The book was released on May 19, 2020. It is the first book in the series in nearly a decade; before its reveal, many fans speculated that Collins was done with the series after Mockingjay (she did co-write the first film adaptation, and provide some creative input for the sequels).
A film adaptation was announced by Lionsgate shortly after the book was first unveiled. It was released on November 17, 2023. Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler star as Snow and Lucy Gray respectively.
Character tropes for this book can be found here.
Note: The title event of this book series is a fight to the death. As such, Death Tropes and death-related spoilers are plentiful. Proceed with caution.
Provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: The main characters are called Coriolanus, Sejanus and ... Lucy (Gray). This also applies to the side characters we met at the Academy, who have names ranging from Iphigenia to Felix, all in the same area and social class. The tributes themselves have common names like Marcus and Tanner as well as ones like Velvereen and Lamina.
- Affectionate Nickname: Snow's friends and cousin Tigris call him "Coryo".
- All for Nothing: Subverted. At first, it seems like Coriolanus' cheating was for nothing, as he doesn't 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 be a Peacekeeper, despite what he thought, and he gets to achieve his dream after all.
- All of the Other Reindeer:
- After Sejanus moves to the Capitol, he is continuously bullied by his classmates because he was born in District 2. And his peers in District 2 rejected him because of his father's connections to the Capitol.
- Lucy Gray doesn't fit into District 12 because of her Covey background and is never quite happy living there.
- Ambition Is Evil: Our main character, Coriolanus Snow, is a perfect example of this trope. He chooses ambition over his best friend, his girlfriend, and his morality, to the detriment of both his personal life (it's implied in the epilogue that he willingly enters a loveless marriage with a woman he can't stand so that he won't be distracted from his goals by love) and society in general. His descent from a relatively normal (although deeply flawed) person to a ruthless, power-hungry villain is largely fuelled by his desire to secure a good job and improve his family's financial situation.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear whether 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.
- Ambiguously Related: 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 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 yet Katniss knows it.
- Arc Number: 3. 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.
- Arc Words:
- During the first two thirds of the book, we get many glimpses of the list of tributes and mentors, with more and more names struck out.
- "Snow lands on top."
- Asshole Victim: Arachne Crane and Mayfair Lipp. 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 kills Arachne. And 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.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Coriolanus is never punished for killing three people and in fact achieves his goals.
- Bait the Dog: 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.
- Ballad of X: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
- Barefoot Captives: 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.
- Bathos: As the body count rises and Lucy Gray finds herself in increasing danger, the situation throughout the book remains quite serious. However, Coriolanus's ego and lack of self-awareness provide some humor during it. Towards the end, we get this gem, where Coriolanus and Lucy Gray find themselves running away into the unknown out of fear for their lives, but Coriolanus just can't stop thinking about how superior he thinks he is to everyone else: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.
- Beautiful Singing Voice: Lucy Gray is notably good at singing, unsurprisingly, as she's a professional singer by trade. Downplayed with Coriolanus, who doesn't sing often, but is apparently quite good at it.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: 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. Their relationship is shattered when Coriolanus inadvertently reveals to Lucy Gray that he's responsible for at least one death he hasn't told her about, and she runs off when she realizes she can no longer trust him.
- Big Damn Kiss: Coriolanus and Lucy Gray share one of these before she's sent into the arena.
- Birds of a Feather: One of the things that Coriolanus and Lucy Gray bond over is the fact that both lost their parents during the Dark Days and its aftermath.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: 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 knew Coriolanus's father and therefore can see that Coriolanus is false in the same way.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Volumnia Gaul and President Ravinstill are definitely evil, with the two of them being responsible for putting the Hunger Games into practice (Gaul is particularly evil, as she also performs human experiments and plays mind games with Coriolanus to sway his mind towards thinking that the oppression of the Districts is necessary for the Capitol to thrive). Coriolanus himself starts off morally gray; he's not strictly on the side of good like Sejanus, and is self-centered and haughty even in the beginning, but he has a moral code and he finds the Hunger Games to be in poor taste. He has opportunities via his relationships with Tigris, Sejanus, and Lucy Gray, to turn out good, but their influence eventually stops being enough to counteract his evil traits, and he ends up taking the dark path that leads to him becoming the President Evil of Panem.
- Blatant Lies: Coriolanus is usually very good at lying to Lucy Gray, but when he tries to cover for Saying Too Much and claims the third death he's responsible for is that of his "old self", she smells a rat, realizes she can't trust him anymore, and flees from him into the woods soon after.
- Blue Blood: The main character attends the most prestigious secondary school in the Capitol, where all of the upper class people send their kids.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Coriolanus is getting tired of music in his life:It seemed to be everywhere: birdsong, Covey song, bird-and-Covey song.
- Caged Bird Metaphor: What with the litany of bird metaphors employed throughout the book, this pops up a few times.
- When Coriolanus is trying to get out of the arena, he compares himself to a caged bird:Only a few weak layers of moonlight penetrated the layers of the barricade, and Coriolanus found himself crashing into wood and fencing like a wild bird in a cage[.]
- Later, Coriolanus spearheads an effort to exterminate District 12's mockingjays and jabberjays, which have come to symbolize unruly people of the districts, particularly Lucy Gray's people, the Covey. Many of them are captured in cages, facilitating this trope.Lucy Gray: I hate to think of them caged up, when they've had a taste of freedom. [...] Sounds like torture, having someone controlling your voice like that. [Reaches up to touch her throat]
Coriolanus: I don't think there's a human equivalent.
Lucy Gray: Really? Do you always feel free to speak your mind, Coriolanus Snow?
- When Coriolanus is trying to get out of the arena, he compares himself to a caged bird:
- Career Versus Man: A Rare Male Example. 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 Foregone Conclusion, since Snow ends up becoming a President of Panem in the original trilogy.
- Central Theme: Are human beings born evil or do they become evil due to the events around them?
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Coriolanus Snow saves a handkerchief that Lucy Gray uses so he can have a token of her while she's in the Arena. 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 help Lucy Gray sneak poison into the arena.
- Among Sejanus' possessions is medication, including morphling. 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.
- Chick Magnet: Coriolanus, who apparently attracted a lot of girls, but never pursued relationships with any of them out of fear that they might discover his family's financial situation. He did have a one night stand in an alleyway, though.
- Children Are Innocent: Discussed. Coriolanus talks about how the Hunger Games intentionally subvert this trope by showing that even children, considered the most innocent members of society, will brutally murder each other when forced to.
- Colorful Theme Naming: Played with. All the Coveys have a color for a middle name, that seems to symbolize their personality:
- Maude Ivory embodies Children Are Innocent, 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 cousin off to the annual child murder games.
- Lucy Gray is hard to place in every way, both morally and relationship-wise. No one never really knows where her loyalties or allegiances lie.
- Barb Azure is calm and motherly.
- Clerk Carmine has a temper.
- Tam Amber likes sunshine, and not much else is known about him.
- Billy Taupe is a darker moral gray than Lucy Gray.
- Combat Pragmatism: 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.
- Contrasting Prequel Main Character: Quite a few.
- Both the original trilogy and the Ballad feature a pair of Star-Crossed Lovers who bond in the Hunger Games, both initially out of a desire to survive. Both include a blond boy and a dark-haired girl from different socio-economic backgrounds (albeit the wealthier family in both relationships are far poorer than they initially seem and the poorer family are markedly different from the others in the Seam) and contrasting views on humanity. Their relationships are both marked by a backdrop of political instability, fears of providing for their respective families However, while Katniss and Peeta ultimately are able to reconcile their differences and find love both during and after topping the system as well as put their partner's life before their own, Coriolanus and Lucy Gray ultimately end their relationship mutually trying to trap one another in their "own Hunger Games". Neither ultimately are successful in breaking the system that would keep them apart, and unlike Katniss and Peeta who go down relatively positively in history, Snow will be remembered as a brutal tyrant and Lucy Gray's story is all but forgotten.
- Coriolanus and Katniss are both stubborn, jerkasses with a Dark and Troubled Past filled with hunger, dead fathers, and feelings of loneliness despite being reasonably well known in their communities. Both have formerly wealthy parents, a sibling (or cousin) that they adore, an older relative that is not quite capable of being a caretaker, and a drive to provide for their respective families despite their relative youth. Both are observant but not very introspective narrators, and as leads they struggle to make their own choices while at the mercy of older adults that treat them as pawns. They struggle to make connections with other people (but have a shockingly large number of allies), have beautiful singing voices that they rarely use, and fall in love with partners that have contrasting backgrounds and worldviews. The two are pragmatic, cynical, consummate survivors who can put up an effective facade in public. Despite these similarities, in the end Coriolanus is headed down a very dark path towards becoming the Capital's brutal Evil President who willingly and calculatingly gives up his loving family and friends for the sake of power, while Katniss gradually becomes the Icon of Rebellion through impulsive but heroic actions and tragically loses many of her friends and family members along the way despite her best efforts. Snow dies hated and abandoned by all, while Katniss ultimately is able to find bitter-sweet happiness.
- Lucy Gray and Peeta are the deuteragonists and romantic interests of the leads of their respective novels, and both charming, kind, artistic and optimistic people thrown into the Hunger Games. Despite not having traditionally useful skills for the arena, they excel at manipulating the audiences to their favor. Neither want to kill others both are forced to by circumstances (both use poison at least once) and ultimately win their respective games with the support of their partners. Both contrast physically. Lucy Gray has darker hair and is physically not particularly intimidating. Peeta has light hair is from a wealthier background, which affords him a notably strong physique that he uses to his advantage on a few smaller occasions. Lucy Gray is the eldest of her non-traditional but extremely family, while Peeta is the youngest sibling of a more traditional family that he has a distant relationship with. Peeta's interest in Katniss is born out of a decade long crush on her since they were children and early on he seems determined to ensure that she survives. Lucy Gray meets Coriolanus for the first time at the Hunger Games and it is suggested that her initial interactions with him were primarily born out of a desire to survive before becoming romantic.
- Mayfair and Madge are both daughters of District 12's Mayors, but while Mayfair is a spoiled, awful girl with a murderous relationship with Lucy Gray (the District 12 tribute), Madge is a spoiled but extremely kind girl and one of Katniss's (the other District 12 tribute) few friends.
- Corrupt Politician: District 12's Mayor Lipp, Mayfair's father. He uses his power to 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 the real reason).
- Death by Childbirth: Coriolanus' mother died while giving birth to his little sister, who also did not survive.
- Deconstruction: Of the Protagonist Journey to Villain and Villain Origin Stories in general.
- While most villain origin stories show the main character being sympathetic and a good person before their Start of Darkness, usually brought on by a tragic event, this is not the case with Coriolanus Snow. From the start, he is shown to be an ambitious, manipulative and opportunistic young man, angry and resentful of how his family has fallen on hard times. He is also sympathetic to the fascist government running the Capitol, in contrast to Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist in the original trilogy. While he develops into the villain as we see him in the original trilogy, he was never a truly good person.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird ultimately do not stay together, mainly because of their differing views of the world. Lucy Gray goes missing, and Snow returns to the Capitol, decides that Love Is a Weakness, and resolves to never let himself fall in love again.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- 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. 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. 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 realizes this, Sejanus has already been sentenced to death.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- 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? 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 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. It is also likely that Dr. Gaul knew better than to make a martyr out of her in the eyes of Coriolanus, seeing as she had designs on him.
- Distant Sequel: In this case, a prequel explicitly 64 years before the events of the original trilogy, i.e. Katniss' era.
- Dr. Genericius: A notable aversion. A lot of characters have names ending in "us", for example: Festus, Hilarius, Sejanus, Gaius, Crassus, Lucretius, Pluribus, and of course, the main character himself, Coriolanus. However, the Mad Scientist character does not have such a name, and is instead named "Dr. Volumnia Gaul." (Of course, "-ia" is also a common suffix for many Western female names, let alone Latin-based ones like those of most Capitolites.)
- Downer Ending: Snow rises to power and becomes a villain, the game continues, and his relationship with Lucy Gray fails after he tries to kill her.
- Due to the Dead: Reaper and some of the others try to put the bodies of the dead tributes in a 'graveyard' on one side of the arena, and/or cover them to give them a scrap of dignity. Conversely, the Capitol forces indulge in Dead Guy on Display (or Almost Dead Guy on Display) to humiliate tributes who step out of line.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The 10th Hunger Games themselves are a total mess in-universe. Elements of the Games that would become standard by The Hunger Games are either missing entirely or very different:
- 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.
- The tributes are held in a rabies-ridden zoo rather than in a Gilded Cage 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, Panlo and Sheaf die before the Games even begin due to lack of proper medical care to treat illnesses or injuries.
- There is no emphasis on talents. It's generally expected that fighting ability is the only skill that matters in the Games, whereas later years would see appealing to an audience recognized as a valuable ability. Lucy Gray gets much of the edge she does by appealing to the audience, which is a novel approach at this time.
- Even the Games' arena is a more typical sporting stadium/coliseum that's been used each year, rather than the one-time elaborate simulated environments that would be the arenas in later Games. Bombing destruction to the arena before the Games start, (which changes the layout from a more open field) seems to inspire the trend of arenas being designed as survival hide-and-seek spaces in the future.
- 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 one of the District 3 tributes managed to reprogram them to kill another tribute; as Haymitch Abernathy will eventually prove, the Gamemakers really don't like the secrets of their arenas being weaponized.
- A big part of the book focuses around the establishment of the Mentor program, although the mentors are top-performing students of the Academy, rather than past victors. (Logically, there would have been only nine victors at this point anyway, not enough for every district, and that's assuming they're all still alive by the 10th Games. It's also hinted that Districts 1 and 2 have already produced at least two victors each, which would further reduce the number of districts with victors to act as mentors.)
- Here, sponsorship has a less complicated system. A tribute's ability to get sponsors is based solely on how they are doing in the arena and how they directly appeal to the audience instead of on training scores (as they have not yet been implemented), and items they can receive are limited to select food items (ie. apples, cheese, and bread) and water, whereas in the main trilogy they can receive any food item and most weapons. (The food items are given an in-universe justification when Snow mentions that the basic items on offer were the only ones the Gamemakers could scrounge up on short notice, since the idea was put in place shortly before the games began.)
- 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.
- 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, and most people living in the Districts can't afford a television or can barely get the ones they have working properly.
- The bodies of fallen Tributes are not removed from the arena. Reaper takes it upon himself to 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. It's implied that the later practice of projecting the faces of dead tributes into the sky at the end of each day in the arena evolved from this suggestion.
- 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.
- Rather than being issued with specially designed outfits for the Games, the tributes go into the arena wearing whatever they happened to be wearing when they were reaped. There are also no escorts, stylists and prep teams at this stage since, in the first nine Hunger Games, there was no sponsorship and therefore no need to make the tributes look attractive to potential sponsors.
- Once the 10th Hunger Games are over, 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.
- Above all else 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 lingering hatred and disdain on both sides, they still aren't keen to watch children and teenagers fight to the death.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- When Coriolanus is called out by Lucy Gray 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.
- Coriolanus is taken aback when Marcus is tortured and strung up in the arena, noting that the tribute's only crime was trying to run for his life—hardly anything evil.
- It's made clear that Coriolanus never truly wanted to see Sejanus harmed, no matter how he feels about him, and is sick with guilt over it. Unfortunately, he rationalizes his betrayal of Sejanus as necessary, nearing the end of his Protagonist Journey to Villain.
- Everyone Has Standards: The Capitol veterinarian who treats the tributes injured in the arena bombing does her best to save them and repeatedly tries to get them admitted to the hospital; her requests are refused.
- Evil Former Friend: 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.
- Evil Is Petty:
- Dr. Gaul lets Clemensia get bitten nearly to death by mutated snakes simply because she lies about her part in a group project she was doing with Snow.
- Mayfair Lipp has her father, the mayor, call out Lucy Gray's name during the reaping just so she could have the latter's boyfriend to herself.
- Family Theme Naming: The Covey families have a system for naming their family members. They have two first names, one of which is a name mentioned in a poem or ballad, and the other is the name of a colour, which is followed by their family name.
- Fantastic Racism: Capitol citizens believe the people from the districts to be almost sub-human, and aren't shy about voicing these opinions. The Tributes for the 10th game are housed in a zoo and the only medical treatment offered to them is a veterinarian.
- 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 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.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Covey seem to be inspired by the Romani, being a group of itinerants who feel that they don't belong to any single regional border and provide musical entertainment to make a living, and being associated with colorful clothing.
- Foil: From his introduction, fellow Academy student Sejanus Plinth is positioned as a contrasting character to Coriolanus. Where Coriolanus is a broke orphan from Capitol Old Money, Sejanus is the reluctant child of two loving, Nouveau Riche parents from the Districts, representing everything Coriolanus fears and envies. Their moral constitutions are also complementary—Sejanus's sympathy for the citizenry outside the Capitol highlights Coriolanus's own brutal unconcern, and ultimately Sejanus pays the price for taking a stand, while Coriolanus assimilates into the hierarchy and, chillingly, Sejanus's own family.
- Foregone Conclusion:
- Since this is a prequel, readers know that Coriolanus Snow will become President of Panem, will not die until nearly sixty-six years later, and 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.
- Since the book was marketed as showing the backstory of the other previous District 12 victor (besides Haymitch), we also know that none of the tributes save for Lucy Gray will survive the Games.
- 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. 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.
- For the Evulz: This seems to be the motivation behind some of Volumnia Gaul's actions; 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, yet she does it anyway.
- Freudian Excuse: We learn that Coriolanus Snow's need for power and control is partially the result of his poverty and loss of status as a child.
- Generation Xerox: Lucky Flickerman, implied to be some ancestor of Caesar from the original trilogy, is also a flamboyant Capitol showman tapped to host the new interview night with the tributes and mentors, and then the Games themselves, although by trade he's a professional weather reporter (and an amateur stage magician). He also comes off as less professional (in attitude) and more bumbling than his descendant.
- Good All Along: 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. However, after the 10th Hunger Games he apologises to Lucy Gray in private for all she's had to endure, gives her a huge sum of money and sends her back to her family in District 12, and 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.
- Hair-Contrast Duo: An unusual example. Coriolanus is blond and Lucy Gray is dark-haired. As in many such duos, the lighter-haired one, Coriolanus, values rules and generally abides by them (although he's not above breaking them, especially when Lucy Gray is involved), and the darker-haired one, Lucy Gray, prefers freedom and likes rebelling. Lucy Gray is implied to also have a somewhat darker past than Coriolanus, having had to become a breadwinner as a child and being betrayed by a former lover. However, unlike most examples of this trope, the darker-haired Lucy Gray is the more hopeful and kindhearted of the two, while the fairer-haired Coriolanus is more cynical and ruthless.
- Hereditary Republic: Many of the same prominent Capitol family names in the original novel trilogy and films are already prominent this far back in the Capitol's history; the Snows themselves are one (the father was a prominent general, the son later becomes President).
- Hidden Depths: Cowardly bully Livia, Arachne The Gadfly, nervous "Well Done, Son" Guy Hilarius, immature Pup, seemingly apathetic Iphigenia, Class Clown Gaius and several other mentors who display little if any brilliance throughout the Games are still among the 24 highest-scoring students in the school.
- High-Class Cannibal: Tigris and Coriolanus saw the Impoverished Patrician, Nero Price, cannibalize his maid during the Dark Days. He is still regarded as one of the most wealthy and important Capitol citizens, as is his daughter Persephone, to whom he's implied to have fed human meat without her knowledge.
- Hobbes Was Right: 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 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.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: 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, 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.
- I Just Want to Be Special: What causes Coriolanus to change his mind about running off and living in the wilderness: he thinks he scored the highest on the officer test of anyone his age and experience-level, and decides to pursue a career as an officer rather than rob the world of someone as exceptional as himself. It turns out to have been a ruse, and is implied to just be Gaul pulling strings to appeal to his ego not to run away.
- Impoverished Patrician: At the start of the book, the Snow family have their name and their apartment, but little else, having lost their money during the Dark Days. Coriolanus' determination to restore his family's fortunes forms a big part of his motivations.
- Inter-Class Romance: There are two examples of this:
- The main romance is composed of the Old Money, Blue Blood, Capitol-born Coriolanus Snow, and Lucy Gray, a girl from the Seam, a poor neighbourhood in District 12.
- Billy Taupe, who's also from the Seam and is most likely jobless since his expulsion from the Covey, is in a relationship with Mayfair Lipp, the Mayor's daughter and District 12's resident Rich Bitch.
- In-Series Nickname: Some of which are combined with Affectionate Nickname:
- Coriolanus Snow's family and friends call him "Coryo."
- Clemensia Dovecote has the nickname "Clemmie."
- Coriolanus Snow briefly refers to Lysistrata Vickers as "Lyssie," which he used to call her when they were very young.
- And Casca Highbottom has the unflattering nickname "Dean High-as-a-Kite Bottom."
- As a Peacekeeper, Sejanus's marksmanship earns him the nickname Bulls-eye. He's uncomfortable with it. This is also a Meaningful Name, given how he's the target Coriolanus aims the Capitol at.
- I Want My Mommy!: Sejanus Plinth calls out for his Ma Plinth before being hanged for treason. His cry is picked up by the jabberjays, resounding through the woods.
- Ironic Name:
- Clemensia Dovecote's name suggests "clemency" and associations with the dove, a symbol of peace. As a result of Gaul's Disproportionate Retribution, she becomes irritable and vicious.
- Hilarius Heavensbee is morose and sullen.
- Kill the Cutie: Sejanus, who is sweet and adorable, gets hanged for treason.
- Last-Name Basis: Throughout the book, the main character is referred to by the narration as Coriolanus. In the epilogue, the narration switches to "Snow", signifying him fully embracing the Snow legacy (like his father Crassus before him) and transforming into the monstrous President Snow of the original trilogy.
- Liberty Over Prosperity: In contrast to Coriolanus, Lucy Gray and the Covey prefer a free-spirited, nomadic lifestyle over a more stable but tightly-controlled life under the Capitol's rule.
- Literal-Minded: 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 Gray'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 Sejanus and Lil.
- Love Cannot Overcome:
- Snow's initial excitement at 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 Implied Trope with Lucy Gray's decision to leave Snow. Likewise, Lucy Gray made it clear that she values trust above all else, including love. 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.
- Mad Scientist: 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 like Clemensia—and the absolute lack of moral qualms about any of what she's doing, although she does justify much of it as part of her 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.
- Maybe Ever After: 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. Presumably 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.
- Meaningful Name:
- Lucy Gray's musical troupe is called the Covey. A covey is a group of quails, tying in with her avian theme. Her last name sounds like "bird" and means "bard", "one who sings ballads" or "son of the bard", fitting for a performer who sings ballads and considers her troupe her family.
- Gaul is a region that was conquered and assimilated by the Romans. Volumnia is the mother of Roman general Gaius Martius Coriolanus. Shakespeare's version of Volumnia is profoundly controlling towards Coriolanus and constantly urges him towards aggression. Dr. Gaul was mentoring Coriolanus Snow in her own twisted way and arranged some events, which molded the young teenager into the villain that we know from the Hunger Games books. By the end of the book, he's taking classes with Gaul, and is interning to be a Gamemaker — her position for the Tenth Game.
- Arachne Crane's first name comes from a girl foolish enough to challenge the goddess Athena to a contest in weaving and insult the gods with her tapestry before dying for her trouble. Crane cruelly torments her tribute Brandy and gets killed as a result.
- Festus Creed cracks a lot of jokes, fitting for someone named "joyous, festive".
- Sejanus' first name comes from Lucius Sejanus Aelius, a powerful politician in Ancient Rome who was a close friend of Emperor Tiberius. The historical Sejanus was suddenly executed when it was feared he would usurp Tiberius.
- Mirror Character: A few to the characters from the original trilogy.
- 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 Gray couldn't say for sure he loved her.) Also, both can sing beautifully.
- Coriolanus Snow to Gale Hawthorne: Both fall in love with the girl tribute from District 12; both go into the military; both decide to run away from 12; both end up being responsible for the death of a young person whose family trusted him with said person's safety; and both do not end up with the girl they love.
- Coriolanus could also be considered a mirror to Peeta Mellark. Both are great liars, with Peeta successfully lying to the entire nation on different occasions and Snow convincing everyone he's a nice person when underneath it all he's a manipulative snake. Both are blue eyed blonds from privileged backgrounds who are star-crossed lovers with a singing dark-haired girl from the Seam. Their relationship with said girl starts during the Hunger Games, except Snow is in a position of power over Lucy Gray as her Mentor and Peeta and Katniss are both equals as Tributes, which shows the contrast between Snow and Peeta. Both feel jealous over a boy from the Seam despite their respective love interests not having feelings for that boy. Both are charming and charismatic. They know the right things to say and how to make the audience like them. Both of them are always thinking a step ahead. Both, despite technically coming from privileged backgrounds, struggled with food insecurity growing up, with Peeta's family mostly living on stale bread and Snow living on cabbage and lima beans and often going hungry. Both have one nice parent (Peeta's Dad, Snow's Mom) and one cold parent (Peeta's Mom, Snow's Dad). Both have a connection to poison, with Peeta (accidentally) poisoning Foxface and then trying to commit suicide with nightlock, and Snow giving Lucy Gray rat poison to use on her opponents in the Arena and later on directly poisoning people who stand in the way of him gaining/maintaining power. And both have flower motifs, with Peeta decorating cookies with flowers and being compared to a dandelion by Katniss, and Snow being heavily associated with roses.
- 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-figure (cousin, in Maude Ivory's case) with a protective streak.
- Mayfair Lipp to Madge Undersee. Both are the Mayor's daughter, but while Mayfair thinks she's above other people, Madge has sympathy for the people of 12 despite benefitting from the Capitol as the Mayor's daughter. And while Mayfair despises Lucy Gray, Madge is a close friend of Katniss, spending her lunchtimes in school with Katniss, giving her a precious family heirloom to use as her token, and being the first person to believe in Katniss who wasn't her sister or in love with her.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Coriolanus unwittingly solves the love quadrangle he's gotten tangled into by 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 Gray too.
- Musical Theme Naming: All members of the Covey are named after real-life ballads and poems. The most prominent, of course, is Lucy Gray (named after the poem by William Wordsworth; this is even pointed out in-universe). Another is Barb Azure (named after Barbara Allen
). - My God, What Have I Done?:
- Heavily implied to be the reason behind Dean Highbottom's morphling addiction. 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 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.
- Named After Someone Famous: Subverted with the Covey, who are all named after a character from a poem, whether fictional or based on a real person.
- Never Found the Body:
- The plot of the Wordsworth poem about one Lucy Gray, whose footprints stop in the middle of a bridge.
- Try as he might, Coriolanus cannot confirm that Lucy Gray is dead, or even was hit by one of the dozens of bullets he fired in every direction.
- New Parent Nomenclature Problem: Coriolanus isn't sure what to call Strabo Plinth at the end of the book; "Father" doesn't feel accurate since Plinth named him his heir rather than formally adopting him. He ends up calling him "sir" a lot.
- Noodle Incident: Iphigenia Moss, a classmate of Coriolanus', is very thin, and doesn't eat her school meals. It's never specified exactly why she starves herself, but according to Lysistrata Vickers, it's a form of revenge for something that Iphigenia's father (the Head of the Agriculture Department of Panem) did.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: During the war, the Capitol was cut off from food deliveries they usually depended on, which drove some people to cannibalism to avoid starvation.
- Nouveau Riche: After the Dark Days, families from the Districts who loyally supported the Capitol were able to buy their way into the Capitol, preventing them from having to participate in the Hunger Games. Strabo Plinth from District 2 funded the reconstruction of Panem, and as a result his family were allowed to settle in the Capitol. Nevertheless, they were despised by the particularly elitist Capitol citizens, who never let it slide that they came from the Districts. It didn't help that Strabo's wife and son felt that they were misfits within the Capitol, and the latter even came around to support the rebels, which cost him dearly.
- Not So Stoic: 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.
- Numerological Motif: Three. 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.
- Parental Substitute: Tigris, Coryo's older cousin who's lived with him since they were children, became this to him after his parents died, acting as his closest confidant and serving as a source of advice and support.
- People Zoo: Capitol Zoo functions as one in the weeks prior to the Hunger Games. In a time before the Tribute Training Centre was introduced, the tributes were housed in a zoo, where citizens of the Capitol could visit and get the tributes to perform for food.
- Perspective Flip: The book shows the Capitol-districts conflict from the Capitol's side. While the Capitol still comes out looking like the bad guys, the book gives you a better sense of just why they the came to hate the districts enough to impose the Hunger Games on them, and that a lot of them are just living by the rules they were born into.
- Pet the Dog: 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, not putting together that Highbottom's ill feelings are only directed toward Coriolanus himself and not towards his tribute.
- Philosophical Novel: The book is a prequel exploring the origins of the dictator who serves as the villain of the Hunger Games series, and a recurring theme is the nature of humanity and of evil. Over the course of the book, Coriolanus comes to believe in a Hobbesian worldview that posits that humans are naturally evil and require a strict totalitarian government to control them.
- Police State: Already a given for Panem in this early period, with the Capitol already having won the war against the Districts and now in the process of consolidating and refining its authoritarian rule. Readers trace Coriolanus' journey as he becomes a cog in the Capitol's repression machine, first as a mentor to a Games tribute, and later as an actual Peacekeeper (and still later, of course, as President).
- Prophetic Name: Lucy Gray ends up just like the character she was named after; she disappears off the face of the Earth without leaving a trace.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: Downplayed. Coriolanus starts off this prequel selfish and haughty to begin with, but still above murder and the kinds of horrible crimes he commits in the original trilogy. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes covers his descent into the kind of villainy that defines him as President Snow.
- Protagonist Title: Subverted. Sort of. Who is the songbird and who is the snake? Both Lucy Gray and Snow are associated with both animals throughout the book. Snow sings towards the start of the book. Lucy Gray sings throughout. Lucy Gray also uses snakes. And Snow has been associated with snakes since the Hunger Games trilogy.
- Public Execution: One of the first things that happens once Coriolanus gets to District 12 as a peacekeeper is for some rebels to be hanged in the town square. Sejanus is also hanged for treason at the end of the book.
- Racist Grandma: Sort of. While Panem is a post-racial dystopia, Grandma'am sees District people as barbaric and inferior to Capitol culture.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: The story ends on this. Snow finally chooses his destiny as a future leader of Panem and kills anyone who stands in his way, including his best friend. However, he is unable to snuff out the last link to his old life: Lucy Gray Baird, who presumably still hangs out in District 12 and becomes a precursor (either literally or metaphorically) to a future rebellious girl from the same district who will take away everything he holds dear some sixty-four years later.
- Rebel Prince: Sejanus Plinth is the heir to a very successful munitions empire started by his loyalist father during the rebellion. However, he hates war and especially hates the Capitol, and does not want to lead a company that would help the Capitol.
- Ret-Canon: "The Hanging Tree" is an extremely small part of The Hunger Games, but it is a large part of the film adaptation, and the content of the song becomes a huge plot point, with the events that inspired it being shown.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Coriolanus grew up in a very wealthy family and is determined to restore their fortunes. His belief in the power of money leads him to make a colossal mistake when deciding to betray Sejanus to the Capitol for colluding with rebels, since he assumes Sejanus' father will be able to buy his freedom as he's done in the past... clearly not considering that wealth and influence only go so far when it comes to being charged with treason.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Because he doesn't know the context of his father's relationship with Casca Highbottom, Coriolanus assumes that Highbottom has no reason to hate him other than petty jealousy of his success.
- Rousseau Was Right: In contrast to Dr. Gaul and Coriolanus, Lucy Gray believes that people are born good and only do bad things because of their experiences. She herself experienced terrible trauma throughout her life, the Hunger Games only being part of it, and still is generally good-natured. Ditto for other members of the Covey, Tigris, Lysistrata, and Sejanus.
- Ruins of the Modern Age: The (sole) Capitol arena—a literal arena, in this case a sports stadium—is a dilapidated relic from the prewar days, when it hosted various sporting, military and national events. It's easy to imagine the arena being a long-disused version of something like Yankee Stadium.
- Rule of Symbolism: Bird symbolism is used pretty blatantly in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Coriolanus, a Capitol born-and-bred who favors order and resents chaos, loves the jabberjays (through which the Capitol tried to impose order on the Districts) and hates the mockingjays (who represent "mistakes" that the Capitol accidentally created because they couldn't impose order), dreading whenever they start to mimic voices and at one point suggesting for hunting trips to eradicate them. He uses a jabberjay to rat out Sejanus to the Capitol, but mockingjays prevent him from washing his hands clean of the rebel plot completely, since they protect the last known witness of his involvement: Lucy Gray Baird.
- Rule of Three:
- There are three characters who can be said to have murdered three each by the time of the epilogue. Lucy Gray kills three other tributes in the Arena, Arlo Chance is hanged for killing three people in the mines, and Snow is responsible for the deaths of Bobbin, Mayfair, and Sejanus.
- We are shown three people hanged in the Hanging Tree from the song: Arlo Chance, his girlfriend Lil, and Sejanus.
- The book is divided into three parts: "The Mentor," "The Prize," and "The Peacekeeper."
- Saying Too Much: As Coriolanus and Lucy Gray are leaving District 12 to run away together, she states that it'll be nice to not have to kill anyone again, and he agrees, "Three seems enough for one lifetime. And certainly enough for one summer." This immediately makes her suspicious, since she only knows about the two people he's directly killed (Bobbin and Mayfair); the third person Coryo is counting is Sejanus, whom he considers an indirect kill because his betrayal was responsible for getting him hanged. Lucy Gray figures this out silently and loses all her trust in him, and when she gets the chance to go off alone, claiming to gather katniss herbs for their dinner, she flees and hides from him.
- School Forced Us Together: Coriolanus and Sejanus originally don't know each other very well outside of being classmates. But becoming Mentors in the Hunger Games on an assignment brings them close to each other, and Coriolanus does eventually seem to develop some degree of affection for Sejanus despite initially resenting him, even being happy when Sejanus turns up at District 12 later on in the novel, while Sejanus comes to regard Coriolanus as his best friend during the course of their Hunger Games mentorship.
- Scientific and Technological Theme Naming: Named characters from Districts 3, 5, and 6 tend to have names pertaining to their districts' industries — technology, electricity, and transportation, respectively.
- District 3 (technology) has Circ (circuit) and Teslee (Tesla).
- District 5 (electricity) has Hy and Sol, likely nods to hydroelectric and solar power, respectively.
- District 6 (transportation) gives us the tributes Otto (as in automobile) and Ginnee (engine).
- Secret Test of Character: During the 10th Hunger Games, Volumnia Gaul discreetly puts Coriolanus Snow in a series of loyalty tests to see if he is fit to become a future Gamemaker and Capitol leader, culminating in him destroying the would-be rebel cell in District 12 and ratting out his friend Sejanus Plinth as a rebel sympathizer and letting him get executed. She subsequently promotes him to become her understudy, allowing him to entry to the Capitol University.
- Significant Reference Date: The reaping takes place on the fourth of July. This seems to be the tradition at this point; decades later they would hold the reaping in the spring.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Turns out that like a lot of real life sporting events, the early editions of the Hunger Games were a big case of Early-Installment Weirdness. As the Games here were only the 10th edition, several elements that were standard by the time Katniss participated decades later were either newly introduced as tests or not even conceived yet.
- 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. 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 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.
- Take That!: There are several, some of which are combined with Does This Remind You of Anything?
- The "outsider" children from the Districts are kept in cages when they're brought to the Capitol. This is actually happening in real life in the US, with immigrant children being reported as being kept in cages in detention centres.
- Coriolanus feels that he's in danger while he's a Peacekeeper, which makes him willing to readily shoot at protesters. This parallels with the police brutality in the USA and the Black Lives Matters protests.
- The date of the Reaping is July 4th, which in real life is the United States' Independence Day, which celebrates the country becoming independent from England at a time when Americans found the British rule, which did not allow Americans to have a voice in government, oppressive. Having the society of Panem use it as a day of oppression of the districts by the Capitol, which does not allow most of its citizens to have a voice in government, seems very deliberate, especially given the presence of apple pie (a food traditionally eaten on Independence Day in the United States).
- Teens Are Monsters: Coriolanus doesn't take many weeks to go from appalled at the horrible conditions they put Tributes in to being able to talk himself into murdering his girlfriend in minutes.
- Too Dumb to Live: 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 be a bad idea.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth:
- Coriolanus's mother. Dean Highbottom muses that she was a child until she died giving birth to her second child shortly after being widowed.
- Sejanus. He wanted to be a medic, and believes in the inherent good in people … and gets executed anyway.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Coriolanus Snow. While he's not exactly nice at the beginning, he's also not completely awful. By the end of the book he's an irredeemable monster.
- Unequal Pairing: Coriolanus Snow is always in a position of power over Lucy Gray Baird during their relationship. He starts off as her mentor in the Hunger Games, and later on becomes a Peacekeeper in her District.
- Unbalanced By Rival's Kid: This is why Casca Highbottom hates Coriolanus; him and Coriolanus' father were best friends in school, but then had a falling out, and after Coriolanus' father died, Highbottom transferred his hatred onto his son.
- Uncertain Doom: 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 face of the earth.
- Unperson: The entire 10th Hunger Games, due to them being a huge mess from start to finish: 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 savior 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 someone from District 12 won.
- Unreliable Narrator: Coriolanus, an already dishonest person also saddled with a self-absorbed worldview and a general paranoia that anyone who doesn't absolutely love him may or may not be plotting his downfall.
- 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: 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.
- Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Lucy Gray comes from an unusual background, has an unusual occupation, and appears to keep snakes as pets, describing the one she puts down Mayfair's dress as a "particular friend of hers."
- Villainous Breakdown: Snow has one towards the end of the novel; he completely loses his temper when Lucy Gray figures out that he's lying to her and abandons him, and starts shooting randomly in the foliage, trying to kill her.
- Villain Protagonist: 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 sympathizers like his own best friend Sejanus, is what it takes… he'll take it.
- The War Just Before: The novel takes place a few years after the Dark Days ended. The Capitol is recovering from the hardships suffered during the Dark Days, but many people, including the protagonist, are still struggling.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Played with interestingly between Coriolanus and Sejanus. The former sees the latter as this 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.
- What You Are in the Dark: Both of the District 12 tributes end up saving their mentors' lives, despite having every reason to want them dead.
- Would Hurt a Child: Dr. Gaul has no qualms risking the lives of kids be they District or Capitol.
- The X of Y: The title of the book follows this formula; it is called The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
- You Remind Me of X: Casca Highbottom emphasises how much Coriolanus Snow reminds him of Coriolanus' father, Crassus Snow. Highbottom does not view this as a good thing.
