some things about sunrise on the reaping/the hunger games universe i'm thinking about today
haymitch was close friends with katniss's father when they were teenagers... how many times did haymitch see her at the hob or around town and do a double take?
burdock everdeen is lenore dove baird's distant cousin, meaning katniss is connected to lucy gray's bloodline... literally snow's worst nightmare come back to haunt him, down to genetics
reaping day is on the fourth of july. idk what else to say about this one i think we're all on the same page about this
katniss wanting wiress, beetee, and mags as allies despite over half of the victor tributes wanting to pair up with her... the three victors who helped haymitch win his games
haymitch, the victor of a games with twice as many tributes, bringing two victors home as a mentor in the 74th games
despite having the most tributes and therefore the most deadly, with the least odds of survival per tribute, the 50th hunger games had the most alliances out of any other games
beetee's son being a tribute in the quell- i know we're all there already and it's been talked about endlessly but i'd like us to recall in catching fire when katniss tells the reader that the children of victors are reaped at a disproportionate amount... ampert was not the first nor was he the last. how many tributes were reaped to punish previous victors? "you tried to take away control from the capitol... look what we can take from you"
the circumstances of ampert's death: mutts that were engineered just for him, just for beetee, designed to literally strip him of anything that made him recognizable while they killed him. beetee and his family didn't even have a body to bury, just a pile of bones
we also know that at the end of sotr, beetee's wife is pregnant, but when beetee comes to district 13 in mockingjay he is alone. was his family killed in the uprising, or was yet another one of his children sent to the games as punishment for beetee's actions before and during the 2nd quarter quell?
effie was the last person haymitch saw before the games began. she came into his launch room before he went into the tube... she was the last face he saw, the last person he touched, before the games changed him forever. she was the last person to know the "old" haymitch
maysilee didn't even like the mockingjay pin- it wasn't a beloved token that had a deep meaning to generations before katniss. it meant nothing until katniss made it mean something- until madge, maysilee's niece, made it mean something
gale mocking madge for wearing an especially nice dress and trying to present herself well on reaping day, and her defending herself by saying "i want to look nice if they send me to the capital" - maysilee being scorned by haymitch for her nice clothes and her necklaces until he realizes it's her own way of rebelling against the capitol... "i am going to make you see me as human too if it kills me" (they all try to dress their best for reaping day but gale & haymitch were bothered by madge & maysilee’s clothes as a status symbol)
haymitch mentions that hattie used to tell him "fire is catching", which later became one of the slogans of the rebellion via katniss's propos with plutarch
haymitch's token being a flint striker, and katniss being the girl on fire. katniss inciting the rebellion by succeeding at the exact task at which haymitch failed- destroying the force field. she wasn’t special, she was just in the right place at the right time and got enough support
we've always seen the quarter quell as a way of snow getting back at katniss for her rebellion in the 74th games, but after sotr we know she is hardly the first victor to rebel against the capitol. beetee was already a rebel in his own right, wiress and mags were instrumental in haymitch's victory in the 50th games, we can infer from johanna's characterization as loud and outspoken and certainly less than palatable to the capital's propoganda that she may have had a less than ideal (to the capitol) history... how many victor tributes were reaped on purpose? how many of them won their games through an act of defiance that was covered up?
similary, we know plutarch's plan with katniss was similar to his plan with haymitch... but surely they weren't the only two. how many other tributes, district 12 or otherwise, did plutarch and co. try to use as weapons, simply by being victims of circumstance? how many families of rebellious tributes, whether they were victors or not, were punished, because they went along with plutarch's plan thinking they had nothing left to lose seeing as they were probably going to die anyway? so much of haymitch's games was covered up and rewritten to hide his defiance of the capitol,,, how many other games were significantly or almost entirely fabricated by the capitol because of "unruly" tributes? was any of it real?
anyway i may be reaching with some of these but suzanne collins just gave us so much to think about with sotr!!! i've seen some dissent about how some of sotr disrupts the canon of thg but i think that's entirely the point... none of what katniss knew about haymitch's games was real to begin with, it's just what was fed to her by the capitol.
don't let media literacy die friends there are too many stupid people in the world already!!! mwah
