by V. Arrow
Katniss and Peeta’s relationship can also be seen as a parallel of the slow opening of Panem society to reintegration. Peeta—as a baker and as someone whose name is a homonym for a type of bread, pita—is bread and Panem is bread, so what happens to Peeta happens to Panem; as Peeta crosses racial lines and breaks out of his class mold, so does Panem, resulting (eventually) in the creation of a new generation unfettered by such strict socioethnic lines. Katniss herself was born to interracial parents; she is the second generation of her family to engage in a positive interracial relationship, despite coming from a culture of such isolation that both the Seam and merchant classes have fairly static appearances. Given that Katniss and Peeta’s children are born with appearances representative of both the merchant class and the Seam—a “girl with dark hair and blue eyes” and a “boy with blond curls and gray eyes” (Mockingjay)—it’s clear that Katniss and Peeta’s joint family is meant literarily to represent the racial/ethnic/cultural reintegration of Panem that is a root cause, and a massive effect, of the Second Rebellion.
When Posy Hawthorne tells green-skinned Capitol citizen and prep team stylist Octavia that she would be “pretty in any color” in Mockingjay, it emphasizes the idea that judging worth by skin color isn’t automatic or natural—and suggests the potential for change that rebellion represents.
Though Panem does not seem to have the same racial markers (or ethnic, cultural, or religious markers) as we do, that does not mean that these differences don’t exist, and does not mean that they should be ignored when we are given the distinctions between Panem’s races in the text. We don’t know how dark the Seam’s skin is, and indeed to our twenty-first-century understanding of race versus ethnicity, Katniss could well visually appear “Caucasian” to us. However, we do know that her skin, and Gale’s skin, and the skin of the Seam populace, is pointedly darker than the merchants’ and that has made a significant, significant difference in how people are raised, married, treated, and receive job placement in District 12—and their odds of being reaped and surviving the Hunger Games.
4
The Socioeconomics of Tesserae
The racially fueled class differences outlined in chapter three, both between districts and within District 12, are more than just a legacy from our world. They also perform an important function in maintaining the Capitol’s rule: separating and differentiating the country’s citizenry. Race, ethnicity, and culture provide a source of discord and tension that the Capitol relies on to suppress any organized rebellion in the districts. (If the residents of a district do not trust each other, they cannot work together to fight against the Capitol.) In fact, the sociopolitical system of Panem—the tesserae and the extra chance it brings of being selected as Hunger Games tribute—seems specifically designed to intensify this tension, by targeting the (darker-skinned) lower class:
I’ve listened to [Gale] rant about how the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another. “It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine.THG14
In Panem, just as in the contemporary world and throughout virtually all of human history, race justifies social inequalities as natural through the role it plays in determining societal privilege. As the concept of race evolved, it provided a reason for the extermination of Native Americans, the exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the seizure of Mexican lands. And it did so in part through institutional means. Racial practices were—and are—institutionalized within government, law, and social practices. When it comes to Panem, this means the Games–tesserae system.
Peggy McIntosh, the founder and co-director of the National S.E.E.D. Project on Inclusive Curriculum, explains privilege like this:
Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do. Access to privilege does not determine one’s outcomes, but it is definitely an asset that makes it more likely that whatever talent, ability, and aspirations a person with privilege has will result in something positive for them.xxvi
In Panem, that is tantamount to the idea that a person with privilege doesn’t necessarily avoid being reaped, but they are more likely either to avoid the reaping or survive the arena due to their racial, ethnic, and/or cultural status. And that means, of course, members of the Capitol—who do not face a reaping and the arena at all—but also people like the mayor’s merchant-class daughter, Madge, in District 12.
The distribution of tesserae between people who identify as Seam and those who identify as merchants is inherently unequal—and of course, those who identify as Capitol do not take any tesserae at all, and live in a world predicated on the belief that the (predominantly darker, predominantly lower-class) children who are killed in the Hunger Games are receiving a just punishment. After all, the annual reaping ceremony in each district is begun with a reading of the “Treaty of Treason” that automatically stipulates the superiority of the Capitol class over both the merchants and district specialty classes.
That the system institutionally favors the wealthier—and fairer-skinned—higher classes is implicit in Katniss’ narrative, and is best examined by looking at District 12 as an example.
Because the Hunger Games is written from the perspective of a first-person narrator, the only perspective that we get on Panem in the books is that of Katniss, who lives in District 12 and knows—or at least conveys—very little about the demographics or make-up of other districts, sometimes even leaving out their specialties. However, given the Capitol’s heavily structured hierarchy of control, the assumption that all of the districts were originally formed with similar basic planning doesn’t seem unwarranted; using District 12 as a model is the most reliable way to extrapolate information about Panem as a whole.
If one takes Katniss’ description of District 12 economics at face value, then the residents of the Seam (who we’ve established are, in the world of Panem, racially nonwhite) work in the district specialty profession—mining—and are all below the poverty line, requiring all Seam children to take multiple tesserae. Both the Everdeens and Hawthornes, for example, took out the maximum available tesserae every year, and both self-identify as “nonwhite” in the context of Panem. The merchants work in more specialized, educated, high-yield professions—and may be independent business owners—requiring fewer tesserae per child. Gale assumes that Madge’s name has only been entered once for each year she’s been eligible, and she doesn’t contradict him. Taken together, this suggests that specialty-class families—who are largely of darker skin or considered as the ethnic/racial Other in Panem—as a whole take more tesserae than merchant-class and therefore have a higher likelihood of being drawn in the reaping.
The third sentence of the entire series sets up the reaping as something to fear—before we even know what the Hunger Games are or, other than their use as the title, that they exist.
[Prim] must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.THG3
Shortly after, within the first third of The Hunger Games, there is a slew of information that is meant to impress on us, the readers, that the Games–tesserae sociopolitical system is unfair, biased, only masquerading as punishment for all district citizens, when in fact, it unequivocally targets families of lesser economic means, living in the specialty classes. Katniss tells us this directly at the outset of The Hunger Games:
The reaping system is unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it. You become eligible for the reaping the day you turn twelve. That year, your name is entered once. At thirteen, twice. And so on and so on until you reach the age of eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when your name goes into the pool seven times. That’s true for every citizen in all twelve districts
in the entire country of Panem.
But here’s the catch. Say you are poor and starving as we were. You can opt to add your name more times in exchange for tesserae. Each tessera is worth a meager year’s supply of grain and oil for one person. You may do this for each of your family members as well. So, at the age of twelve, I had my name entered four times. Once, because I had to, and three times for tesserae for grain and oil for myself, Prim, and my mother. In fact, every year I have needed to do this. And the entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping twenty times. Gale, who is eighteen and has been either helping or single-handedly feeding a family of five for seven years, will have his name in forty-two times.
You can see why someone like Madge, who has never been at risk of needing a tessera, can set him off. The chance of her name being drawn is very slim compared to those of us who live in the Seam.THG13
The division that this causes in Panem society between the merchant class—the “haves”—and the specialty classes—the “have-nots”—is clear from Gale, Katniss, and Madge’s early conversation about the impending seventy-fourth reaping ceremony. Madge is used explicitly as a way to contrast Katniss’ situation and the situation of merchant-class children:
“You won’t be going to the Capitol,” says Gale coolly. His eyes land on a small, circular pin that adorns her dress. Real gold. Beautifully crafted. It could keep a family in bread for months. “What can you have? Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old.”
“That’s not her fault,” I say.
“No, it’s no one’s fault. Just the way it is,” says Gale.
Madge’s face has become closed off. She puts the money for the berries in my hand. “Good luck, Katniss.”THG12
Although the previous quotes illustrate masterfully the premise and the execution of the Games–tesserae welfare system, and the resentment it breeds, it’s Gale’s “ranting” in the woods that conveys its nefarious purpose and effects:
I’ve listened to [Gale] rant about how the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another. “It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine. If it wasn’t reaping day. If a girl with a gold pin and no tesserae had not made what I’m sure she thought was a harmless comment.THG14
Gale is not wrong. Taking Katniss’ perceptions of Panem at face value, there is a distinct social class missing from the nation: a middle class. There are those living in abject, starving, governmentally-sanctioned-physical-aid-dependent poverty—which does include the merchant class, because though they take fewer tesserae, they are still required to put their names once into the reaping—and those who live in absurd, Gilded-Age-and-then-some levels of wealth in the Capitol. The reasons for this are most succinctly summed up in a sentence from a speech given by US president Barack Obama in December 2011: “A strong middle class can only exist in an economy where everyone plays by the same rules.”xxvii
Panem is a nation that, as far as Katniss relays to the reader, is fully predicated on the notion that its citizens do not all have to play by the same rules. Those in the Capitol are treated to sheltered lives of luxury, courtesy of the exploitation of laborers in the districts. In the districts themselves, those who work in the jobs that support the high-cost lifestyles in the Capitol see none of the financial returns from their work, but instead—if District 12 is an accurate model—live as institutionally second-class citizens to those whose jobs don’t directly benefit the actual wealthy class at all, but who share the same skin color as the Capitol citizens (when the Capitol citizens aren’t dyeing their skin for fashion!). Although the specialty class’ jobs in every district directly provide goods to the Capitol citizens, the merchant class’ vocations are largely for the benefit of the merchant class within their own districts: bakers, cobblers, butchers, apothecaries, etc. Despite being of less economic benefit to the Capitol, the Games–tesserae system still heavily favors them. Katniss’ take on the system is as succinct as Obama’s statement about the necessity of a middle class for healthy economic function: “It’s hard not to resent those who don’t have to sign up for tesserae.”THG13
Obviously, Panem is an exaggerated case of class warfare, designed to fit within the paradigms of dystopian science fiction; however, the disparity of wealth and wealth distribution in Panem is not a far cry from the wealth distribution in the United States at the time of The Hunger Games’ writing. When Mockingjay was released in 2010, 85 percent of American wealth was held by only 20 percent of its citizens, with 40 percent of Americans holding only 0.3 percent of the nation’s wealth.
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.7%.xxviii
We don’t know Panem’s specific statistics—and it’s unlikely that Katniss cared, because knowing numbers doesn’t put food on Prim’s plate—but given the vastness of the districts in comparison to the small size of the Capitol and its almost-total control over Panem’s wealth, we can infer that it was, at best, along the same lines; at worst, it would have been more akin to Mexico, whose wealth distribution is vastly unequal (as of 2010, the top 10 percent of the nation’s wealthy control 42.2 percent of all income, and the poorest 10 percent control only 1.3 percent).xxix
One of the results of such a vast disparity in wealth is the need for a welfare system. I described tesserae as welfare previously, and that’s exactly what it is: a government program (ostensibly) put in place to subsidize basic living costs or needs for those at the poorest level of economic society. At the time that the Hunger Games series was being written, according to G. William Domhoff, a research professor in sociology at the University of California–Santa Cruz, in the United States “welfare (mainly AFDC [Aid for Families with Dependent Children]) dole[d] out humiliating relief primarily to poor single mothers. Welfare recipients [were] stigmatized as shiftless and irresponsible, their personal lives [were] scrutinized by government workers, and they must conform to behavioral rules in order to receive their benefits.”xxx Unlike District 11, which has a specialty more specifically designed to reflect slavery, in which citizens begin work in early childhood, District 12 has a specialty that has historically precluded women from employment—making the majority of Seam families dependent on the male wage-earner as the primary, if not the only, source of income. There are female miners in District 12, such as Bristel, but even from what little detail Katniss gives us about the miners, the numbers seem to be overwhelmingly male (Gale, Thom, Mr. Everdeen, Mr. Hawthorne are all male miners, whereas Bristel is the only female miner mentioned). That automatically limits the ability of Seam families to provide for themselves economically to the same level as merchant families such as the Mellarks or Cartwrights, in which both heads of house can earn an equal salary. It also ensures that in the case of a mining accident, the Seam families are certain to be beholden to the state for tesserae grain/oil to survive.
The Games–tessera system is smartly designed. Unlike our present-day welfare system, it is predicated on making its beneficiaries state-dependent, creating a nation of “pauperism.”xxxi It is only with this dependency that the Capitol can control its most oppressed class at its most basic level and assuage the doubts of any potential thinkers in the wealthier classes/districts by demonstrating that the specialty class take disproportionate tesserae only “because they need it.” In addition, the tesserae is set up as
something to avoid, because it increases one’s chances of being reaped—which may serve as encouragement for district citizens to work harder at their specialty-class professions: If you work hard enough, you can protect your children from taking tesserae (and allow more of your product to make its way into Capitol hands, to boot). But the Capitol actually wins when its citizens take the tesserae—so long as they aren’t allowed to take too much.
If tesserae serve as a monthly aid package, then ideally, the specialty-class citizens of Panem should not be in the fiscally tragic state they are in. After all, the purpose of government at its most basic level is to provide its citizens with their fundamental needs in order to ensure their full participation in national affairs,xxxii and Katniss’ account of what life is like in the Seam does not seem to lead to the idea that she (or Gale, or most of the Seam) is able to function as a “citizen” despite her “government aid”—at least if a “citizen” of Panem is defined as someone who puts full participation into the society.
However, the Seam’s poorest citizens do still make important contributions to the Capitol’s way of life, by mining. Had Gale and Katniss not been able to hunt, neither of them would have been strong enough to work in the mines—if they even survived to adulthood. (Katniss says starvation is common in the Seam, especially among “older people who can’t work. Children from a family with too many to feed. Those injured in the mines.”THG28) It’s in the Capitol’s best interest to keep its citizens alive—alive but hungry. And so it must balance its poorest citizens’ need against the threat of the Games, keeping them fed enough to serve the Capitol residents’ needs but hungry enough not to rebel.
[W]e were slowly starving to death. There’s no other way to put it. I kept telling myself if I could only hold out until May, just May 8th, I would turn twelve and be able to sign up for tesserae and get that precious grain and oil to feed us.THG27-28