and stay pregnant, let alone the constant subsistence-level or less diet District 12 gets. The Mellarks had access to better food all along, while even with Mr. Everdeen supplementing from hunting and gathering they didn't. It's possible they even did have other pregnancies that didn't come to term or where the infant was stillborn or died shortly after birth from malnourishment before they had Katniss and Prim. |
| 691 | *** It's also possible that Mr. Mellark knew Katniss's mother was in love with Mr. Everdeen and gave up on her a long time before everyone else knew about it - they could have hidden a relationship from the town at large for a long time before they finally got married. |
| 692 | ** You're forgetting that not all forms of sex is the kind that causes conception. |
| 693 | ** Fun fact! People who ovulate can track their ovulation and fertile days through cervical secretions and basal body temperature. It can be pretty reliable. Lots of people use it to track fertile days to make getting pregnant easier. Don't have sex on those days combined with pulling out/oral or non-penetrative sex = good chance of no babies. |
| 694 | ** Summation: no modern birth control ≠ no birth control. Low fertility + knowledge of plants that can act as birth control/cause miscarriage + fertility awareness methods+ unreliable methods such as pulling out = decent chance of preventing unwanted pregnancy. |
| 695 | *** ^Since the Everdeens did hunt, perhaps, some parts of the animal (like the skin and some of the guts) were fashioned into condoms (Truth in TV, actually). |
| 696 | [[/folder]] |
| 697 | |
| 698 | [[folder: No other hostages other than Peeta or Annie?]] |
| 699 | * In Mockingjay, Katniss realizes that President Snow is keeping Peeta alive so he can manipulate her, using Peeta as bait so she will be afraid to do anything because she doesn't know what worse-than-death torture they will do to him. Annie was being held hostage in the same way to torment Finnick. Ok, do Plutarch, Fulvia, Cressida, Messalla, Castor, Pollux, and any other Capitol rebels in District Thirteen have no family members/loved ones in the Capitol that Snow could use against them in a similar fashion? It seems unlikely that all of those people important to each of them could be gathered up, put on the hovercraft, and transported to Thirteen along with them at the time the escape was made; things happened very quickly and they barely made it out of there. Also how did Cressida and the cameramen get to District Thirteen? They weren't on the escape hovercraft apparently, and in the movie Cressida says she "up and left", but certainly they didn't travel on foot all that way, what with all their equipment and of course the difficulties of surviving/not getting caught the entire considerable distance. |
| 700 | ** I don't think any of the people you mentioned are confirmed in canon to have living family members (other than Castor and Pollux being related to each other), but Plutarch and Fulvia at the very least knew what was coming and could conceivably have taken steps to get any of their family members out ahead of time. |
| 701 | [[/folder]] |
| 702 | |
| 703 | [[folder: The word 'muttations']] |
| 704 | * This is pretty minor, but I'm still a bit curious about it. Namely, why does everyone refer to the animals that the Capitol created ( such as jabberjays, tracker jackers, and the wolf/tribute hybrids) as "muttations" or "mutts"? Where did that term come from? |
| 705 | ** "Muttation" is most likely a portmanteau of the words "mutt" and "mutation." A mutt is traditionally a term used to describe a mixed-breed dog and a mutation is a change in genetic material. |
| 706 | ** Or Fridge Brilliance, it was just a natural result of a language evolving. Over the years, mutations became muttations, Peter became Peeta, morphine became morphling, ect... When the world we know was destroyed and Panem rose, paper and digital records were probably destroyed and people wrote things how they were pronounced (we don't know if they even use the same writing we do) and the words were corrupted in pronunciation, not to mention regional accents, before the final spellings settled. |
| 707 | [[/folder]] |
| 708 | |
| 709 | [[folder: How do you pronounce 'muttations'?]] |
| 710 | * How do you pronounce "muttations"? It is just mutation with an extra t in the spelling or ''mutt''-tation? |
| 711 | ** Since it's a portmanteau term, I'm going to assume that it's mutt-ation. |
| 712 | ** If it's any help, the audio books do in fact use the latter pronunciation. |
| 713 | [[/folder]] |
| 714 | |
| 715 | [[folder: 'Pity does not get you aid']] |
| 716 | * When Kat is burned by the Gamemaster's trap, she mentions that 'pity does not get you aid.' Now, normally I would agree with that, except that as Haymitch, Peeta and Cinna have all mentioned from their original argument, Kat is likely the fantasy and desirable interest of some rather rich and powerful men and women in the capitol. If they really were interested in her, it would make sense that her need for help would drive them to act with sending medical supplies, unless Haymitch really is sitting on his ass and sending nothing to her. I hate that son of a bitch. |
| 717 | ** If pity got you aid, parachutes would be constant and the Games would be not only much less exciting but expensive for the Capitol crowd. Also, if pity got you aid, there wouldn't be Games in the first place. |
| 718 | *** See, that doesn't hold up for Haymitch's tactical perception of Katt to the crowd, one of the few things I can agree he did well: As he says himself, the idea of Peeta attributing affection for Katt was to make her desirable to those in The Capitol. That was the entire point to their plan. A lot of rich boys in the capitol, if the plan worked, would be interested in Katt and want to support her with tributes and boons. |
| 719 | *** That was still early in the Game, however. Gifts are pricey. I'm sure the Capitol crowd is savvy enough that they don't want to waste money on a tribute who's not going to survive. And besides, Haymitch sends her burn ointment soon after that, once she's faced down the Career pack, defied them, and begun putting her plan to kill them via tracker jackers to work. That's the moment when she proves she is a ''contender.'' |
| 720 | *** If that is true, then there was no point to Peeta weaving the story that he had feelings for Katt. If all she had to do was prove she's a contender, the trials would've been enough-alongside the basic stuff that Cinna did-and wait until the Games started without that little fabrication. Even if he did love her, it only disheartens the story and weakens their cause, especially if Haymitch doesn't act on it. He's already on a great deal of thin ice with margalinizing both tributes and not giving Peeta anything at all despite his ability to stay alive-which has also made him a ButtMonkey in comparison to Katt. Acutally, this has really become unforgivable in terms of FridgeLogic for Haymitch; he only just gave them food because it served their little stupid story when he had the ability to save them '''THE ENTIRE TIME''', and yet he sits on his ass and lets them starve throughout the whole of the game until the near end, showing little to no respect or dignity until he decides to grow a pair near the end, after they already won the games. There's a difference between being stern to protect the cause, and being outright unwilling to keep them alive when they needed it at any other point in the games. Unforgivable and laced in poor tactical judgment, and they still respect him. There's no respect that should be given. |
| 721 | *** First of all, calm down on the Haymitch rage. Second of all, I think you're attributing a little too much power to Haymitch. Yes, Katniss and Peeta are two tributes to watch from the start, but Haymitch ''doesn't'' have unlimited funds, and he ''can't'' just send them anything, anytime, lickety-split. Was he unnecessarily harsh to both Katniss and Peeta in training? Yes. If I'd spent the last quarter century watching children die year after year, I would probably be apathetic to most new mentees myself. The Game isn't played by "Whose mentor will send the best stuff at the best time," the tributes within the Arena have to suffer and struggle and make a great show of it because that's what the Capitol wants. In the case of not sending Peeta any goodies, that just enhances the cathartic response when Katniss finds him and nurses him back to health. |
| 722 | *** Haymitch probably did not have the ability to save them the entire time as you stated. Despite everything in Kat's favor, he still has less resources to work with. He cannot send in supplies as he wants, he has to wait until people spend money to give him the ability to at least send something in. So he better not spend it all at the first occasion, but when it gets really dire or otherwise important as far as he can judge from the outside. If you think he could just send in anything at will, you better reread the pertinent parts of the book. He couldn't. |
| 723 | *** Also, in regards to the original post, where you said that Katniss is a fantasy object of some Capitol citizens, you're again overstating the power of one factor in winning the Games. Katniss only mentions one Victor -- Finnick -- whose victory was due almost singlehandedly to his astounding attractiveness. Katniss is never described as that stunning. She looks her best when she's in one of Cinna's divine creations. For contrast, in that same book, Glimmer deliberately cultivated sex appeal as her gimmick, and look what that got her. |
| 724 | *** Katniss is repeatedly described to be stunning: By Peeta, who says "She has no idea. The effect she can have." By her prep team who tell her how pleasantly surprised they are by Katniss' looks after she got cleaned to "beauty base zero". By the Capitol crowd who throw her flowers and hats and whatnot while Katniss rides the chariot. When Katniss throws a kiss towards the crowd, they go insane with desire for her. |
| 725 | *** Well, for all we know, Glimmer had tons of money in her name, just waiting to be spent. That, I think, is one of the main issues with sponsoring: there is no reason to donate to a tribute until they need aid. Katniss got lucky, in that she got into a situation where she needed aid but was still alive to get aid. Glimmer died too quickly for anyone to help her. |
| 726 | [[/folder]] |
| 727 | |
| 728 | [[folder: Roman names]] |
| 729 | * It's really grating that when the book decides to give people Roman names, it's almost always cognomen or nomen used as people's first names. There's a Cinna, a Cato, a Flavius, a Brutus, a Plutarch, a Seneca, a Caesar, a Claudius, and a Coriolanus. But none of these are names that would correspond to a Roman person's first name. A few of these names could be forgiven, like Brutus and Caesar, which have become first names over time (Brutus is an uncommon English name and Cesar and Cesare are not uncommon Spanish and Italian names), and it is possible that the same thing has happened with regard to other Latin cognomen and nomen, but that is not a satisfying answer, especially given that Cesar(e) has connotations beyond the name (that is, to the title). Why couldn't the book just name the people Marcus, Publius, or Gaius? It’s the equivalent of wanting a Nazi flare and giving people names like Hitler Snow or Von Hindenberg Templesmith or wanting a Russian flare and naming people Zhukov Flickerman or Dostoyevsky Crane – it just makes no sense. |
| 730 | ** OP here. Also, what’s with the use of Cato and Brutus as the names of psychopathic child-murderers? Many of the characters names have overt symbolic overtones (like Katniss and Rue) or at least refer to some aspect of the character's personality or background (like Thresh and Peeta) and if that’s applied to these two names, then there’s a huge dissonance between the symbolic importance of both of these names and the characters’ behavior. Both Catones were paragons of Stoic philosophy (the opposite of the emotional, psychotic murder-machine depicted in the books) and Cato the Younger is most famous for fighting against tyranny and preferring to die free rather than live under a tyrant. And the Bruti were staunch republicans who fought against tyrants, Lucius Junius founding the Republic and defending it against his sons, Marcus Junius the Younger committing tyrannicide and fighting to defend the Republic from those who would subvert it. Now, it could be argued that Cato the Younger and Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger both fought against populist forces, but given that the populist “party” wanted to subvert a republic with a mixed constitution and backed tyrants, that can hardly be seen as a bad thing. Basically, it seems to subvert the books intention to use names symbolically, which it does in droves. |
| 731 | *** VERY weak tie: Cato uses a sword to kill others. The historical Cato used a sword to kill himself. |
| 732 | *** I actually laughed pretty hard at that connection and thus choose to believe that was Collins's thought process. |
| 733 | ** Classical & Near Eastern archaeology major here. Praenomia were rarely relevant to the general public and the Capitol-- which should not be confused with Rome, as there can in fact only be one Rome-- probably realized this as historically they were barely used and largely forgotten. Seeing the fallacy in this system it isn't hard to believe that the Capitol did too and broadened their scope in taking their inspiration to avoid the ridiculous measures to which Rome had to go to keep its citizenry straight; endeavors which it bears mention were largely ineffectual seeing as, in spite of additions of more and more names and titles, the daughters of the Julio family might still be referred to as Julias the first, second, third, fourth, etc. |
| 734 | *** Before I offer up a critique of your main points, it's "praenomina", not "praenomia" and "gens Julia" not "Julio family." Anyway, as to the difficulty in keeping it's citizens straight, we do that today as well. We have given names and surnames which contribute to how we identify people. In addition, we often have middle names, which can provide an extra layer of identification when confusion is otherwise possible (i.e. George H. W. Bush as opposed to George W. Bush). Also, in professional discourse, we often use surnames more than given names. For instance, it is rare to refer to artists by their first names (we speak of Kafka, Dali, and Nietzsche, never Franz, Salvadore, or Friedrich) and the same can be said of politicians and other professionals, where either a surname is sufficient or a full name is used (i.e. we would never call James Carter by anything aside from his full name or surname. The same could be said of people like Warren Buffet or Ted Turner). It is only in colloquial language that we primarily refer to people by their given names. So I do not understand the difference you are drawing between Rome and the present day and the future of ''The Hunger Games''. Perhaps you might be refering to the fact that people often neglect praenomina, but I would also find it offensive if people in the future were calling themselves Montesquieu or Petrarch or Collingwood rather than Charles, Francesco, or Robin. And, as to the issue with women's names, the problem with all the Julias (Juliae) was one that disappeared under the Empire, as it became fashionable to name one's daughters, rather than use the feminine form of the gens name. So, if the evil empire of the Capitol was willing to use names from the Roman Empire (which seems logical, rather than have them follow the Republic), then there would be no issue with women's names. And finally, if you want to look at the steps that need to be taken to identify citizens, everyone in the US is given a nine digit number to identify them because a name alone is insufficient. In addition, people also get lengthy ID numbers from their state's motor vehicle association that are secondary identification numbers, because one is, apparently, insufficient. So it is not as though the US does not have to go through extra steps to ensure that citizens are differentiated. And I'm sure all those cognomina that were used to differentiate people were honors bestowed, not ways of asking "Now how are we going to identify random person 1 from random person 2". |
| 735 | *** My point was that the Romans as well as the Greeks were terribly uncreative with their names and your quibble related to family names being used as first names is ridiculous. You do not need to discuss the intricacies of "sufficient full names" with me as I live in China; everyone's name is preceded by their family name and it is a personal thing to refer to people by their first name. English has evolved so surnames have become forenames (Madison, Taylor, Cooper, Jamison...) so it is preposterous to believe that society could not evolve to accept what is by all intents and purposes a surname as a first name. I will also take this opportunity to apologize for my lack of Latin proficiency and modernisation of what is apparently a sacred language for you. I took a different route by choosing to concentrate on an area of the ancient world that didn't treat women like chattel, thus the "Near Easternism" of my major... |
| 736 | *** I said it was grating that Suzanne Collins uses historical figures' nomen and cognomen as her characters' praenomen (or given name, since you seem to not like Latin) because I assumed that it was symptomatic of her ignorance of the Roman culture she decided to use as the basis for the Capitol (which I also thought was shown in her decision of what names to give different people). I did not say that it ruined the book (the poor characterization and terrible plot did), only that it's annoying (which it is). And why does your being Chinese have anything to do with naming conventions in either the modern West (i.e. the use of surnames when refering to people of academic or historical importance) or antique Rome. Unless you mean to say that someone like Caesar Flickerman was being refered to by his middle name and surname (of which we see no indication in the text), but that seems absurd since the point of the character is to mock modern TV sensibilities and on modern TV we often refer to talk/gameshow hosts by their first or full name (i.e. Oprah, Dr. Phil, Pat [Sajak], Bob Barker, Sally Jessy Raphael, or Alex [Trebek]). If she wanted tos how a shift to impersonal naming conventions, she should have done it more overtly, since it does not come across thusly. I suppose it is possible that language evolved either thusly or so that ancient nomen and cognomen became thought of as given names (but that would depend on how long such names were part of the naming culture). As to Latin - I feel like if you are going to use it, you should use it correctly. There is no reason to incorrectly write praenomina (and your fake word is not even a modernization) and there is also no reason to corrupt Julius/a into Julio (I probably wouldn't have mentioned the term ''gens'' if you had said either Julius or Julia or even Julium [assuming English's lack of gender would tend towards neuter]). And as to Rome and Greece treating women like chattel, for one it has nothing to do with proper Latin (what if I like proper Latin because I love Church Latin or Neo-Latin?) and for another it's simply incorrect. I'm not going to argue women were treated well, but they were not viewed as property in the way that African slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were (which is the direct equivocation your statement demands). |
| 737 | ** Alternatively, you're both taking this way too seriously. Think about the mindsets of people from the Capitol for a second: naming their child "Cinna" or "Brutus" just because it sounds cool (if we take the Watsonian perspective here) is ''exactly the kind of thing they would do.'' Why would citizens of the Capitol care about accurately representing Roman naming tradition, or even if it was a forname or a surname? Given the abundance of weird names in the books, naming your children after anything you think sounds good seems to be the norm. |
| 738 | *** I probably am taking this way too seriously, but it still irritates me. I suppose my only response is that the Roman names are specifically associated with the Capitol - almost every individual from the Capitol has one and no one aside from Capitol citizens (and some of the people from districts 1 and 2) have one. If people are actually just picking crazy names without caring about the origins or symbolic importance, it would seem odd that there would be a clustering like this. |
| 739 | ** The vast majority of the ancient Romans to are best know to modern people by their nomens or cognomens, their praenomen known only in conjunction with their nomen and/or cognomen. If someone mentioned the Roman Marcus, would you think of anyone in particular? Probably not, but if somebody brought up Brutus of Antony, the answer would probably be different. Since The Hunger Games takes place in a post apocalyptic society, likely out of a recent dark age, knowledge on the details of ancient cultures are likely limited and to the common people. The people of the capital probably don't know much about their names, but they do know that they are ancient names and sound cool. |
| 740 | ** I'm also in agreement that the Roman names used incorrectly are a non-issue. There are many Roman inspirations and parallels, but it is not intended as a literal allegory with everything having a direct correspondence. This is not alternate-universe Ancient Rome, it is far future North America.In the Capitol, Roman names are apparently trendy. Most of the Capitol citizens seem to just live for entertainment and the only one shown to have any sense of history or the distant past is Plutarch Heavensbee. Would you expect the way they used classical names to be anything other than a bastardized Theme-Park Version? I visit first name websites and this kind of thing happens all the time even today. People think names sound "cool" and give them to their children without much thought to the history behind them or their traditionally "correct" use. At least all the Capitol's names were used on the correct gender. |
| 741 | ** It just seems to be an attempt to show how the names have evolved over time, as they have in real life. For instance, Shirley was once considered a boys' name. But after Shirley Temple became famous, it was more associated with girls. Likewise, Ashley has frequently alternated between being a male and female name for decades. |
| 742 | [[/folder]] |
| 743 | |
| 744 | [[folder: Why is the entry to the underground inside someone's house?]] |
| 745 | * So I've got a relatively petty Headscratcher here that's been bugging me since I finished Mockingjay last night: they mention that the utility door that leads to the underground tubes is located inside some of the center apartments; Messala even says that they're a pain to live in because workmen will be coming in and out at all hours. This is how Katniss ends up killing the unarmed Capitol woman when she and the survivors of her team exit the underground from the utility room in woman's apartment. So my question is...why on earth would anyone build an entry to and from the underground ''inside'' someone's private residence? Wouldn't it make more sense for the entrance to open into the hallway or somewhere more public? |
| 746 | ** I can hardly think of a more dystopian feature than an access panel which allows strangers to come in on you at all hours of the night. |
| 747 | [[/folder]] |
| 748 | |
| 749 | [[folder: Plant matching activity]] |
| 750 | * What ''was'' the point of the activity Foxface did when she was matching images of plants? Everything else we see done in the training would've had some sort of use in the Games, but this just seems like a regular brain teaser. She's not identifying what the plants are called, or matching the plants to any uses (whether medicinal or if they're edible or not). |
| 751 | ** It adds some extra context to her eventual death by eating the nightlock berries. There's an interpretation that she knew fully well what the berries were, pretended she didn't and ate them anyway, knowing she had little chance of surviving. And possibly even pulled a HeroicSacrifice to let Katniss and Peeta know what to look out for. |
| 752 | ** I can see how it foreshadows her death. But in the specific context of ''how it trains her for the Games'' it just seems unnecessary - all she’s doing is matching pictures. There’s nothing on the activity that even identifies the plants, let alone giving information about their properties or uses. How is a picture matching activity supposed to give her any form of survival training? |
| 753 | ** Don't forget that we see things from Katniss' perspective, she could have misunderstood what was going on or missed a previous/following exercise. It's been a while since I've read the books, so I don't remember the exact description, but the goal of the game could also have been to help her catch on the differences between plants, by making her look at them one after another while comparing them. |
| 754 | [[/folder]] |
| 755 | |
| 756 | [[folder: Madge's mockingjay pin]] |
| 757 | * Did Madge giving Katniss the pin for purely sentimental reasons or was Katniess already being set up (after she volunteered) as the mockingjay and someone nudged Madge to do so, to set up everything that happened (and it was just sheer luck that Peeta was reaped with her?). |
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