History Literature / TheBalladOfSongbirdsAndSnakes

** Coriolanus Snow to Gale Hawthorne: Both like the girl tribute from District 12; both go into the military; both decide to run away from 12; [[spoiler:both end up being responsible for the death of a young person whose family trusted him with said person's safety.]]

* NotSoStoic: Coriolanus cries out and pushes someone aside when he sees Lucy Gray about to be killed by Treech; she manages to kill him with a well-placed snake.]]

** Billy Taupe is a darker moral gray than Lucy.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: When Coriolanus is called out by Lucy for not thinking she has a chance of winning the Games, he's forced to admit that she's right and that he's basically been using her as a tool to make himself look better, which is an extraordinarily unfair way to treat a person who's saved his life twice.

* LiteralMinded: Subverted with Coriolanus. He doesn't take everything completely literally -- rather, he takes everything as a hidden message. He has trouble deciphering poetry, sufficiently so that he bitterly recalls getting mocked for it in class. He assumes the Lucy Gray from the Wordsworth poem dematerialized, rather than, say, grew wings and flew away; he takes Lucy's song ''The Hanging Tree'' to be another ballad about her relationship with Billy Taupe, rather than her recounting the events she witnessed by the Hanging Tree, from the hanging of Arlo to the double execution of [[spoiler:Sejanus and Lil]].

** The Reaping is performed by the head of the District, or at least it is in Twelve, whereas by the 74th Games the names are chosen by an escort sent by the Capitol. This may have been to prevent Mayors from trying to rig the selection the way Mayor Lipp did to get rid of Lucy Gray.]] The names are also chosen from sacks rather than the glass bowls used in later years.

* CombatPragmatism: Coriolanus and Lucy Gray use some dubious tactics to get her through the Games, with an understanding that she probably couldn't survive playing fairly. Coriolanus gives Dr. Gaul's killer snakes an article with Lucy Gray's scent, preventing them from attacking her and giving her an unfair advantage once they're used in the arena, and Lucy Gray uses Snow's mother's compact, her tribute token, to smuggle poison powder and kill some competitors without the knowledge of the other tributes or the foresight/approval of the Gamemakers.]]

* AllForNothing: Subverted. At first, it seems like Coriolanus' [[spoiler:cheating]] was for nothing, as he doesn't [[spoiler:get the scholarship he wanted and ends up being expelled from school and shipped off to become a Peacekeeper.]] However, it turns out that he was never permanently intended to [[spoiler:be a Peacekeeper]], despite what he thought, and he gets to achieve his dream after all.

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Arachne Crane]] and [[spoiler:Mayfair Lipp.]] [[spoiler:Arachne]] brings sandwiches to her starving tribute, but teases her by repeatedly pulling the sandwich out of reach just as she's about to take it. Her tribute then explodes in anger and [[spoiler:kills Arachne]]. And [[spoiler:Mayfair blames Lucy Gray for Billy Taupe's adultery, (even though Lucy Gray was unaware of his two-timing), arranges to have her sent to the Hunger Games in order to get rid of her, and eventually ends up shot to death by Coriolanus Snow]].

** When Coriolanus is trying to get out of [[spoiler:the arena]], he compares himself to a caged bird:

** Coriolanus Snow saves a handkerchief that Lucy Gray uses so he can have a token of her while she's in the Arena. [[spoiler:It comes in handy when he discovers that Dr Gaul's genetically engineered snakes will be sent into the Arena, as he can drop the handkerchief with Lucy Gray's DNA into their tank, thereby making them accustomed to her scent and unwilling to harm her. This is one of the ways he helps Lucy Gray cheat her way to victory]].
** The rose compact belonging to his mother also counts, for similar reasons. It's introduced early on as a memento Coriolanus keeps of his mother and uses as a source of comfort. Later on, he uses it to [[spoiler:help Lucy Gray sneak poison into the arena]].

* CombatPragmatism: Coriolanus and Lucy Gray use some dubious tactics to get her through the Games, with an understanding that she probably couldn't survive playing fairly. [[spoiler:Coriolanus gives Dr. Gaul's killer snakes an article with Lucy Gray's scent, preventing them from attacking her and giving her an unfair advantage once they're used in the arena, and Lucy Gray uses Snow's mother's compact, her tribute token, to smuggle poison powder and kill some competitors without the knowledge of the other tributes or the foresight/approval of the Gamemakers.]]
* CorruptPolitician: District 12's Mayor Lipp, Mayfair's father. He uses his power to [[spoiler:try to get the innocent Lucy Gray killed just because his daughter asked him to (with Lucy Gray speculating that Mayfair told him some kind of lie to cover up [[MurderTheHypotenuse the real reason]]).]]

** The tributes for the 10th Hunger Games are kept in appalling conditions in a zoo, receive almost no preparation for the Games and wouldn't even have been fed if it wasn't for the mentors sharing their meals with them, meaning they're very disinclined to fight and spend the first few days just hiding from each other. [[spoiler:It even emerges that Jessup actually contracted ''rabies'' from being attacked by raccoons while still in the zoo. The whole Games end up being an utter disaster as a result, and they're pretty much wiped from the record.]]
** Coriolanus has an awful one late in the book. [[spoiler: While he did intend to sell out Sejanus to the Capitol, he did it under the misguided impression that his father would come and bail him out like he had in the past. It doesn't occur to him that Sejanus doesn't have access to a phone, and thus his parents have no way to know about his predicament and no way to help him; besides which, getting someone off the hook for giving food to tributes is easy, while saving them from a ''treason charge'' would be near impossible. By the time Coriolanus realises this, Sejanus has already been sentenced to death.]]

** 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.]]

** The Reaping is performed by the head of the District, or at least it is in Twelve, whereas by the 74th Games the names are chosen by an escort sent by the Capitol. [[spoiler:This may have been to prevent Mayors from trying to rig the selection the way Mayor Lipp did to get rid of Lucy Gray.]] The names are also chosen from sacks rather than the glass bowls used in later years.

** Once the 10th Hunger Games are over, [[spoiler:Lucy Gray is apparently able to return to District 12 to resume life as normal without any prize or notoriety; while this is likely a mark of what a shambles these particular games were, it does hint that there's no real interest in the winners at this stage]]. At the end of the book, Snow establishes the Victors' Villages as a small motivator to make tributes and Districts more engaged in the games. This also adds more interest for the Capitol, and we know that this will eventually turn the Games into a twisted spectacle for them in time.

** [[spoiler:It's quite presumable that the landmines that go off during the pre-Games tour of ''the'' Capitol arena—in this period there's just the one, and no one knows who rigged the arena with mines—will become the inspiration for the later system of rigging tributes' starting platforms to explode if they step off before the Games timer starts.]]

** Mayfair Lipp has her father, the mayor, [[spoiler:call out Lucy Gray's name during the reaping]] just so she could have the latter's boyfriend to herself.

** 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.]]
* ForTheEvulz: This seems to be the motivation behind some of Volumnia Gaul's actions; [[spoiler:there is absolutely no need for her to punish a student for lying about her participation in a group project by attacking her with mutated snakes which almost kill her, but yet she does it anyway]].

* HobbesWasRight: Dr. Gaul takes the particularly blunt stance that harsh and hardline Capitol rule is the only viable means to prevent society from spiraling 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.
* HowTheMightyHaveFallen: We learn that this trope applied to several upper class Capitol families during the Dark Days, including the Snow family itself. The Snows lost their fortune, struggled with food insecurity, and Tigris is implied to have turned to prostitution in order to put food on the table. And before the events of the book, [[spoiler:the Prices turned to cannibalism to avoid starvation]]. Although by the time of the novel, prospects seem to be improving for many of the upper class families in the Capitol.
* 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.]]

** As a Peacekeeper, Sejanus's marksmanship earns him the nickname Bulls-eye. He's uncomfortable with it. [[spoiler:This is also a Meaningful Name, given how he's the target Coriolanus aims the Capitol at.]]

* 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.

** Coriolanus Snow to Gale Hawthorne: Both like the girl tribute from District 12; both go into the military; both decide to run away from 12; [[spoiler:both end up being responsible for the death of a young person whose family trusted him with the young person's safety.]]

* NumerologicalMotif: Three. [[spoiler:Lucy Gray kills three other tributes, Arlo Chance kills three people in the mines, and Snow is responsible for the deaths of three people before the epilogue]].
* ParentalSubstitute: Tigris, Coryo's older cousin who's lived with him since he was a child, became this to him after his parents died, acting as his closest confidant and serving as a source of advice and support.

** Since many of the more competitive tributes die even ''before'' the Games officially start, and the rest are kept in appalling conditions, by the time the Games begin 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.]]
** Coriolanus doesn't fully realize the implications of [[spoiler: reporting Sejanus to the Capitol for colluding with the rebels, and thinks that Sejanus's father will come bail him out with money like usual. Instead, Sejanus is swiftly convicted for treason and executed before his parents are even aware of what's happening, because neither Sejanus nor Coriolanus had access to a phone to tell them. Even if they had known, it's unlikely that they would have been able to do anything; as far as the Capitol is concerned, handing out food to tributes is one thing and committing treason is entirely another.]]

* {{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. And Highbottom can see through the act Coriolanus puts on and knows full well that Coriolanus is ''very'' similar to his father in all the worst ways.]]

* VillainousBreakdown: Snow has one towards the end of the novel; [[spoiler:he completely loses his temper when Lucy Gray abandons him and starts shooting randomly in the foliage, trying to kill her.]]
* 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.

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

* DidNotGetTheGirl: [[spoiler:Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird ultimately do not stay together, mainly because of [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill their differing views]] [[IJustWantToBeFree of the world]]. Lucy Gray goes missing, and Snow returns to the Capitol, where he decides that LoveIsAWeakness and resolves to never let himself fall in love again.]]

** Maude Ivory embodies ChildrenAreInnocent, not seeming the least bit jaded despite growing up for eight or nine years in the poorest part or the poorest District and seeing her older sister off to the annual child murder games.

* DeathByChildbirth: Coriolanus' mother dies while giving birth to his little sister, who also does not survive.

** Maude Ivory to Primrose Everdeen: Both are innocent and unjaded well after they're old enough to have seen horrible things happen around them, both grow up in the Seam, both own a goat, and they both have an older sister with a protective streak.

** 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.]]

* CareerVersusMan: A rare male example, in ''The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes'', Coriolanus Snow is eventually forced to make a decision: go back to the Capitol and return to his life of decadence or run away with a District girl to god-knows-where? Of course, it's a ForegoneConclusion, since Snow ends up becoming a President of Panem in the original trilogy.

* BlatantLies: Coriolanus is usually very good at lying to Lucy Gray, but when he tries to cover for SayingTooMuch and claims the third death he's responsible for is that of his "old self", she smells a rat, realizes she can no longer trust him, and flees from him into the woods soon after.

* BlatantLies: Coriolanus is usually very good at lying to Lucy Gray, but when he pretends to feel responsible for the death of his "old self", she smells a rat.

** Most of all there's the fact that at this stage, the Hunger Games aren't very popular even among the residents of the Capitol; despite the long war with the Districts and the distain held for the people who come from there, people still aren't keen to watch children and teenagers fight to the death.

[[caption-width-right:284:]]

* GoodAllAlong: Casca Highbottom is portrayed as a cruel Capitol big wig who was the sadistic mastermind behind the Hunger Games, and is unnecessarily hostile and antagonistic towards Coriolanus. At the very end of the book, it's revealed that he had only proposed the Hunger Games as a morbid idea for a school assignment, but had never actually wanted it implemented. Coriolanus' father was the one who went and suggested the idea to the government, explaining why Highbottom hated Snow so much and why he wasn't actually bad.

** Snow comes up with the idea for betting on the tributes, which is featured in a crude form in the 10th Hunger Games. He also secretly gives Lucy Gray a tribute token, which, even though it allows Lucy Gray to kill, would later establish tribute tokens (and tributes attempting to weaponize them) as a tradition later on. At the end of the book, he establishes the Victors' Villages as a small motivator to make tributes and Districts more engaged in the games. This also adds more interest for the Capitol, and we know that this will eventually turn the Games into a twisted spectacle for them in time.

** Most of all, there's the fact that at this stage, the Games aren't very popular even among the residents of the Capitol; despite the long war with the Districts, the people aren't keen to watch children and teenagers fight to the death.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: When Coriolanus is called out by Lucy for not thinking she has a chance of winning the Games, he's forced to admit that she's right and that he's basically been using her as a tool to make himself look better, which is an extraordinarily unfair way to treat person who's saved his life twice.

** 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. Hy and Sheaf die before the Games even begin due to lack of proper medical care to treat illnesses or injuries.

** The bodies of fallen Tributes are not removed from the arena. Reaper takes it upon himself to [[DueToTheDead arrange their bodies in a respectful way]]. The deaths are also not communicated to the remaining Tributes, so they only know how many of them are left if they leave their hiding places and count the bodies. Coriolanus suggests they could start listing the dead on the leaderboard within the arena in future Games.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Since many of the more competitive tributes die even ''before'' the Games officially start, and the rest are kept in appalling conditions, by the time the Games begin 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.]]

** Most of all, there's the fact that at this stage, the Games aren't very popular even among the residents of the Capitol; despite the long war with the Districts, the people aren't keen to watch prisoners fight to the death.

** The tributes for the 10th Hunger Games are kept in appalling conditions in a zoo, receive almost no preparation for the Games and wouldn't even have been fed if it wasn't for the mentors sharing their meals with them, meaning they're very disinclined to fight and spend the first few days just hiding from each other. [[spoiler:Jessup even ended up catching ''rabies'' from being attacked by raccoons while still in the zoo. The whole Games end up being an utter disaster as a result, and they're pretty much wiped from the record.]]

** The tributes for the 10th Hunger Games are kept in appalling conditions, receive almost no preparation for the Games and wouldn't even have been fed if it wasn't for the mentors sharing their meals with them, meaning they're very disinclined to fight and spend the first few days just hiding from each other. [[spoiler:The whole Games end up being an utter disaster as a result, and they're pretty much wiped from the record.]]

** The tributes for the 10th Hunger Games are kept in appalling conditions and receive almost no preparation for the Games, meaning they're very disinclined to fight and spend the first few days just hiding from each other. [[spoiler:The whole Games end up being an utter disaster as a result, and they're pretty much wiped from the record.]]

* AmbiguouslyRelated: The book heavily implies that Katniss is a descendant of someone in the Covey on her father’s side but who exactly she is related to is never made clear. They go to the same lake that she talks about having gone hunting to with him which is said to not be widely known about. She also knows the songs that they sing and both she and her father are mentioned to have been good singers which is highly coincidental in the smallest district. The Covey are also described as being dark haired and olive skinned, looks said to be shared by them. The strongest candidate for the one she is related to is [[spoiler:Maude Ivory]]. The narration goes out of its way to note that she can remember a song completely after only hearing it once and the hanging tree song is only performed once but Katniss knows it.

* 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. [[spoiler:The whole Games end up being an utter disaster as a result, and they're pretty much wiped from the record.]]
** Coriolanus has an awful one late in the book. [[spoiler: While he did intend to sell out Sejanus to the Capitol, he did it under the misguided impression that his father would come bail him out like he had in the past. It doesn't occur to him that Sejanus doesn't have access to a phone, and thus Sejanus's parents have no way to know about his predicament and no way to help him. By the time this does occur to Coriolanus, Sejanus has already been sentenced to death.]]

** [[spoiler:What really happened to Lucy Gray Baird? Did she die when Snow shot her? Did she live and just run off into the woods for the rest of her life? Did she try to make it to what we know is District 13 in the north and died of exposure (since the climax is set in August, she wouldn’t have been able to travel all the way there on foot by the winter) on the way? Could she have made it there? Could she have just lived in the wilderness for a while to let things cool off and then went back to District 12 under an assumed name? This is a possibility since it’s heavily implied that she or one of her relatives ended up marrying into the Everdeen family, due to her knowledge of the songs Katniss' father liked to recite, her relationship with mockingjays, and her love of katnisses/arrowheads, but left unclear whether it was her or Maude Ivory]]. Snow, who has made up his mind to forget about her, simply learns that she disappeared from the faces of the earth.

** We are shown three people hanged in the Hanging Tree from the song: [[spoilerArlo Chance, his girlfriend Lil, and Sejanus]].

** Coriolanus has an awful one late in the book. [[spoiler: While he did intend to sell out Sejanus to the Capitol, he did it under the misguided impression that his father would come bail him out like he had in the past. It doesn't occur to him that because Sejanus doesn't have access to a phone, Sejanus's parents have no way to know about his predicament and thus no way to help him. By the time this does occur to Coriolanus, Sejanus has already been sentenced to death.]]