Close Read: The Hunger Games Prequels

Hallo, it's me, Laura King. Ever since reading Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins in March and getting pulled back into what I thought was my dormant Hunger Games fandom, I've been meaning to clarify my thoughts here. If you are concerned about spoilers I would recommend you revisit this newsletter when you've read the books or watched the films.

I wrote last year about being skeptical of sequels written years later and you'll never guess, but I'm also skeptical about prequels. It's always great to be back in a world you enjoyed reading about (though each of these novels is more violent and upsetting than the last), but it's hard to watch an author undo a good ending by forcing a new book in what can often feel like a cash grab. This idea or fear was front of my mind when reading both prequels published in recent years, about what value they add for the fictional world as well as the reader, and the question of “why this book, now” is an important part of reading each of these books but especially the prequels, given that this now evolving dystopian future of course has roots in the world we live in now (I have written about this before, by the way!).

For those who don't know, the original Hunger Games trilogy is about a teenage girl called Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the most impoverished area in what was once North America, now broken up into various Districts based on the primary goods or service they can provide to those privileged enough to live in the Capitol. Katniss only knows the history of the country of Panem through tightly controlled education at school - the country rose from the ashes of a land ravaged by national disasters and war - and through mandatory broadcasts from the Capitol.

The major media event is the annual Hunger Games, which at the beginning of the book is about to take place for the 74th year. Each year on the 4th July a teenage boy and girl from each of the twelve Districts is selected in a public lottery known as The Reaping, and are sent to a bloody fight to the death in a nightmarish arena, all to be broadcast on a warped reality tv show, complete with punditry, betting, sponsorship, costumes and, importantly, children murdering one another. Katniss is marked out from the start because she volunteers as a tribute instead of her younger sister Prim, an unheard of display of agency as well as unity coming from the most impoverished District. She is also an accomplished hunter, having grown up illegally hunting and trading in order to keep her family alive. This secret weapon may be enough if she is prepared to do what it takes to be the lone victor - but, as the books teach us, nobody really “wins” the Hunger Games, they just survive.

Suzanne Collins said that her inspiration for the series came from flicking through television channels, between the constant, real time coverage of the war in Iraq and exploitative reality television shows, both relatively new concepts in “entertainment”. Both influences are present throughout the books, in often glaringly obvious ways - but then, I think this is the point. At some points it doesn't feel like dystopia at all (in that we are already almost there, more so each year), and each key message is stated very clearly, sometimes several times, so that there can be no misunderstanding (later I’d like to suggest how she uses jarring passages to her advantage in the latest book). This was probably useful for the younger readers Collins aimed the books at, but as the years go on I fear she needs to do this for adult readers who lack media literacy or critical thinking skills, making sure they're really understanding the mess the world is in.

This mess is exactly why Collins has published two prequels in the last five years; The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (set 65 years before THG, when the villainous President Snow was a hateful young man working on the tenth Hunger Games) and Sunrise on the Reaping (set 25 years before THG, when Katniss’ mean, alcoholic mentor Haymitch was an earnest, caring teenage boy entered into the fiftieth Hunger Games). Collins has been quoted numerous times saying that she only writes when she has something to say, and I do believe her when she says this - every book in this series has strong, clear messages about the state of our world, often layering in really interesting and nuanced concepts as well as the main idea.

I read somewhere recently that Collins chose to write A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (the villain origin story) as a way to explore the radicalization of young, disenfranchised (particularly white) men in our world, and as usual this idea has only become more relevant with more time, with the rise of alt right male "influencers". The dehumanization and subjugation of "lesser" people, either because of their class in the Capitol (though he himself has nothing), to some extent because of their gender, or especially through Othering peers from the Districts (ie, race, ethnicity etc), allows Snow to feel superior, and he uses this, along with the hurt of his previous standing and reputation being marred, to propel himself onwards and upwards no matter what the cost. This gave me a really useful lens through which I could reread the book lately and get a lot out of it, though I really didn't enjoy it- not liking a single character really doesn't help!

Sunrise on the Reaping is a much more familiar book given that it follows the structure of THG, this time about a male tribute from District 12 entered into the games. Haymitch would always have been a popular choice, especially since his games are famous in that world for being particularly awful, with double the standard number of tributes entered into an arena that seemed beautiful, and inviting, and luscious seeming, only for tributes to realise they were being lulled to their deaths - and that's before you count in the competitors. For any existing fans of these books, they'll recognise this familiar, fairly obvious metaphor for the danger beneath the pretty facade, of things being not what they seem, and even something like nature being malleable, a tool to turn reality on its head.

Propaganda is a huge part of this series, with characters who know that this is a key tool of the Capitol, while still finding it hard at times to separate fact from fiction. Manipulation of footage and even memory is a key feature of Sunrise on the Reaping, and it's interesting not because this doesn't happen in the original series, but because it is so pointed in this book, and it is discussed because the characters have an easier time figuring it out. It isn't just because the Capitol is learning and evolving as the games go on, it's because there are people within living memory who remember a time before the Games began. Being able to remember a past points to a possibility of a future, both ideas that are alien to Katniss in THG. Haymitch particularly knows about a time before because his girlfriend back home is a member of a travelling band of musicians who still perform songs and poems from a time “before” - songs and poems readers will start to realise is from our world, our time. This connection through art is powerful for the characters, and is proven to be dangerous in that there's little trace of this family of musicians in THG, meaning that they were all killed off or simply had to go into hiding and never perform again.

These two factors might seem interesting but unconnected, except for a conversation that takes place a few chapters into the book, between gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee and Haymitch before he enters the arena. Plutrarch, we know from later books, is an inside man on a long-building resistance to the Capitol, and points out some of the work done to manipulate footage for the games, which is something Haymitch learns to keep in mind as a tribute and later as a mentor.

“He sighs when he mentions the tools that were abolished and incapacitated in the past, ones that seemed fated to destroy humanity because of their ability to replicate any scenario using any person. ‘and in mere seconds!’ he snaps his fingers to emphasise their speed. ‘I guess it was the right thing to do, given our natures. We almost wiped [ourselves out]”.

And when I say my jaw dropped reading this!! It's a really clunky piece in the novel, demanding that we pay attention. He's obviously referring to artificial intelligence here, which was already gathering prominence in so many spaces when the book was written and continues to encroach further now, and this feels like a direct attack from Collins. There are two meanings here, potentially both true - the distortion of truth destroys something of humanity, especially if it is used to further sow distrust and dissatisfaction, but also because of the drain on natural resources caused by large energy users. Katniss directly references climate change as a cause of society crumbling, but it's especially interesting if this climate change is brought about or expedited by the increased use of AI programmes.

If you're reading that novel and not understanding that your using generative AI like Chat GBT for fun, or for “learning”, or to “make your life easier” (spare me until they come up with a way for AI to clean my house) this is actively harming your brain on an individual level and your planet on a wider level, and I need you to think very carefully about why this is worth it for you, and who stands to benefit from your outsourcing your ability to think for yourself (it's rich and powerful people). AI art is also obviously crap and insulting, and it makes sense that computer generated copies of art and writing and music can be used to devalue those art forms and cut people off from an ability to make a living from it, or from the freedom of speech and thought that comes from its expression. If this still doesn't seem like a big deal, I hope you enjoy living in Panem. I hear the reality television is excellent there.

There are two other parts of Sunrise on the Reaping that seem forced. One is a scene where the tributes are busy trying to kill each other and/or survive and come across Gamemakers from the Capitol clearing up something in the arena while the Games are still ongoing. The Gamemakers are obviously terrified at being found by what they believe are savage children, and some of the tributes react by freezing, while others kill the intruders. Haymitch berates himself for hesitating, knowing he should do something to rebel, but as a reader we realise that the Gamemakers, while complicit, are really expendable to Capitol too. This echoes The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes when Snow enters the arena to rescue his fellow Gamemaker, and I think Collins repeated this to further emphasize to those who didn't get it the first time - being born in the right place doesn't protect you, working for that authoritarian regime doesn't protect you, and your “good behaviour” or silence doesn't protect you either, and that isn't only true of the Capitol using their employees as human shields.

However, this jarring interlude also serves to remind the reader there is life going on outside the arena, and there is a way out of that arena. Haymitch tries to find a way to “break” that arena, and while this novel ends badly for him, his efforts do later allow for another arena to be broken. Similarly, the third jarring scene in the novel (sorry Suzanne you are not subtle) is an extended quotation of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, which is largely unnecessary except for the fact that it reminds us of the use of poetry and storytelling, and particularly that time from before the Capitol. The songs do still remain in District 12 to some extent, as Katniss knows them, and Haymitch seems to have a really good grasp on The Raven, for better or worse. The epilogue of Sunrise on the Reaping ties in with the epilogue of Mockingjay, where Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch create a memory book to commemorate fallen tributes and other loved ones, as well as perhaps these old songs. The fact that the books end with characters beginning to write their history after the fall of the Capitol could suggest the role of writing and story in memory, and a way of connecting the past and the future as a way to forge ahead out of the dark days.

I really enjoyed Sunrise on the Reaping, but I hope I'm not alone in hoping that there are no more Hunger Games books to come because there's nothing Collins feels strongly enough about to base a book on. Personally I would now like to live through some very boring, very precedented times.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you join me soon for another installment of LauraEatsBooks.