Tweaking the Sunrise on the Reaping Ending [with direct The Raven parallels]
As soon as I finished SOTR with my friend, I mentioned how stupid the Snow "plan" was and how it seemed like the "plan" being put onto Snow (SC insisting on said idea needlessly) and not a plan he developed with his very clever brain. A guess as to how: SC starting with a very specific conclusion in her head (Lenore dying in Hay's arms because of the poisoned gumdrops he just gave her) and then trying to tie it into Snow's "plan" backwards. The result is clumsy at best. Allow me to try some tweaks.
What to me sounds more like an actual Snow plan and a better ending for SOTR while achieving all that SC wanted to achieve with it:
Snow makes the threat, ok. Hay arrives in 12. All is well. Ma and Sid there, Lenore is there, gumdrops scene. All is well. He breathes but breathes suspiciously. He remembers the threat but all is well. When Ma and Sid are going to move out to go live at the village, the house burns with them inside. He receives a note from Snow the next day, "enjoy your new house". Haymitch grieves his Ma and Sid.
Lenore is still fine, not exactly enjoying the village situation, not enjoying how different Hay has become, not knowing how to deal with his grief. She doesn't know what to do about them. Something clearly has changed. Haymitch didn't return the same.
More Snow notes arrive. "How's your girl? Healthy?" -- Hay turns more and more paranoid. Lenore and him fight more. She can't have this responsibility of taking care of his trauma, he feels misunderstood and isolates more. More drinking. She certainly doesn't like this drinking. More Snow notes. It's like he never left the milk and bread apartment. He didn't in a way. Whenever Lenore is about to eat, he eats a spoon of it first, whenever Lenore is about to drink water, he takes a sip first. She gets them some candies, he throws it away scared, convinced this is it, this is how she's going to die. She eats the candies. She's fine. "I'm fine, see? You're going insane for nothing!" She feels trapped. She's Covey, she doesn't like the Victor's Village. Haymitch has nowhere to go because he lost his house. "You didn't come back the same, I want what we had", that's her side. "You don't know what it's like in the arena", that's his side.
They officially break up for good due to Hay's increasing paranoia. She reaches her limit which is completely understandable and expected. He blames himself entirey for the breakup. Others in 12 think he's gone mad. The uncles feel bad but want Hay away.
Weeks go by. Snow already won, he got her out of Hay's life and for Hay the guilt is much clearer. He blames himself for the trauma, the paranoia, the drinking (much more plausible than not knowing about the gumdrops, who could know?).
Lenore eventually gets arrested because of a protest. Her own doing, her agency, her individuality. Snow sends a note (not because he's been watching them specifically but because he has asked the head peacekeeper to keep him aware of Lenore's arrest record, which is easily accesible to him via the system). At the same time, no Snow notes. None for a few days. Haymitch freaks out. Hay convinces himself Lenore is going to be poisoned in prison. He makes a mess outside prison, punches his own friends, tries to go in, town folks think he's a freak. He can't go there and see her. He convinced himself it's coming. She dies in prison, alleged "knife fight with another prisoner". He knows it was poison, he knows it was Snow. Was it? At this point, the reader is questioning Haymitch too. Is it all in his head? Is it Snow? Finally a note arrives. "Remember: no knives allowed in the upcoming Victory Tour." This could prove it was Snow except it doesn't because he could have checked the system's records and is just making fun of it except if he actually did it and is playing him twice. Is it in his head? Is it Snow? This is just like the milk in the arena again.
Haymitch loses it at her funeral. It's sad to watch. He tells the uncles, "it was Snow, Snow poisoned Lenore". The grieving uncles think he has lost it completely. "Why would the president poison our Lenore? Please stay away and let us grieve". It's a full tragedy in 12 by itself but Hay has his own version of truth that no one believes. If only he hadn't drunk, if only he hadn't come back wrong in the head, if only he hadn't been paranoid except he was right, he was right! And no one knows. No one but him and Snow. Why would 12 believe him? No other victors as precedent, they see the local Peacekeepers as the main authority, not this man from far away whom they see once a year on a screen, this "Big Brother" figure, not a man who would bother to kill a victor's teenage girlfriend. It would sound crazy to any local.
He's a pariah in 12 now. More isolated, more drinking. This even creates some folklore in the district about the games: if you get reaped better hope you die instead of coming back wrong in the head like Haymitch Abernathy. Ma and Sid - dead. His past house - gone. Lenore Dove - dead. Haymitch - cast aside by 12, alcoholic living in the Village, neither a 12 local nor a Capitolite. He's a Victor, one of his kind. Completely alive and alone.
From Snow's perspective, this is rather simple: He has already started playing mind games with Haymitch with the milk and bread. He knows Hay is smart because of the milk drinking in the library, he'll jump to the paranoid conclusions he's enforcing. He gives him a false notion of homecoming safety only to then take away his home, his family. He has access to 12's prison records (he's the president), he doesn't need to be spying on Hay and Lenore, no stupid gumdrops. Suspense builds by itself, he knows Covey people get arrested. She does get arrested as he predicted. Easy peasy way to get rid of her. Wouldn't everyone in 12 think it's odd a random girl died poisoned in the hands of her boyfriend who's the comeback victor and just lost his house and family, no witnesses, no proper cause of death declared, the 'rascal' teenager they all just watched kill a bunch of children on TV? Yeah, that's very odd, too much questioning, too much potential for local rebellion. Why bother? What's not odd for 12? Dying in prison, knife fights, direct confrontations with Peacekeepers. Easy peasy. Side effect? Haymitch being considered crazy by everyone in 12. Great 6 months for Snow. Oh, what's that? Time for the Victory Tour!
This would have made for a much more well-rounded plot point where the tragedy is that Snow took Haymitch from himself, and therefore from Lenore as much as Lenore is taken away from him, when he sent Hay into the arena. Because Snow takes away the lives of teenagers. The games take away the innocence of children and teenagers, their status as children and teenagers by turning them into tributes who die as tributes, not as children. It's about the trauma of surviving, of not returning the same after the "war", akin to PTSD in veterans (which SC would know lots about, having a veteran father), akin to Frodo in Lord of The Rings and how it can be destructive from within, no need for a cartoon villain, just the looming, overpowering presence of a totalitarian leader. It addresses Hay didn't return the same, no one does and no one would have. It'd be foolish to think it'd been the same between him and her after the games, foolish to make Lenore one-dimensional with no feelings of her own. This addresses the emotional distance the game puts between victor and their past lives, parallel with Katniss and Gale.
This gives Lenore agency but still makes her a victim tied to revenge, if the SC point was the lives of women lost as collateral damages from the games. It makes Snow's intelligence believable and in-character. He made Hay paranoid and destroy things "himself", it ties the spying dots due to the prison records sent to the president, Snow's systemic power entangled with this personal pet peeve. It displays the system's power as well as insight into Snow's personal ego. It gives Snow about 6 months of sadistic fun, it makes Hay spiral in paranoia while grieving Ma, Sid and the tributes and then and only then at last grieve Lenore, whose death he knew was coming, said it was coming, cried wolf and no one paid attention, doubted himself until it happened and still, he couldn't prevent it. He doesn't even know what's true and what's not. The questioning persists in his mind and that, that, is how Snow ultimately wins every single day after all the deaths. He wins by being in Haymitch's mind the same way the trauma of the games are, the same way the system is. It's a heartbreaking, torturous tragedy.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
[questioning himself, the paranoia over Lenore being taken or not, instances of the food not being poisoned, is it poisoned or not poisoned, is it milk from Plutarch or from Snow, am I crazy or is Snow in my head?]
Poe's voice in the poem is frantic, desperate, alone, enthralled by his own madness. The ending of SOTR hints at grief but never feels frantic, it feels flat. This would match the poem even more too. The anticipation of death, the paranoia of the pariah, the loneliness of the victor.
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! [Snow's mind games]
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! [a traumatized Haymitch begging to be alone in his own mind, without Snow in it, making him question reality, himself, the past, guilt, afraid of loving and putting that person in danger, feeling like he taints anything he touches]
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” [Snow is the Raven, its beak that destroyed the innocence of his teenage love, that pushed Lenore away from a Haymitch that didn't return as her Haymitch but something else, Snow's form is at his door, it is the entire house, the overpowering totalitarian system that never leaves the individual alone]
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” [the illusion of always watching, always in Haymitch's head, never free, never innocent, never home, never not in the arena]
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting [sitting for 25 years]
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; [Haymitch's mind never being free of the shadow of Snow, the shadow also representing the memory and trauma of the games]
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor [Haymitch's soul taken by the shadow, by the games, the trauma making him feel like he's dead inside]
Shall be lifted—nevermore! [points to the sense of complete defeat teen Haymitch felt for 25 years until the 74th when 'nevermore' turned into hope]
This ending would be in tune with Snow's character, reaffirming him as the sadist he is, the very clever sadist he is. Poison may be for Capitolites but mind games? Mind games don't kill "just" loved ones, they "kill" someone's mind. What is the ultimate domination? Not merely death but death of the mind while being alive. The paranoia and the subsequent doubt would have made for a much more elegant ending. Snow takes away his innocence, his family, his teenage love and, none of that being quite enough, he takes away his home in the ample sense. Haymitch, the pariah. Haymitch, who no one in 12 is allowed to talk to and talks to no one. Haymitch, the Boogeyman who you'll only talk to on your way to certain death. Haymitch, whom Katniss and Peeta only meet as tributes because that's how much cast aside from 12 he is. Snow takes away his social and cultural belonging to his own district, everything that he has ever known so he's lost entirely in his alcohol and his head, most of which owned by Snow due to the ongoing questioning. So all that he feels like he has, that is Haymitch's to own, is tied to the games. For 25 years.
30 pages, give or take. Sorry, Suzanne Collins, but we didn't need to have surrendered Snow's intelligence for this to be achieved. I loved Sunrise on the Reaping for my own personal reasons. But here's just one example of a more polished ending compared to the clumsy, paper-thin, open to so many plot holes SOTR ending we got.
