History Literature / TheBalladOfSongbirdsAndSnakes

* HobbesWasRight: Dr. Gaul takes the particularly blunt stance that harsh and hardline Capitol rule is the only viable means to prevent society from spiralling into senseless and relentless violence and anarchy; she decides to teach Coriolanus this the hard way when [[spoiler:she sends him into the Capitol arena in an ad hoc mission to extract Sejanus, who had broken into the arena to pay respects to Marcus, his fallen tribute ''and'' district-mate. Several tributes, wary of anyone Capitol, attack them, and Coriolanus beats one to death in his panic. Dr. Gaul tells Coriolanus that this incident is proof supporting her belief]]. Prior to this, Coriolanus also writes in one essay that one of the more "positive" things to come out of war is the appreciation of having a sense of control when watching the defeat of the Capitol's enemies at its end—especially if anarchy is the default option without.

* TooDumbToLive: Arachne Crane. Her tribute is a desperate, mistreated, starving girl, and she still decides to withhold food for her and taunt her, without considering that this might have bad consequences.

** One prime example is his interpretation of Casca Highbottom's behavior. He's well aware that Highbottom ''despises'' him, but has no idea why; all he knows is that Highbottom was friends with his father when they were in school and his father has been dead for years, so from his perspective Highbottom has no reason to hate him and can only be acting out of jealousy. The reader, however, eventually learns that Highbottom has very good reason to hate Snow senior: [[spoiler:he basically used Highbottom to help get the Hunger Games started]].

* CorruptPolitician: District 12's Mayor Lipp, Mayfair's father. He uses his power to [[spoiler:try and get the innocent Lucy Gray killed, all because she was the ex-girlfriend of his daughter's boyfriend.]]

* ForegoneConclusion: Since this is a prequel, readers know that Coriolanus Snow will become President of Panem, will not die until a good sixty years later, and [[spoiler:will not end up with Lucy Gray Baird]]. We also know that Tigris will ascend as a Games stylist before falling out of fashion and that she will turn completely against her cousin by ''Mockingjay''.

* HeroesWantRedheads: Played with when it comes to Coriolanus. Lucy Gray is noted to have red hair on her first appearance, and the more heroic-minded he gets, the more he falls in love with her. Then when he decides against being all heroic and supportive of the little guy, [[spoiler:he falls so out of love that he turns right around and fires roughly 99 bullets all intended for her]].

** Lucy Gray to Katniss Everdeen: The girl tribute from District 12 who plays the odds and wins the Hunger Games, who has a precarious relationship with Coriolanus Snow. (Katniss couldn't say for sure he hated her; Lucy couldn't say for sure he loved her.) Also, both can sing beautifully.

* MurderTheHypotenuse: Coriolanus unwittingly solves the love quadrangle he's gotten tangled into by [[spoiler:killing Mayfair, only for Billy Taupe to fly into a rage and get shot to death by Spruce. Not long after, he tries to kill Lucy too]].

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Heavily implied to be the reason behind Dean Highbottom's morphling addiction. [[spoiler:Highbottom never intended for his Hunger Games proposal to actually be implemented. When they were schoolboys, Coriolanus's father got Highbottom drunk and had him write out his idea for punishing the districts as part of an assignment, then turned it in because he didn't want a zero. Gaul loved the proposal, and the rest was history.]]

%%* ParentalSubstitute: Tigris acts as one to Coriolanus after his parents die.

* ProtagonistTitle: Subverted. Sort of. Who is the songbird and who is the snake? Both Lucy and Snow are associated with both animals throughout the book. Snow sings towards the start of the book. Lucy sings throughout. Lucy also uses snakes. And Snow has been associated with snakes since the Hunger Games trilogy.

* TeensAreMonsters: Coriolanus doesn't take many weeks to go from appalled at the horrible conditions they put Tributes in to able to talk himself into murdering his girlfriend in minutes.
%%* ThoseTwoGuys: Coriolanus and Sejanus come to be viewed as this by the staff and students of the Academy.

** Surprisingly enough, averted in the case of [[spoiler:Lucy Gray, who could have easily been executed for her role in cheating during her Games. While she had no knowledge of Coriolanus tampering with the snakes, she did smuggle in rat poison and took full responsibility for it when questioned, and at any rate the Capitol likely wouldn't even need an excuse to put her to death at the best of times. Dean Highbottom, however, privately apologizes to her for what she's been through and even secretly gives her some cash to take home with her; he handwaves it by saying that her being sent back to District 12 is punishment enough. Publicly, the only real consequences were the 10th Hunger Games basically getting erased from public memory, and even that wasn't all related to Lucy Gray; there were plenty of other disasters taking place at the same time, and the higher-ups basically consider the 10th Games a failure.]]

* ArcWords: "Snow lands on top."

* AllHeroesWantRedheads: Played with when it comes to Coriolanus. Lucy Gray is noted to have red hair on her first appearance, and the more heroic-minded he gets, the more he falls in love with her. Then when he decides against being all heroic and supportive of the little guy, [[spoiler:he falls so out of love that he turns right around and fires roughly 99 bullets all intended for her]].

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: Deconstructed with Coriolanus and Lucy Gray; she begins to fall for him because he treats her as a human being when almost no one else in the Capitol does, and because he makes a genuine effort to help her win the Games. Despite the genuine affection Coriolanus feels for her, however, it ultimately doesn't change the kind of person he is nor how he views everyone else ''besides'' her. [[spoiler:Their relationship is shattered when Coriolanus inadvertently reveals to Lucy Gray that he's responsible for at least one murder he hasn't told her about, and she runs off when she realizes she can no longer trust him.]]

** Barb [[TrueBlueFeminine Azure]] is calm and motherly.

* KickTheSonOfABitch: [[spoiler:Snow murders Dean Highbottom in the epilogue, for no better reason than his personal dislike of the man.]]

* BitchInSheepsClothing: Coriolanus feigns niceness in order to manipulate others. Only Casca Highbottom can see him for who he really is, and it's not even because Coriolanus is actually showing his true personality, but rather because Highbottom hated Coriolanus's father and therefore hates Coriolanus by extension.

%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample* Kick The Son Of A Bitch: [[spoiler:Snow's murder of Dean Highbottom.]]

* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: [[spoiler:Sejanus. He wanted to be a medic, and believes in the inherent good in people … and gets executed anyway.]]

* FantasticRacism: Capitol citizens believe the people from the districts to be almost sub-human, and aren't shy about voicing these opinions.

** The tributes are held in a rabies-ridden zoo rather than in a GildedCage the way they would be in later years, and are given no food, provisions, or training to make them more fit to put on a good show in the arena.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: The tributes for the 10th Hunger Games are kept in appalling conditions and receive very little preparation for the Games, meaning they're very disinclined to fight and spend the first few days just hiding from each other.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Since many of the more competitive tributes die even ''before'' the Games officially start, by the time it does start, most of the survivors are weaker and more reluctant to proactively hunt and kill, and so the Games' first day is largely anticlimactic and slow, with the tributes all hiding from each other in the depths of the bombed-out arena the first chance they get; of those who even survived the opening day, several more die of starvation, exhaustion or illness. [[spoiler:It doesn't stop a few of the surviving tributes from quickly adapting and learning to attack later on, though.]]

A film adaptation was announced by Creator/{{Lionsgate}} shortly after the book was first unveiled. It is currently slated to be released on November 17, 2023. Creator/TomBlyth and Creator/RachelZegler are attached to star as Snow and Lucy Gray respectively.

* Foreshadowing: Shortly before the Games start, Lucy Gray notes that her fellow District 12 tribute Jessup has stopped eating and is acting strangely, but chalks it up to nerves. [[spoiler:It turns out he got infected with rabies at the zoo, and by the time he emerges from hiding in the Games themselves, he's already on his last legs.]]

* MeaningfulName: Lucy Gray's musical troupe is called the Covey. A covey is a group of quails, tying in with her avian theme.

** It's unclear whether [[spoiler: Lucy Gray deliberately left the snake to bite Coriolanus. She has shown that she's able to catch snakes and willing to use them as weapons, but the snake that was underneath her scarf wasn't even venomous, and a doctor tells Coriolanus that those snakes come out on their own when it rains.]]

* ArcNumber: 3. [[spoiler: Lucy Gray kills three people in the arena, Arlo is hanged for having killed three people in the mines, and Coriolanus is responsible for three deaths by the end of the book, two direct kills and one indirect one]].

* BaitTheDog: [[spoiler: Snow runs away with Lucy Gray to the woods outside of Twelve, and several times in the book he contemplates the possibility of living an honourable life, but he abandons that dream at the end of the book.]]
* BalladOfX: 'The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes'.
* BarefootCaptives: When the tributes for the 10th Games arrive in the Capitol, the outfits they are dressed in seem to take inspiration from ancient Roman slave garb - including a lack of footwear.

--> ''Heavy, dark clouds rolled in, providing some relief from the beating sun but adding to his oppression. This was his life now. Digging for worms and being at the mercy of the weather. Elemental. Like an animal. He knew this would be easier if he wasn’t such an exceptional person. The best and the brightest humanity had to offer. The youngest to pass the officer candidate test. If he’d been useless and stupid, the loss of civilization would not have hollowed out his insides in this manner. He’d have taken it in stride.''

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: Deconstructed with Coriolanus and Lucy Gray; she begins to fall for him because he treats her as a human being when almost no one else in the Capitol does, and because he makes a genuine effort to help her win the Games. Despite the genuine affection Coriolanus feels for her, however, it ultimately doesn't change the kind of person he is nor how he views everyone else ''besides'' her. [[spoiler: Their relationship is shattered when Coriolanus inadvertently reveals to Lucy Gray that he's responsible for at least one murder he hasn't told her about, and she runs off when she realizes she can no longer trust him.]]

** Among Senjanus' possessions is medication, including morphling. [[spoiler: At the end of the epilogue, Snow tosses it into Dean Highbottom's trash, ostensibly to get rid of it. Knowing that Highbottom is a severe addict, Snow also knows that the morphling won't go to waste and that the Dean won't realize it's been tampered with rat poison until it's too late.]]

* DisproportionateRetribution: Dr. Gaul's reaction to a student lying about contributing to a group project? Having the student be bitten by deadly mutated snakes, forcing her to spend days in the hospital, live with a long-term condition said to last about a year, and almost die. To make it even worse...The reason that student didn't contribute? [[spoiler: The night that they were supposed to have done the assignment, they watched a fellow student get murdered.]]
** Surprisingly enough, averted in the case of [[spoiler: Lucy Gray, who could have easily been executed for her role in cheating during her Games. While she had no knowledge of Coriolanus tampering with the snakes, she did smuggle in rat poison and took full responsibility for it when questioned, and at any rate the Capitol likely wouldn't even need an excuse to put her to death at the best of times. Dean Highbottom, however, privately apologizes to her for what she's been through and even secretly gives her some cash to take home with her; he handwaves it by saying that her being sent back to District 12 is punishment enough. Publicly, the only real consequences were the 10th Hunger Games basically getting erased from public memory, and even that wasn't all related to Lucy Gray; there were plenty of other disasters taking place at the same time, and the higher-ups basically consider the 10th Games a failure.]]
* DistantSequel: In this case, a prequel explicitly 64 years before the events of the original trilogy, i.e., Katniss' era.

** Deconstructed for Coriolanus, who is shown kindness by multiple District citizens and even falls in love with Lucy Gray, but none of his genuine emotions do anything to change the type of person he is. His gratitude towards everything the Plinths do for him still doesn't stop him from openly admitting that he views them as lesser [[spoiler: or from betraying Sejanus to die and then more or less ''taking his place'' in his family afterwards]], and he clings to the notion that Lucy Gray and the Covey aren't ''really'' District-born in an attempt to rationalize his feelings for her as "acceptable" both to himself and to everyone else.

* ForegoneConclusion: Since this is a prequel, readers know that Coriolanus Snow will become President of Panem, will not die until a good sixty years later, and [[spoiler: will not end up with Lucy Gray Baird]]. We also know that Tigris will ascend as a Games stylist before falling out of fashion and that she will turn completely against her cousin by ''Mockingjay''.

* Foreshadowing: Shortly before the Games start, Lucy Gray notes that her fellow District 12 tribute Jessup has stopped eating and is acting strangely, but chalks it up to nerves. [[spoiler: It turns out he got infected with rabies at the zoo, and by the time he emerges from hiding in the Games themselves, he's already on his last legs.]]

* ImAHumanitarian: [[spoiler: Nero Price cannibalised a dead maid in front of Tigris and Snow, and may have fed human meat to his unwitting daughter Persephone.]]

%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample* KickTheSonOfABitch: [[spoiler: Snow's murder of Dean Highbottom.]]

** Snow's initial excitement at [[spoiler: running away and starting a life with Lucy Gray]] is quickly dampened by the realization that he would have to live a primitive life fighting for survival, having lived a life of comfort back in the Capitol. He decides that even the idea of settling down with Lucy Gray cannot make up for this potential dreaded life, and plans to leave her behind in District 12 so he can begin his Peacekeeping studies.
** Also an ImpliedTrope with [[spoiler: Lucy Gray's decision to leave Snow.]] Likewise, Lucy Gray made it clear that she values trust above all else, including love. [[spoiler:While she may have still loved Snow, her trust in him had shattered when he accidentally revealed he was responsible for a death he was keeping secret from her, and so she tried to escape him.]]
* MadScientist: Dr. Gaul certainly qualifies as one, what with all the animal experimentation and torture, the willingness to experiment even on humans—Avoxes (Capitol slaves), of course, but even including Capitol elites [[spoiler:like Clemensia]]—and [[TheSociopath the absolute lack of moral qualms about any of what she's doing]], although she does justify much of it as part of her [[HobbesWasRight Hobbesian worldviews]]. It doesn't help that, as concurrent Head Gamemaker and ill-defined, high-ranking, de facto Capitol official, there are no institutional restraints on her work either.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Heavily implied to be the reason behind Dean Highbottom's morphling addiction. [[spoiler: Highbottom never intended for his Hunger Games proposal to actually be implemented. When they were schoolboys, Coriolanus's father got Highbottom drunk and had him write out his idea for punishing the districts as part of an assignment, then turned it in because he didn't want a zero. Gaul loved the proposal, and the rest was history.]]
** Deliberately downplayed by Coriolanus himself in the narration during and after [[spoiler: Sejanus is executed. For all his faults, Coriolanus doesn't seem to have fully considered that his actions would condemn Sejanus to death, and is horrified at having to watch it happen. Shortly beforehand, he even wonders why Sejanus's father hasn't come to bail him out yet.]]

* {{Unperson}}: [[spoiler:''The entire 10th Hunger Games'']], due to them being a huge mess from start to finish: [[spoiler:A mentor was killed by her tribute before the Games started, and several further tributes and mentors alike were killed in a bombing raid when they were sent to scope out the arena. Then once the games began, another mentor tried to kill himself by entering the Arena and letting the tributes kill him; when he was extracted, his saviour had to kill a tribute to escape; the victor only won because her mentor cheated outrageously; and the victor eventually goes AWOL after being falsely accused of murder.]] Basically the only detail that seems to be intact by the time of the main trilogy is that [[spoiler: someone from District 12 won.]]

** One prime example is his interpretation of Casca Highbottom's behavior. He's well aware that Highbottom ''despises'' him, but has no idea why; all he knows is that Highbottom was friends with his father when they were in school and his father has been dead for years, so from his perspective Highbottom has no reason to hate him and can only be acting out of jealousy. The reader, however, eventually learns that Highbottom has very good reason to hate Snow senior: [[spoiler: he basically used Highbottom to help get the Hunger Games started]].

* VillainProtagonist: Coriolanus, the man who would be President of Panem, is very ambitious and determined to seek that goal and that kind of power even this early in his life; and if it means supporting the Games and the Capitol's authoritarian rule, or snitching on rebel sympathisers [[spoiler:like his own best friend Sejanus]], is what it takes … he'll take it.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Played with interestingly between Coriolanus and Sejanus. The former sees the latter as this [[spoiler: due to his collusion with the rebels]], but Coriolanus himself is the straighter example. Ambitious though he may be, his actions are at least partially driven by a desire not only to provide for his family, but to ensure that none of them will ''ever'' be in danger of starving to death again.

** Tribute gifts are sent in on remote-controlled drones, instead of the parachutes that would eventually be implemented. This is partly because the drones can be awkward to manipulate and partly because the District 3 tributes managed to hack them; as Haymitch Abernathy will eventually prove, the Gamemakers ''really'' don't like the secrets of their arenas being weaponized.

** Dr. Gaul lets Clemensia get bitten near death by mutated snakes simply because she lies about her part in a group project she was doing with Snow.

* MaybeEverAfter: Coriolanus notes in the epilogue that he wants to marry Livia Cardew because he’d rather have a loveless marriage to focus on his goals after what happened with Lucy Gray. However, it’s never made clear if they do get married. We know he does marry someone because his granddaughter is mentioned as a tribute in the revenge Hunger Games by Johanna but his wife is never mentioned at all, let alone by name.

* NewParentNomenclatureProblem: Snow isn't sure what to call Strabo Plinth at the end of the book. "Father" doesn't feel right since Plinth couldn't legally adopt him because he's 18 and therefore made him his heir instead. He ends up calling him "sir" a lot.

* PetTheDog: Dean Highbottom hates Coriolanus and goes out of his way to show it, so it comes as a surprise to the latter when Lucy Gray reveals the dean gave her some money after the Games to compensate for all she's been through. Coriolanus has difficulty reconciling this show of compassion with Highbottom's usual nastiness.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Dr. Gaul's reaction to a student lying about contributing to a group project? Having the student be bitten by deadly mutated snakes, forcing her to spend days in the hospital, live with a long-term condition said to last about a year, and almost die.
** To make it even worse...The reason that student didn't contribute? [[spoiler: The night that they were supposed to have done the assignment, they watched a fellow student get murdered.]]

** Snow is also the one to point out that the Hunger Games can't have their full intended impact on the Districts if no one is able to watch them.

* EvilFormerFriend: Crassus Snow is this to Casca Highbottom. Highbottom considers Crassus' actions (presenting Highbottom's idea of the Hunger Games to Dr Gaul despite reassuring Highbottom he would keep the idea private) unforgivable and continues to hate Crassus because of this even after he dies.

* {{Unperson}}: [[spoiler:''The entire 10th Hunger Games'']], due to them being a huge mess from start to finish: [[spoiler:A mentor was killed by her tribute before the Games started, and several further tributes and mentors alike were killed in a bombing raid when they were sent to scope out the arena. Then once the games began, another mentor tried to kill himself by entering the Arena and letting the tributes kill him; when he was extracted, his saviour had to kill a tribute to escape; the victor only won because her mentor cheated outrageously; and the victor eventually goes AWOL after being falsely accused of murder.]]
* UnreliableNarrator: The story is, after all, told from Coriolanus' point of view, who is not exactly the most honest of people.