Nuclear development continues in District 13, which supposedly is why the Capitol has allowed that district to survive at all (Catching Fire, 146–47). As mentioned above, the post-apocalypse nuclear fears are similar to the mood of the United States and Soviet Union in the 1950s.
In 1949, President Harry Truman told the citizens of the United States that the Soviet Union had atomic bomb technology and had actually exploded its first bomb. People started worrying about a full-scale nuclear war between the two “superpowers.” Throughout the 1950s, this fear escalated with the development of the hydrogen bomb by both “superpowers.” A 1957 report determined that the Soviets would soon have nuclear superiority, which further increased the fear of a nuclear holocaust. As late as 1961, President Kennedy asked that $100 million be set aside for the construction of U.S. bomb shelters.
Both District 13, the makers of nuclear weapons, and the Capitol—the evil empire—are at an impasse: If one shoots its nukes at the other, retaliation is inevitable. Hence, the Capitol keeps its arsenal somewhere “out west” and leaves District 13 to its underground lifestyle (Mockingjay, 17).
These nukes are just like the ones we have in reality: If used, according to President Coin, they would kill everyone either upon impact or by flooding the environment with deadly radiation (Mockingjay, 138). Powerful bunker missiles—either nuclear or otherwise—would plunge into the deep underground city of District 13 and then explode (Mockingjay, 147).
Nuclear explosive devices rely on fission or fusion. In the first case, uranium or plutonium atoms split into lighter atoms; a free neutron from one atom fuses with a uranium atom; the fusion causes the uranium atom to split into two lighter atoms; and two neutrons plus thirty-two Pico watts of energy are released. The two free neutrons then collide with more atoms, and the process repeats in a chain reaction. In this manner, more than 36 million million watts of energy can explode from one pound of U-235.
In the case of a fusion bomb—a hydrogen or thermonuclear device—atoms are fused rather than split. For example, with deuterium fusion, in the heat of an initial fission explosion, two deuterium atoms collide then fuse with one atom of Helium-3, releasing one neutron and energy. A resulting chain reaction causes a massive explosion. With deuterium and tritium fusion, one deuterium atom collides with one tritium atom, fusing into a Helium-4 atom and releasing one neutron and energy. And then, the chain reaction takes over.
A hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb uses a core containing lithium and deuterium that is surrounded by U-235 or plutonium. This shell is then surrounded by U-238, a much more inert form of uranium than U-235. After the initial fission reaction, the deuterium and tritium undergo fusion and release neutrons and energy that make the U-238 undergo fission. In essence, this type of bomb combines fission and fusion in a sequence of events: fission, fusion, fission.
Clearly, we’re supplying only the basics about bombs and nuclear devices. It’s beyond the scope of this book to really explore these topics in detail. Suffice it to say that bombs, both aerial and nuclear, as well as missiles are commonly used in the battles between the government and the people in The Hunger Games.
In large part, the rebels’ destruction of the Capitol and its government is due to the bombing of District 2’s Nut, a fortress mountain that is home to the evil empire’s military. The Nut has evil empire computers, weapons, barracks, and entry and exit paths for the bomb and missile-packed hoverplanes, but the actual nukes are kept elsewhere on the edge of the Capitol (Mockingjay, 192).
If you remember the James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, then you also remember Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s mountain fortress. Hell-bent on triggering nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union, Blofeld kidnaps spaceships and astronauts from both countries and blames the other countries for the crimes. His giant rocket base is in an inactive volcano in a remote section of Japan. Inside the mountain is a vast secret base, complete with evil empire computers, weapons, barracks, and entry and exit paths for outerspace rockets and space stations.
There are some differences between Blofeld’s fortress and the Nut, of course. For one thing, the Capitol doesn’t kidnap space ships and astronauts. For another, the Capitol keeps its missiles and planes on the edge of the Capitol rather than in the Nut.
While reading Mockingjay, I kept wondering about a few things. First, nuclear weapons deteriorate over time and must be maintained and replenished. Also required—for replenishment purposes—is a nuclear reactor, which cannot be underground. I never quite understood how District 13, “the maker of nuclear weapons,” was able to maintain and replenish its nukes. The people of District 13 aren’t allowed above ground, so where’s the nuclear reactor?
Assuming District 13 does indeed have access to a reactor and can hence make nukes, then as Katniss puts it very early into the third book (Mockingjay, 81), and I also wondered while reading: Why doesn’t District 13 help everyone else? Better yet, given how easily they blow up the Nut in Mockingjay, after finishing the book (and reading it three times), I wondered why District 13 didn’t blow up the Nut years ago. We’re told that during the Dark Days, the Capitol and District 13 both had nuclear weapons, so the Capitol agreed to leave District 13 alone if all the people stayed underground. The Capitol then hid the fact that District 13 existed from all the other districts (Mockingjay, 17). But if it’s so easy now (in Katniss’s time) to take the warplane-hovercrafts to the Nut and bomb it, then why hadn’t District 13 done this a very long time ago? Somehow, Boggs’s explanation (Mockingjay, 81) felt “off” to me, that District 13 would have launched nuclear missiles but they feared the end of all human life and they simply weren’t ready to attack the Capitol yet. It’s no different in Katniss’s time that a nuclear war could end all human life. And it hardly seems reasonable that District 13 was “barely surviving” given their complex technologies (updated Capitol hovercrafts, power generation, heat, food, water purification, high-tech body armor and shoes, missile launchers, armored vehicles, and much more). Surely, District 13 could have filtered help to one district, then another, and so on down the line, making their way to the Capitol—decades ago.
Even after reading Mockingjay three times, I remained perplexed by this aspect of the series. The first time I read Mockingjay, I thought perhaps that District 13 was in cahoots with the Capitol, and hence, didn’t filter its weapons to the other districts earlier.
I also wondered how an underground society trains its warplane-hovercraft pilots. It would be pretty hard to fly a bomber with accuracy for the first time if you’ve lived underground during your entire life.
These are nitpicking points, of course. As a whole, the series stands as a remarkable literary achievement. The Hunger Games is brilliant; Catching Fire has some remarkable technical imagery and poignant moments; and Mockingjay is a gruesome violence-fest that winds down to a bittersweet ending. The rebellion had to occur somehow during Katniss’s time, or we wouldn’t have a satisfying end to her story. In the end, readers must always suspend disbelief while reading science fiction and fantasy. If there are loose ends that feel disjointed or somewhat illogical, we tell ourselves that the story was a good ride, the novels were beautifully written, we loved certain characters, and the books had depth and emotional impact. What more do we want?
AD 793, Spain
Bishop Elipandus of Toledo wrote about an Easter Eve doomsday panic, in which Beatus of Liebana proclaimed that the world would end that very night. People were frantic and fasted all night, believing death would take them at any moment. By dawn, everyone realized they were still alive, the world had not ended, and they could now eat, drink, and make merry again.
AD 806–992
AD 806, Bishop Gregory of Tours calculated that the end of the world would occur between AD 799 and 806. Any second now . . .
AD 848, Thiota, a female prophet, was certain that the end of the world would occur in 848. Any second now . . .
AD 950, Adso of Montier insisted to King Otto of Germany
that the end of the world was imminent, that the Antichrist would rise and destroy the Frankish kings. Europe flew into an apocalyptic frenzy.
AD 970, the geeks of all geeks, the Lotharingians crunched a bunch of numbers and determined that March 25, 970 was exactly the day that marked the end of all time.
AD 992, Benard of Thuringia calculated that the end of the world would occur in 992. Any second now . . .
Aside from the torture of starvation (chapter 3) and the gladiatorial arena (chapter 4) with its full array of monstrous weapons (chapter 5), the Peacekeepers, Mayors, and other Capitol officials dish out plenty of other excruciating tortures. They use torture, of course, to intimidate people, deter possible uprisings, and to punish supposed traitors.
Given that torture tends to shock people into downward spirals of fear and terror, it’s no surprise that Peeta basically loses his mind and Katniss suffers from constant nightmares. The two are so intertwined that her nightmares whip into frenzies of torture scenes in which Peeta is being mutilated, beaten, burned, drowned, and shocked with electricity (Mockingjay, 9). Suzanne Collins has said that her own father suffered from terrible nightmares after returning from Vietnam and that as a child she heard him “crying out” at night.1 In large part, it’s Peeta’s change from a happy-go-lucky, delightful, loving, giving boy into a terrified zombie-like drone that pushes Katniss toward him. She empathizes with him and feels responsible, if only out of friendship, to help him, but given that he can’t distinguish reality from whatever’s swirling in his mind, and given that he’s convinced she’s an enemy who needs to die, it’s a battle for her to help him. Still, her nightmares persist. We see the true beauty of her character in light of her deeply rooted kindness, loyalty, and genuine concern. Had Peeta simply remained a happy-go-lucky, delightful, loving, giving boy, then the reader wouldn’t see Katniss with the same depth.
Some of the methods of inflicting pain and executing victims that the Capitol uses to exerts its power over citizens are:
Mutilating and cutting off body parts.
Beatings and whippings.
Drowning.
Electric shocks.
Burning.
Hangings.
Hijacking and psychological—torture by fear.
We’ll examine each method as used by the leaders of Panem and then touch on fear as it relates to torture.
MUTILATING AND CUTTING OFF BODY PARTS
The most obvious example of this form of torture is in the form of Avoxes, supposed traitors whose tongues have been cut out so they can’t talk. Given that this torture is introduced early in The Hunger Games series, it makes a huge impact on the reader, who isn’t expecting anything quite this horrific in a young adult novel. Of course, the tortures and violence only get worse as the story continues, but we’re not yet used to reading these gruesome aspects this early in the series. Katniss and Peeta first encounter an Avox when they run into Lavinia in the Capitol (The Hunger Games, 78). Later, two Avoxes wait on Katniss, and she realizes that one, Darius, is from District 12 and once saved Gale (Catching Fire, 218). This makes Darius’s mutilation hurt Katniss even more than the impact of Lavinia. When they clasp hands briefly beneath a banquet table, the reader knows that she feels his pain and wishes she could save him; but we also know that the author is probably foreshadowing his ultimate death at the hands of the Capitol.
Sadly for poor Darius, the foreshadowing is right on the mark. Peeta eventually watches government officers torture both Darius and his companion Avox, Lavinia, to death using a variety of techniques: electric shocks and beatings, which we’ll talk about later in this chapter; and cutting off body parts (Mockingjay, 274). We’re not told which body parts the torturers slice off, nor are we told the types of instruments they use. In sparse fashion, we’re told that it took days to torture Darius to death, so we can only assume the worst.
As you might imagine, having your tongue ripped out of your mouth would be excruciating. In ancient times, torturers used tools called mouth openers and tongue tearers to punish those accused of heresy and blasphemy. The mouth opener had three horizontal pieces held in place by two vertical poles. A large screw was inserted into a hole in the topmost horizontal piece, and it descended into the middle pieces. On the bottommost and middle pieces were two plates that jutted out and sloped down.
First, the torturer tied up the victim so he couldn’t struggle, then he pushed the mouth opener’s plates between the victim’s lips. The sloping of the plates kept the mouth very wide open, with the tongue clearly exposed. By twisting the screw, the torturer could widen the distance between the two plates, thus forcing the mouth open as widely as he wanted.
With the victim’s tongue sticking through the device, the torturer picked up his tongue tearer, which looked like very sharp shears with pointed ends. The two handles of the shears were held together by another large screw. The torturer clipped off the tongue at its root, and if needing more force to slice through the solid back muscle, he cranked the screw tighter.
King Louis IX of France put a twist on the tongue-ripping torture. He ordered that his officers slice and shred the tongues and then pierce the still-attached tongues with hot irons.
As for the severing of other body parts, as mentioned, we don’t know what form this torture took in Mockingjay, and it’s beyond the scope of this book to delve into the vast array of possible methods.
BEATINGS AND WHIPPINGS
Poor Darius and Lavinia are also beaten during their ultimate torture by the Capitol. But beatings and whippings are common in Panem and are doled out liberally by the Peacekeepers and other officials. For example, according to Rue, if anyone is caught eating crops in the agriculture district, they’re whipped in public (The Hunger Games, 202). And Gale is whipped so badly that “his back is a raw, bloody slab of meat” (Catching Fire, 105). As was done in medieval times, the method in Panem is to tie the victim’s wrists to posts—typically in the public squares—and then whip the naked flesh until the victim passes out from pain.
Beatings are a common form of punishment. Not only do we still read about deadly beatings taking place around the world today, by everyone from mobs to police to the military, we’ve all read accounts of floggings throughout history.
In England teachers used to routinely cane students for all sorts of activities, anything ranging from violence and theft down to lascivious thoughts and behaviors. It’s anyone’s guess how authorities figure out what anyone is thinking, but in authoritarian environments, it really doesn’t matter.
In the Middle Ages, people whipped children after forcing them to watch public executions. The reason? Same as with the rulers of Panem: Look what will happen to you if you get out of line! But it didn’t stop there; men whipped their wives, people publicly whipped prostitutes, and beggars were routinely whipped, as well.
Whippings have even been used as self-punishment by religious zealots. The Dionysian cult in Greece and the cult of Isis in Egypt both used whippings as part of their religious fervor. Dionysus, Greek god of wine, music, and ecstasy, was worshipped not only in the Greek Dionysian cult, but also by the ancient Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. The cult was an unconventional form of religion and included dancing, music, intoxication, and trances.
Isis was the Egyptian goddess of motherhood and fertility, as well as a protector of the dead. She was worshipped not only in Egypt, but later in Rome, Greece, and elsewhere around the world.
In the Middle Ages, the European Flagellants whipped themselves and each other in hopes of achieving God’s good favor. Although the Catholic Church viewed them as heretics—though not because they whipped themselves—it also considered self-flagellation as a form of penance.
In Perugia, Italy in the 1300s, thousands of people were Flagellants and marched in huge processions while whipping themselves. This group was so extreme that they believed that anyone who did not whip himself worshipped Satan.
The Flagellant movement spread all over Italy unt
il major cities each had some ten thousand people in their processions.
DROWNING
Anyone of reading age has probably heard about waterboarding. Torture using water has been around for as long as humans and water have coexisted. Who hasn’t seen a movie in which some poor fool has his head dunked in a toilet until he finally confesses a sin or provides critical information?
In The Hunger Games trilogy, Haymitch tells Katniss that Johanna was drenched in water and then tortured with electricity (Mockingjay, 253). And while Katniss worries that officials might drown Peeta (Mockingjay, 9), luckily, it doesn’t happen. Perhaps the closest thing to water torture in the three novels is the tidal wave that slams down the man-made foothills in Catching Fire. In an interesting parallel to Johanna’s torture by water and electricity, Beetee sets things up so any dampness from the tidal wave will interact with his high-voltage wire and electrocute any tributes who are standing too close (Catching Fire, 359–60).
ELECTRIC SHOCKS
We’ve mentioned a few cases of electric shocks already: Darius, Lavinia, Johanna, and Beetee’s method. Given that criminals are still executed in electric chairs, it might be worthwhile to delve into this topic briefly. Just what happens when a victim is hit by electric current? How is someone tortured by electric shocks?
Electric current damages the heart and nervous system, and it causes muscle contractions. The higher the current, the more harmful the effects.
The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion Page 11