The Panem Companion

by V. Arrow

  District 4

  The belief that Cinna was born, and perhaps raised, in District 4 stems from the same source as the evidence that Cinna and Finnick have a relationship—whether romantic or platonic—prior to the run-up to the Quarter Quell (see chapter eight).

  At least in District 12, people from the same districts or socioeconomic classes resemble each other: the merchants of District 12 share blonde hair and pale eyes and the residents of the Seam share olive skin, gray eyes, and straight black hair. It’s not unreasonable to extrapolate that this is the case in other districts, too. Cinna and Finnick are described using similar physical descriptors: light brown hair and green eyes. Katniss describes relatively few characters in the series in any physical detail at all, so—like with Prim and Peeta—this attention to detail may be meant to convey a deeper narrative meaning.

  There are three differences in accent or speech pattern that Katniss notes in the series: the Capitol “affectation,” Mags’ “garbled” speech that requires “translation,” and Cinna’s lack of distinct accent. This is solid evidence that Cinna is not from the Capitol, at minimum. Some readers suggest that calling attention to Cinna’s lack of a Capitol accent, without an accompanying note specifying that his speech sounds the same as Katniss’, is meant to suggest traces of a District 4 accent. However, this particular inference does not seem very credible.

  District 1

  District 1’s specialty is luxury goods, which has led some to suggest that Cinna may have been raised in District 1 and recruited by the Capitol for his high skill level. In Catching Fire, Cinna demonstrates proficiency in working with one of District 1’s proprietary goods, gold (it seems unlikely he would have left making the gold tokens for Peeta, Haymitch, and [possibly] Finnick to someone else).

  District 8

  The evidence that Cinna hails from District 8 comes from a similar place as the belief that he is from District 1: the district’s specialty, textiles. Given that Cinna works with fabrics and textiles in the Capitol, it’s possible that he may have been recruited from District 8 to work as a designer for the Games because he showed extraordinary skill.

  District 8 is the first district in which a true violent revolt occurs during the Second Rebellion, perhaps suggesting that its citizens are most sensitive to Capitol injustice and most prepared to fight for their freedom, the way Cinna is sensitive to the plight of the tributes and is prepared to die for his belief in Panem’s emancipation. District 8 is also where the mockingjay crackers—a symbol of rebel sympathies shown to Katniss by District 8 refugees passing through District 12 on their way to District 13—originate. As Cinna is also heavily tied to the mockingjay’s use as a rebel symbol at all, it may suggest commonality between Cinna and the District 8 populace.

  District 12

  The best evidence for Cinna hailing from District 12 is the simplest: he requested to style District 12’s tributes in his first Games as a lead stylist. Why would he, as a Capitol man, choose the least prestigious district? A personal connection to the district is more plausible than a personal connection to Katniss, Peeta, or Haymitch.

  But there are other suggestions in Katniss’ narrative, however small, that Cinna may have had a presence in her home district during the time between Haymitch’s Games and her own—though they require a little more reading between the lines than most of the other district origin theories.

  Katniss, as a rule, does not describe much that does not specifically pertain to her survival. One example that online Hunger Games fandom tends to remark on most is that Katniss describes food in copious detail but does not offer any description of most of her fellow tributes in the Seventy-fourth Games. Likewise, she does not remark much on her everyday clothing or the clothing of others. She does, however, spend a lot of time describing the clothing Cinna creates for her—which, in a way, also helps keep her alive.

  Before she arrives in the Capitol, we are meant to understand that clothing does not matter to her. But she describes her reaping dress in the same level of detail that she devotes to Cinna’s designs:

  To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her own lovely dresses for me. A soft blue thing with matching shoes.

  “Are you sure?” I ask . . . [T]his is something special. Her clothes from her past are very precious to her . . .

  “You look beautiful,” says Prim in a hushed voice.

  “And nothing like myself,” I say.THG15

  Later, while she is waiting for the train to take her to the Capitol, Katniss makes reference to another lush fabric:

  I know velvet because my mother has a dress with a collar made of the stuff. When I sit on the couch, I can’t help running my fingers over the fabric repeatedly. It helps to calm me as I try to prepare for the next hour.THG34

  These other descriptions of fabrics certainly could be coincidence or instances intended to foreshadow the importance of fashion generally later on. But given that Cinna’s creations are the only articles of clothing she describes anywhere else, it could also suggest that these items from Mrs. Everdeen’s merchant past, too, were Cinna’s handiwork—especially when paired with Cinna’s inexplicable attachment to District 12.

  If Cinna is indeed meant to be read as being an outsider in the Capitol, then the portrayal of him gains a secondary level of mystery when we consider that, in working for the Games, in residing in the Capitol, he has made himself into an outsider to the districts as well: yet another enigmatic facet of Cinna’s character. Katniss trusts him and comes to see him as a surrogate father figure and source of comfort, but Gale’s reaction to her camaraderie with Cinna is negative and he refuses a gift of Cinna’s gloves because they are “from the Capitol.”CF94 It’s hard to believe many other rebels would feel much differently. In short: Cinna played a leading role in the revolution that freed a people from whom he can be read as wholly separate.

  Cinna the Artist

  Cinna is an employee of the Capitol, and a vital part of the Games that oppress Panem’s citizenry. But he uses his position and his skills in a way that suggests his work is more than just a job or a way to gain higher standing in the Capitol. What he creates is art. His focus is never on fame, though we can assume he experienced plenty of it after the Seventy-fourth Games. Instead, he expresses, through his actions as much as through his understated clothing, that his art is what should be looked at and judged and discussed, not his person. Cinna is literally the opposite of flamboyant; his art is what stands out and gets noticed, not the man in the background. That speaks volumes about who he is and what his goals are, especially in a city like the Capitol.

  Cinna is the consummate artist, and an undeniably powerful one. Through his work with Katniss’ Games costumes, which couple the long-standing Western symbolism of birds of peace and birds of war with the Eastern tradition of fire as a form of protest (both of which seem to resonate with Panem the same way as they do with us), he achieves something very, very few people ever do: the successful utilization of his art as a method of social change, not just commentary. His art not only encapsulates and expresses his ideas but actually communicates them to people of different mindsets and encourages them to think and consider a viewpoint different from their own. And as a result, minds are changed. A country is changed.

  Cinna uses the visibility of the Hunger Games as a form of political expression, a tradition that has existed since the days of Rome itself, when satirical theater was the primary mode of artistic political commentary. There are so many artists who work hard to gain the world’s attention, but then, once they have it, don’t really know what they want to say. That’s certainly not the case with Cinna. He adeptly uses Katniss’ wedding gown debut in the Quarter Quell opening ceremonies not only to invoke the fire imagery citizens of Panem (districts and Capitol alike) would recall from her previous Games but also the mockingjay imagery that had since come to be associated with her, and with her rebellion. In doing so, he manages to embed that imagery into the public mindset so flawlessly a
nd strongly that viewers begin to sympathize with his message—that Katniss, like the mockingjay, is unprecedented and will survive despite the Capitol’s wishes—before they even realize their minds are changing.

  Cinna the Conspirator

  By the same token, his artful use of that imagery to bend others ideologically to his will can also be read as deeply manipulative. The result of that manipulation was undeniably positive—an end to the Capitol’s reign, and a chance for a free Panem to do better by its citizens—but that does not change the fact that, because of it, we cannot view Cinna purely as an artist (or at least not one whose primary motivation is to create art!).

  This duality is also reflected in the probable origins of Cinna’s name. As with many other names in the Hunger Games (see the Lexicon), “Cinna” has a direct connection to the story of Caesar. Historically, there were two Cinnas of note involved in Caesar’s death: Cinna the Conspirator, and Cinna the Poet.

  The first Cinna was a conspirator against Caesar, who played a key role in enlisting Brutus to the assassins’ cause. In 78 BC, Cinna allied himself with Roman statesman Lepidus in an attempt to overthrow the Roman constitution of dictator Sulla. As a result, he was exiled. Before he left Rome, he sought out the support of Julius Caesar for the rebellion, which was not forthcoming, though it was Caesar who later recalled Cinna from exile to use him in the Roman Senate against Caesar’s senatorial opposition. On the day of Caesar’s funeral, the Roman populace was in such rage at Cinna for his role in Caesar’s death that a group of citizens murdered Helvius Cinna, tribune of the plebs, because they mistook him for Cinna the Conspirator. When the murder of the tribune took place, the other Cinna was walking in Caesar’s funeral procession.

  Helvius Cinna is better known as Cinna the Poet, thanks to William Shakespeare and the Roman historian Plutarch. Most historians at the time only recorded that this Cinna was a representative of the people, but Plutarch preserved the information that he was also a poet. Shakespeare adopted Plutarch’s version of Cinna’s death in his Julius Caesar, with the black humor through which he often expressed his distrust of the crowd:

  III.iii.—

  CINNA.Truly, my name is Cinna.

  FIRST CITIZEN.Tear him to pieces, he’s a conspirator.

  CINNA.I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

  FOURTH CITIZEN.Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.

  CINNA.I am not Cinna the conspirator.

  FOURTH CITIZEN.It is no matter, his name’s Cinna. Pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.

  So Cinna shares his name with one of history’s most infamous conspirators . . . and also the innocent man who was killed in his place. Like Helvius Cinna, the Hunger Games’ Cinna is both a representative of the people and a poet. But he is a conspirator, too.

  We know that Cinna is ambushed and beaten at the outset of the Quarter Quell, in full view of Katniss, Peeta, and his fellow conspirators, after they have been locked onto their plates. We know that he was not killed that day but was instead tortured for information on Katniss’ whereabouts and the plans of the rebels. We know that unlike Portia’s death and that of Peeta’s prep team, his end was private and solitary—and that his prep team was not being held with him.

  But we do not know what Cinna knew, what his final acts were, or what his final moments were like. What happened to him in his final interrogation? Was he able to help Peeta, Johanna, Enobaria, and Annie survive? Did he share information? Did he mislead the Capitol? Or did he remain silent in protest, leaving the Girl On Fire as his legacy?

  14

  District 13 and the Capitol: Two Sides of the Same “Coin”

  In one important way, the Capitol and District 13 are diametrically opposed. There is no place more visible in Panem than the Capitol: literally visible, in the fences and white-helmeted Peacekeepers in the districts, and ideologically visible in the districts’ isolation, propagandist education, and strict socioeconomic caste system. And there is perhaps no place less visible than District 13: until the end of Catching Fire, neither we nor most of Panem even know it exists; it is, literally and figuratively, underground.

  In another way, however, the two can be seen as two sides of the same coin. They may be on opposite sides of the Second Rebellion but, as Katniss realizes during the course of Mockingjay, they are not so different when it comes to political goals.

  The Capitol and District 13, and their leaders, have both strong similarities and obvious differences. And by comparing one with the other, we come to understand each of them better.

  History and Philosophy

  The details we receive about the history of Panem are limited. We know that, seventy-five years ago, there was something called the First Rebellion, in which the districts, led by District 13, attempted to overthrow the Capitol and were defeated and punished by the inception of the Games–tesserae system . . . except for District 13, with whom the Capitol struck a secret accord, agreeing to let them live in secrecy as long as they did not disrupt the Capitol’s rule of the twelve remaining districts.

  The word “rebellion” suggests that the First Rebellion was a response to a pre-existing economic or political stranglehold on the districts, but there may have been another reason for the attempted revolution—some sort of institutional oppression or attempts at segregation, for example. We know that as a result of that First Rebellion, District 13 was allowed to secede from the nation of Panem under terms of absolute secrecy—and that the rest of the populace were intentionally misinformed that District 13 had been annihilated. We know that, for the past seventy-five years, the idea of District 13’s destruction has been leveraged as a threat against the remaining twelve districts . . . and that, for the past seventy-five years, despite knowledge of the Hunger Games, the Games–tesserae political system, socioeconomic genocide, class struggle, and the poverty epidemic, District 13 did nothing. (It could be argued that, after nearly a century, they did start the Second Rebellion to help liberate the remaining districts from Capitol rule. But there is equal validity to the argument that their involvement came at the behest of the conspirators who lived in the districts—or Capitol, in the case of Plutarch—and did not grow out of their own altruistic intentions. Although communication between District 13 and select outsiders would have been necessary to put together rebellion plans, there is no direct textual evidence that it was something District 13 sought out—or even really welcomed, as Gale relates to Katniss that the District 12 survivors were regarded with deep suspicion and derision by those who dwelled in District 13.)

  The parallel between the Capitol, which perpetrates evils against the populace, and District 13, which turns a blind eye and allows the evils to continue, raises the essential question that takes Mockingjay from dystopian sci-fi to philosphical treatise: Who is more to blame for atrocities, those who enact them, or those who stand by when they could have prevented them? As writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi put it:

  Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.lxxiii

  District 13 is certainly not innocent. And having its leader spearhead the rebellion effort changes this from a story about the good, noble rebel force that throws off oppression to take down the corrupt government to a story about two opposing leaders grappling for power . . . with the only truly innocent party, the populace, caught in the middle.

  Katniss reacts negatively to the excess of the Capitol. She is aggressive towards the Gamemakers, disdainful of her prep team, and disgusted by the partygoers at the victory party after the Seventy-fourth Games. But she reacts negatively to the bleak, regimented lifestyle of District 13, as well. Katniss derides the schedule she, like everyone else in District 13, is required to print on her arm, and refuses to adhere to it; she mocks the titles given to parts of the day—replacing “Reflection” with “Cat Adoration,” for example—and the system of promotions and dem
otions given to the “Soldiers” under Coin.

  Politically, both the Capitol and District 13 are unique mixes of capitalism and socialism: Panem under the Capitol can produce immense quantities of goods, but you must pay penance to the state to receive them; District 13 cannot produce goods, but they are your right as a functioning citizen.

  These differing views on rights and privileges are reflected in the histories of the Capitol and District 13 as independent/ruling states. The Capitol came about because of the government’s desire for total control. Its current leader’s reign began through deception and murder, with the poison he used to eliminate his competition, just as the Capitol government operates by “poisoning” Panem from its heart outward by eliminating the citizens who don’t fit the vision of Capitol lifestyle, children in outlying districts first.

  District 13, in contrast, began with the ideal of freedom from oppression and persecution. However, seventy-five years later, District 13’s citizens have as little freedom as those in the other twelve districts or in the Capitol. Arguably, they have even less, given that they are only allowed outside for specific, set hours of the day and reprieves like Katniss’ hunting trips back in District 12 are not possible. We are never told the circumstances of Coin’s ascent to power, but her method of ruling in District 13—and plan for taking retribution on the Capitol citizens if she becomes the supreme leader—is not ideologically different from Snow’s. Despite outwardly involving a cabinet of advisors and votes on measures (like the proposed Capitol Hunger Games after Snow’s death), Coin intends a unilateral rule. She certainly seems to have one in District 13; she doles out rewards and punishments according to her own personal whims rather than qualifications (such as when she demotes Gale when Katniss storms out of a battle meeting in Coin’s office and he tries to go after her).