The Girl Who Was on Fire (18 page)

Cells throughout the body communicate with each other, but brain cells have an extraordinary ability to reach out and form connections—they make thousands upon thousands of links with other cells. When you learn something, when you make a new memory, there is always a change in the connections. But memory is something the brain
does
, something that happens, not something that just
is
. Memory isn’t something that sits around in a single brain cell waiting to be useful like a spoon in a drawer. When a memory pops into your head it means a specific web of interconnected brain cells has been activated and all those neurons are in communication with each other.

Brain cells, like all cells, communicate chemically, and some of the most powerful chemicals that affect brain cells are those that help us respond to danger. It wouldn’t matter what other fancy things the brain could do if it didn’t have some skills useful for keeping us alive. It needs to recognize danger and figure out how to avoid it. Remembering which berries are poisonous can mean the difference between life and death. We evaluate the present and future based on memories of past experience. When we learn, the brain remodels, building corresponding networks of connections among cells.

We have control over some of the memories we build. Studying is basically all about making memories on purpose. If you repeatedly think about
myomancy
, which means foretelling the future by observing the behavior of mice, you will be able to access that memory and use it. (Although a future where knowledge about myomancy is a practical skill is hard to imagine.) There are other memories that happen without study. These involuntary memories are often tied to exciting, unexpected
events in life—like waking up to find a mouse walking across your face. If that happens, you are likely to experience a flood of chemicals that makes your heart race
and
excites your brain. The moment you felt mouse toenails on your eyelid is a moment you’ll remember, whether you want to or not. Mice can be startling, and that kind of surprise sets chemicals coursing through the brain that cause very strong connections to form
without
repetition. You only need one frightening encounter to learn to be wary of a situation that might cause you harm. That’s handy, since repeated exposure to potential dangers is—well—dangerous.

If you end up seeing mice or feeling little mouse feet in your dreams, that’s a sign the experience has made a cozy nest in your neurons. Although science doesn’t know the exact mechanisms, there seems to be a connection between dreaming and building lasting, accessible memories. Not every experience is dreamworthy, and not everything we see or do or discover ends up in long-term memory, either.

Two things seem necessary for experiences to be successfully stored in long-term memory. First, the connections the experience forms between networked cells must be strong and enduring. The network needs to be in place for potential reactivation so the memory can “happen” in the brain. Second, the memory must undergo a process called “consolidation.” Dreams may be tools we use to sift through the day’s new memory networks and “consolidate” them. The brain, after all, is still just trying to make sense of all those experiences. Making narratives is a way to make sense of events, and dreams might just be efforts to tell a story, to put the pieces together.

That’s the way memory works when things are “normal.” But the world the brain lives in isn’t always safe and secure. Some surprises—a serious injury to your body or witnessing a bloody
accident—are far more horrific than a mouse. It isn’t easy to integrate those shocking experiences with other memories. Sometimes fear doesn’t fade, and instead of a single wash of chemicals to help build quick, strong connections, the brain experiences wave after wave of them. There is no time for the brain to rest, to sort through the networks, and make sense of what has happened. Sometimes the world is more like the Hunger Games.

—from
Mockingjay

 

The horrors of the bloodbath at the Cornucopia may take only seconds, but the memories formed in those seconds are permanent—and painful. When the brain remembers them later, the flood of chemicals that usually makes quick reactions possible instead swamps the brain. Until the fear subsides, those chemicals dominate how the brain works. Memory networks activate, flashing like strobe lights, growing stronger and stronger, creating a feedback loop of fear and sensations. When a brain is having that sort of trouble, a specific set of symptoms emerges: nightmares, flashbacks, emotional numbness, violent outbursts. These are symptoms of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). These are also torments that Katniss Everdeen and the other tributes suffer after living through the trauma of the Hunger Games.

The symptoms of PTSD fall into three different categories.

A memory created by a terrified brain is often very active, very powerful, and very difficult to consolidate with other memories. Such a memory is like a chainsaw that suddenly appears in your living room. It might be a useful thing to have, but you don’t really know where to put it. The chainsaw is for cutting things, but it doesn’t belong in the silverware drawer with the steak knives. It doesn’t belong in the refrigerator or on the bookshelf. So you leave it on the stairs until you can figure out what to do with it. That’s a problem. The chainsaw is in the way. It intrudes. Sometimes you trip over it and it hurts. Worst of all, sometimes it roars into action without warning, threatening everything, including you.

Living with a “chainsaw” memory is intense. As the brain struggles to “learn” and store the memory, recurring nightmares can happen. Fear, real fear, bubbles up in reaction to the nightmare, which just makes the memory stronger. Everyday sensations—a smell, a flashing light—can be linked to the original, horrifying experience and become “triggers”
¹⁹
that evoke vivid involuntary memories called flashbacks. Flashbacks don’t seem like a memory. They feel real. The brain relives the memory as a present, frightening reality. For Katniss, Snow’s white roses are a powerful trigger. Their unmistakable bioengineered scent is strongly linked to her encounters with him. To smell that perfume, the mingling of blood and flowers, is to be in his presence. That is why Snow leaves the rose in the vase for Katniss to find after she returns to District 12. He knows that he has forged a connection and built a trigger that will make her afraid.

Avoidance is a basic response to pain. It’s fundamental. Bees sting: avoid bees. Similarly, when a trigger sets off a painful memory, avoiding the trigger seems like a logical response. But avoiding bees may also mean eliminating roses, dandelions, and even honey from your life. That’s a lot of beauty and sweetness sacrificed.

There is another sort of avoidance that carries a much higher price: emotional numbing. Here again, the logic is simple. If you can’t feel it, it can’t hurt you. But numbing-out dulls all emotions, not just the unpleasant ones. Katniss’ mother provides an early example of this emotional shutdown and its consequences. To avoid emotional pain after the mine explosion, she becomes so numbed and withdrawn she is unavailable to her daughters. Blunting sorrow means blunting happiness, and dodging grief means dodging love. Katniss is angry with her mother, but she is also learning from her example. One of the very first things Katniss reveals about herself is that she is determined never to marry, never to have children, because she can’t imagine a future where those children will be safe from the reaping. Even before she is made a tribute, Katniss has been hurt by the Games. She, like many children who suffer from PTSD, has a foreshortened sense of the future. She expects the worst because, so far, the worst has happened. That is why Gale can’t be more than a hunting partner—ever. Katniss will lay down her life to defend children already in the world, like her sister Prim and Gale’s little sister Posy, but she won’t give the world any more hostages. She is willing to give up a world of love if it means she can avoid a world of hurt.

In a dangerous world, it is important to pay attention. It’s worth taking time to look both ways before you cross the street. It’s worth watching where you put your feet when you hike in rattlesnake country. When the tornado siren sounds, it’s good to seek shelter. But a traumatic experience can mess with your internal controls. Every moment feels like you are stuck in the middle of a busy street while a tornado full of rattlesnakes is headed your way. It doesn’t feel safe to ignore the multitude of hums and whispers in the air or the motionless things at the edge of your peripheral vision. To a nervous system on constant “red alert,” danger is lurking everywhere—all the time.

If you want a little taste of the difference between normal awareness and hyperawareness, scrape your knuckles against a cheese grater, then pour lemon juice on the cuts. Ordinarily, your skin protects those nerves. A brain that is functioning normally is similarly protected. But for the hyperaware brain, there is no protection, no barrier between it and the world. Everything—every tiny noise and every innocent touch on the shoulder—is like lemon juice in a cut. You can’t ignore it. It all hurts. It all might mean something, and what it probably means is that you are in danger.

Sleep is impossible. It’s hard to concentrate or learn because the brain doesn’t have the opportunity to consolidate any new memories. It’s much too busy dealing with the constant onslaught of data. Lashing out is a natural, if unwarranted, response. Hyperawareness messes with the mind as much as tracker jacker venom.

The environment of fear damages the brains of the tributes—and even the audience watching the events unfold on television. It isn’t accidental. The Games are instruments of
terror and control. The lotteries, the lavish preparations for the spectacles, and the catastrophes in the arena are all fine-tuned by the Gamemakers. When we look at the tributes who survive, there can be no question that the long-term ruin of their lives is as deliberate as the uniform height of the flames of an unnatural forest fire.

—from
Catching Fire

 

Haymitch Abernathy, the first surviving tribute we meet, is a clownish, snarling boozehound who has to be hauled away on a stretcher after taking a header off the stage. He doesn’t inspire much confidence. Both Katniss and Peeta know him as the town drunk, but as Effie Trinket scolds, while hopping pointy toed through Haymitch’s vomit, he is their only lifeline. His mentoring can make the difference between life and death. Surely Haymitch knows that, and surely no one could be so selfish that getting staggering drunk could seem more important than making at least a
little
effort to save a life.

Self-medicating with alcohol—or “morphling” for that matter—is common among people suffering from PTSD. Alcohol is a depressant that blunts anxiety and fights insomnia. Narcotics have a similar appeal. Haymitch isn’t a drunk because he has plenty of money and nothing better to do. He is a drunk because he lived through a Quarter Quell. He held his own intestines in his hands while he witnessed his would-be murderer
brained with an ax. Then, every year for twenty-four years, he has been reminded of that experience, made to relive the helplessness and horror as he watched children from his hometown suffer and die. Haymitch drinks because he has PTSD and has no other way to treat his symptoms. And he isn’t alone.

The Quarter Quell tributes are all suffering from damage done by the Games. Some, like Peeta and Beetee, have obvious physical injuries. The symptoms of PTSD are just as obvious. Disassociation of mind and body, difficulty speaking, anxiety, avoidance, and nightmares—those are injuries caused by traumatic experience. It isn’t a coincidence. The Games are a well-designed instrument of terror, and the lasting damage they inflict on the survivors is one of their most important functions. When the victors return home, they are still a weapon in the Hunger Games. Living tributes, like Haymitch, are “rewarded” with new status and even a new home, and isolated not only by their relative wealth, but because neither they nor anyone else can forget that their fellow tribute did not return. The victors are walking reminders of terrible communal loss. The spectacle may be “entertainment” for the citizens in the Capitol, but it is traumatic for those who live in the districts. They are required to watch, helpless, while their child or friend is murdered on the static-filled screen, and they live with daily reminders of the outcome.

Remember all that brain-building work? The Hunger Games demolish it. They tear down the self, create a physical world where the rules don’t apply, and shred the fabric of social relationships. The participants are, first of all, reclassified—they are “tributes,” not people. The self is disembodied and packaged as an image observed on a television screen. In the arena, the physical world is so manipulated that everything is untrustworthy. Butterflies have poisonous stings, and blood falls in suffocating storms from the sky. Finally, the most fundamental social
agreements, like mutual cooperation and the taboo against murder, are violated.

—from
The Hunger Games

 

Grooming, even when it involves a “full polish” that removes three layers of skin, may seem like the least of the tributes’ problems. Ditto being costumed in velvet and jewels. But the pageantry does more than improve the production qualities of the “entertainment” for the capitol audience. There is an underlying message that cuts deep. The message is simple: a tribute is not a person. It is a body, nothing but property to be toyed with, destroyed, or sold.