A bit of speculation, but how well do you think the Snows hid their financial situation? I just started rereading it because I've forgotten a lot but Tigris works in a very menial position, Coriolanus says that Grandma sometimes has visitors and At the academy, he congratulates the teacher on a dress that they both know is the one she wears every year, this after she asks about Coriolanus' shirt and, in front of an audience, points out that the buttons on the shirt look like tiles.
The Plinths are the only ones who can actually afford new clothes because everyone else, or at least a good majority, is still scraping by and living on appearances at least in some ways.We also know that the Snows fared particularly badly and Coriolanus knows some aspects of the families of some of his other classmates. For example, those who are better off because they didn't burn books or those who had to resort to cannibalism.
Coriolanus is supposed to know all this not only because of what he experienced (being an orphan and having to go out with Tigris vs. his classmate whose father went out to look for food, for example) but also because he is also very observant. But the Dean knows that, the teacher's comment seemed more petty to me and he tends to underestimate people.
The Snows' financial situation may not have been an open secret, but I have trouble believing Coriolanus has hidden it as well as he thinks it has.
This is a really interesting point! It's difficult to maintain a facade, but I wouldn't say it's impossible, especially not for Snow. I do think people knew more than Coriolanus believed they did, especially according to the points you made.
His neighbors, the Prices, also seemed to be keeping up the facade of their wealth, and yet, he still insists that the neighborhood in which they live is highly affluent as compared to other neighborhoods:
They would have to move to some obscure neighborhood and join the grimy ranks of everyday citizens, without status, without influence, without dignity.
But the most prevalent difference between the two families is their industry of investment. The Prices were railroad titans. That's an industry we see used many times in Ballad alone. There's no way they were still strapped for cash by the time Ballad was happening, especially with how he speculates the travel industry is picking up:
Arachne had laid out a little picnic for her tribute. A fresh loaf of bread, a block of cheese, and were those grapes? How could she afford those? Maybe the travel industry was picking up.
they'd need a way to travel, and hovercrafts don't yet seem to be as popular, so trains seem to be the chosen infrastructure for at least the Games. They have a major train station in the Capitol, too.
The Snows, on the other hand, invested in munitions in d13. Everyone would know that District 13 "vanished in a nuclear puff of smoke". What we don't know is how many people knew that the Snows had stake in the munitions industry in 13.
It was particularly vexing because the bulk of the Snow family fortune had also been invested in munitions — but in District 13. Their sprawling complex, blocks and blocks of factories and research facilities, had been bombed to dust. District 13 had been nuked, and the entire area still emitted unlivable levels of radiation.
They would know that the munitions industry was booming in Two from the presence of the Plinths, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people knew the Snows' wealth was from d13 munitions. It's possible they kept that part of their income private. We don't know if people knew the Snows invested in 13. We know that, but we don't know if others did.
It's highly likely they did from how Snow seems to know the industries of everyone else, but he's driven by the motives of facade and wealth, so that could just be because he's particularly interested in everyone's income. It might not be the Capitol norm.
I also think most of his classmates, if not all of them, are much more financially better off than he is. He talks about how some of their incomes "took a hit" during the war (like lumber from D7), but seem to have recovered. Perhaps they think the same of him and his family.
There's something to be said about how Mr. Plinth doesn't offer him money as a thanks for saving Sejanus. Meanwhile, he throws around money like confetti when his boy is otherwise in danger (buying the gym, buying the lab, etc.). He may know that money is the one thing he has over Coriolanus—unlike everyone else in that circle, who has money they can bargain back with—or perhaps he believes that Coriolanus has money, too, and would consider a reward an insult. Who deals in money when you have more than you know what to do with? sort of thing.
That, alongside the points you made, and the fact they had to move when they started taxing the property leads me to believe Snow thought he was doing a much better job at hiding it than he actually was.
theartofmadeline
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