The Panem Companion
Page 17
Although District 13’s political system and ideals were born of a direct opposition to the Capitol, over the seventy-five years between their inception and Katniss’ introduction to them in Mockingjay, they have become just as harsh, vindictive, and Machiavellian, with the same disregard for human life as anything other than political fodder. Both the Capitol and District 13 have governments predicated on little more than the continuous reinforcement of their own power, and both have their presidents to blame: Snow in the Capitol, and Coin in District 13.
Parallels Between the Capitol and District 13
Mockingjay provides parallels not only between District 13 and the Capitol but also between key characters associated with them. Although we don’t see any of these pairs of character foils interact with each other directly—in some cases, one member of the pair does not appear in Mockingjay at all—the roles that they play in the story or in Katniss’ life are equivalent, and comparing the two provides a richer understanding of “gray area” in the Second Rebellion.
Cinna and Boggs
Capitol stylist Cinna and District 13 soldier Boggs are both men that Katniss comes to trust despite their position and status in hostile governments. Both also die for the same cause and are taken down (though in Cinna’s case, not yet killed) within view of Katniss, whom they are protecting and serving. However, while Cinna contributes to the cause of the rebellion through art, Boggs does so through skillful tactical warfare.
Cinna and Boggs represent two different approaches to revolution: Is it better to change people’s minds, like Cinna, or to change their actions forcibly, like Boggs? The narrative implies that both are necessary. And each man’s death for the revolution—or in service to Katniss, given that both were killed due to their positions in protecting her—reflects the work he did in life. Cinna’s death is long, slow, difficult, and unseen, mirroring the process of ideological revolutionary change, while Boggs’ death is gruesome, violent, and highly visible, a representation of revolution through brute force.
Caesar Flickerman and Cressida
Both television presenter Caesar and television producer Cressida are influential figures in Panem’s media, and both arguably (see chapter eight) have the best interests—regardless of their official side in the rebellion—of the district tributes at heart. Their methods, however, are different: Caesar works in front of the cameras as an agent of the Capitol, attempting to help the tributes make themselves look and sound more pleasing to potential sponsors. Cressida, in contrast, works behind the scenes, physically cutting and editing the footage of the Seventy-fifth Games, in Catching Fire, and the war, in Mockingjay, to better communicate a pro-district message.
Both Caesar and Cressida manipulate the media in the tributes’ favor. But Cressida manipulates the media with the aim of a greater societal good—the end of the Hunger Games and of the Capitol’s reign—while Caesar’s manipulation is on behalf of single individuals, to humanize them and thereby increase their chances of surviving. Cressida works to change the system for the better; Caesar works to improve the individual fates of those the system oppresses. Caesar focuses on the humanity of individuals and Cressida focuses on the inhumanity of actions.
In Caesar and Cressida’s respective manipulations, we see how easily media can be used for good or for evil, and how fine the line between the two really is.
The Avoxes and Katniss’ Prep Team
Both the Avoxes and Katniss’ prep team serve the role of innocent prisoners of war. The Avoxes we see during the Hunger Games series appear to come from the districts. They are effectively imprisoned in the Capitol, physically tortured (by having their tongues removed), and degraded to the point that they become “less than human” (something their lack of speech emphasizes). The Capitol claims the Avoxes are being punished for treason, but they can also be seen as prisoners of the Capitol’s long-term, large-scale class war. Unfortunately, but poignantly, the equivalent happens to Katniss’ prep team after District 13 ransacks the Capitol torture chambers to free Peeta, Annie, Johanna, and Enobaria. They’re imprisoned, beaten, and subjected to starvation and water deprivation for a different brand of treason: stealing a slice of bread.
Although Katniss herself in earlier books refers to the prep team in nonhuman terms—as “a flock of colorful birds”THG62—seeing them treated in a manner so similar to the Avoxes is an epiphany for her in terms of her opinion about District 13. She realizes that it and the Capitol are not so different; that abuse happens as often and as savagely in District 13 as it did in District 12 and elsewhere under the Capitol’s purview.
Presidents Snow and Coin
The most obvious and important set of parallel characters in Mockingjay, of course, is President Snow and President Coin. The two are presented as obvious literary foils, from physical character details (like their opposing genders) to symbolic or abstract ones (like their preferred methods of control, Snow’s preference being for blackmail and poison, Coin’s for humiliation and bombs). Both Snow and Coin are effective leaders because of their tyrannical style of unilateral rule, and both are feared by their citizens enough that they are able to rule more through threat, supported by select negative actions, than through negative action itself. As a result, both lead mainly through charisma and speechmaking.
The biggest question about District 13, and a major topic of debate within fandom, is whether a new government helmed by Coin would have been freer than Snow’s. Katniss certainly doesn’t think so, as she foregoes her opportunity to kill Snow—her main objective during the war—and instead assassinates Coin.
The actions of both Snow and Coin, from Snow’s “fixing” of the Quarter Quell reaping to Coin’s plan to reinstate a version of the Hunger Games with tributes specially chosen from the old government officials’ children (including Snow’s granddaughter), are comparable to real-life dictators who seized power through forceful means. Snow’s threats against District 13 in Mockingjay perhaps most recall French dictator Maximilien Robespierre’s guillotine-heavy Reign of Terror. Snow tries to force the hand of the rebels by threatening innocent lives in District 13, aligning the whole district with the rebel movement instead of targeting only the soldiers themselves; Robespierre used similar fear tactics to try to control the population; he declared terror as a legal policy in September 1793:
It is time that equality bore its scythe above all heads. It is time to horrify all the conspirators. So legislators, place Terror on the order of the day! Let us be in revolution, because everywhere counter-revolution is being woven by our enemies. The blade of the law should hover over all the guilty.lxxiv
By declaring everyone guilty, the policy encouraged citizens to report those involved in treason; the innocent, it was believed, would report the guilty to save themselves, and the guilty would turn themselves in to spare the innocent.
At the same time, Coin’s determination to rule through terror, even after deposing a tyrant, mirrors the actions of Robespierre’s own Jacobin party after the French Revolution. According to one French Revolution history text:
If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror . . . Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue . . . The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.lxxv
Coin, and her style of rule, represent the despotism of liberty: either Panem is bound under Snow or it is bound under Coin, but in neither case are the citizens allowed to escape the idea of violent reparations for their ancestors’ wrongs.
Katniss’ choice at the end of Mockingjay—to vote “yes” for a Capitol Hunger Games—is, and should be, shocking to the reader, given what she’s gone through in the arena, districts, and war herself. However, it is also the signifier that Katniss understands, finally, that there is gray area in life. Although Snow was a vehemently horrible man, he was not pure evil; he was a product of the Capitol environment
as much as Katniss was a product of the Seam. And although Coin may possess a more populist ideology, she is not “a greater good,” given that she was willing to sacrifice, abuse, and murder others to gain power for herself and to promote her own political ideals. Katniss chooses to use what she has learned from Peeta and Cinna—manipulation—to remain close enough to Coin to assassinate her and effectively end the cycle of violence in Panem—at least for a few generations.
Katniss’ choice to rid Panem of Coin instead of Snow reveals that she has gained an understanding that violence is a cycle and that—as evidenced by the Treaty of Treason that had taken Katniss’ home, sister, and youth—requiring the deaths of innocents as recompense for the deaths of innocents would never give Panem the peaceful future that she had hoped the end of the Hunger Games would bring. Once Katniss decides not to kill Snow, her focus shifts—from revenge against Snow to the full emancipation of Panem from tyranny.
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Accountability for Acts of War in the Hunger Games
Although Mockingjay is easily the least popular of the three Hunger Games series novels, it is not due to any lack of intrigue, excitement, romance, world-building, or character development. Most commonly, this is attributed to the final novel’s lack of continued delineation between “good characters” like Gale and Peeta and “bad characters” such as President Snow. Mockingjay hinges on providing no good guys, bad guys, or morally satisfying conclusions to Panem’s—or Katniss’—story.
This is implicit from very early in the book, when Katniss first arrives in District 13 and learns that, rather than being a small, struggling, ragtag commune, District 13 is a thriving, strict, structured society. The Capitol’s citizens are ignorant of the horror of the Games; the citizens of District 13 know, understand, and purposely ignore the horror of the Games, so long as their lives are not affected. This similarity between ignorant compliance and willful negligence, and what that means for ethics and morality in our world, are Mockingjay’s central focus.
The question of District 13’s culpability in the Hunger Games is a vital part of Mockingjay as capstone of the Hunger Games series. But there are two other issues that encapsulate the debate regarding accountability in the Hunger Games series as a whole: the Career culture of Districts 1, 2, and 4, and the death of Prim Everdeen.
Career Culture
The idea of nebulous morality and shared responsibility for violent acts is brought to the fore in Mockingjay, but it’s been a part of the Hunger Games series from the beginning. Although questions of war take center stage towards the end of the trilogy, The Hunger Games places the Careers at its heart: Are Cato, Clove, Marvel, and Glimmer child monsters or victims in their own right?
In the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games, Katniss describes Cato, a Career from District 2, as “monstrous.” She details how fellow District 2 Career Clove taunts Katniss with details about Rue’s death as she prepares to kill her, and the circumstances of Rue’s death paint District 1 Career Marvel as a bad guy for killing her. In Catching Fire, we learn that Enobaria, a District 2 victor from some years past, won her Games by biting out an opponent’s throat and has since had her teeth sharpened into symbolic trophies and very real weapons. The characterization of the Careers in both novels is limited, but it clearly casts them as smaller-scale villains, often without giving them an opportunity for redemption before their deaths.
But there is plenty to suggest that, rather than monsters, the Careers are meant to be seen as victims of the Games–tesserae system as much as, or more than, the other tributes. Cato dies after the wolf-mutts attack him at the Cornucopia, following a drawn-out, torturous process that ends only when Katniss mercy-kills him in an act of humanity; Enobaria is taken hostage with the other victors after the Quell plot is bungled, and Katniss insists that she be rescued along with Annie, Peeta, and Johanna. Both examples suggest Katniss recognizes their shared victimhood, even if the other tribute does not. The movie’s interpretation of Cato’s death even shows him having an overt epiphany about the true evil of the Games and closes his character arc with a redemptive assisted suicide, though in the novels, there is no indication of such.
Are Cato and Clove psychopaths, acting roles for the camera, or the product of their district’s insular Career culture, raised not to appreciate the gravity of death?
Katniss and Gale have a conversation early on in The Hunger Games that shows how little separates her from the Careers:
“Katniss, it’s just hunting. You’re the best hunter I know,” says Gale.
“It’s not just hunting. They’re armed. They think,” I say.
“So do you. And you’ve had more practice. Real practice,” he says. “You know how to kill.”…
The awful thing is that if I can forget they’re people, it will be no different at all.THG40
The inclusion of this realization so early on suggests that we, as readers, are meant to use it as a framework for understanding the actions of the tributes in the Games—not as some unknowable evil but as something frighteningly close to what we, too, could imagine doing to survive.
But that empathetic understanding, it’s implied, should not be used as an excuse: forgetting that the other tributes are people is still something “awful.” Because Katniss is the heroine, we forgive her for killing Marvel and brush off her blasé acceptance of Foxface’s death; because Cato, Clove, Glimmer, Marvel, Brutus, and their kin are the narrative’s villains, we are prepared and—in some cases—glad when they die. But there are tributes whose names we never learn: the District 3 boy at the Cornucopia, those lost during the bloodbath at the start of every Hunger Games, the morphlings. We view their deaths as spectators, unconcerned with their personal stories or outcomes; in a way, we forget they’re people, the same way Katniss is afraid of doing.
Part of this reader detachment likely stems from growing up in a media culture where death on-screen is commonplace and expected. However, the deaths of the nameless characters are particularly forgettable for just that reason—they’re nameless. By removing such a central human characteristic, they are made less human than Katniss, Peeta, Rue, Finnick. Even the “villain” characters are more relatable—and more favored in fandom—than the nameless “good” characters.
There are other significant parallels between Katniss, who is “good,” and the Careers, who are “bad.” When Katniss enters her arena, she is able to hunt with a bow (“a rarity,”THG5 as she describes it, in the districts), throw knives, forage, identify plants and animals, and swim. Peeta was a wrestler, used to pain from the hot ovens of the bakery and his mother’s abuse, and could dead-lift probably any tribute other than Thresh, and was a master manipulator, a skill he would have cultivated to protect himself from his mother’s moods. What makes Katniss and Peeta any different from those who Katniss deems Careers? Did Katniss and Peeta survive to the end because they were, essentially, Careers from District 12?
Katniss describes the Careers as being well-trained tributes who volunteered for their positions in the arena. But Katniss was well trained . . . and she also volunteered.
The other kids make way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage . . . With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.
“I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!” . . .
District 12 hasn’t had a volunteer in decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute’s name has been pulled from the ball, another eligible boy . . . or girl . . . can step forward to take his or her place.THG22
As Katniss tells us, this is not uncommon in some places in Panem:
In some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated. But in District 12, where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are all but extinct.THG22
Here’s how Katniss describes the District 2 and District 12 reapings:
A monstrous boy who lunges forward to voluntee
r from District 2 . . . Last of all, they show District 12. Prim being called, me running forward to volunteer. You can’t miss the desperation in my voice.THG45
There is very little difference between Katniss “running forward to volunteer” and Cato lunging forward to volunteer. The major difference—the only difference—is motivation. Both Katniss and Cato desperately volunteered out of their own personal sense of what is right; however, Katniss’ driving motivation was survival and familial duty while Cato’s was the desire to serve district and country.
The key difference between the Careers and the other tributes is cultural attitude. The District1/District 2/District 4 Career culture is wholly different from survival; in the Career districts, it was the idea of jingoistic and socioeconomic glory that drove future tributes more than survival or duty. (The Peacekeepers, especially given that they are trained in District 2, may be a direct comment on the danger of glorifying violence in the service of nationalism; the people called “Peacekeepers” in Panem are likely citizens who grew up as Careers, trained to kill.) For the Careers, to be a tribute in the Hunger Games is a high distinction and an honor bestowed by the Capitol.