The Girl Who Was on Fire (7 page)

These are all things Katniss can learn and then predict. But what makes the Games so treacherous is that even the things that should be predictable frequently aren’t—and being caught unaware, by another tribute or by one of the Gamemakers’ toys, can lead to death. After all, these “toys” are specifically designed to catch tributes unaware.

Snares—physical and psychological—play crucial roles in Collins’ trilogy. Snares are by nature hidden: a passive weapon, they are usually some kind of net or wire that is camouflaged, often cleverly buried in leaf litter, to trap unsuspecting game so that they may be more easily killed later. Snares are considered fair play for the hunter, and the first ones the reader encounters seem innocuous enough—as long as you aren’t a rabbit or squirrel caught in one of Gale’s ingenious traps. But in the arena the victims are not rabbits, but humans. Ill-fated Rue, certainly one of the most compelling characters in the series, meets her death in
The Hunger Games
when she is caught in a net and then speared like a helpless rabbit or fawn.

Catching Fire
extends the concept of snares with Beetee’s masterful, rather complicated use of wire to electrify the area of the jungle near the Cornucopia, and thus kill two of the other tributes. And the urban battleground of
Mockingjay
is literally a minefield of snares—fiendish pods that lay in wait for passersby and that incorporate the Capitol’s weapons, either familiar ones from the arena games or new, even more nefarious creations.

But the series’ most memorable snare of all doesn’t need a net. In a tried and true terrorist device borrowed from our world, bombs hidden in parachutes are dropped from a hovercraft with the Capitol insignia onto a group of children outside of Snow’s mansion. Parachutes are familiar to the kids from watching the Games: they deliver presents, good things. But these parachutes are deadly, exploding when the children grab them. And as rebel medics, horrified Capitol Peacekeepers, and citizens rush in to help, a second fiery bomb explodes, maiming and killing the would-be rescuers.

This brilliant amoral snare, a more complex, heinous version of one of Gale and Beetee’s traps, works because it understands the psychology of its targets and uses that understanding to undo them. Reluctantly Katniss comes to believe the exploding parachutes are the work of the rebellion. But everyone else remains convinced the Capitol is responsible for the unconscionable devastation; after all, the weapon bears all the hallmarks of Snow and company’s brutally effective mind games

Mutts—short for “muttations,” the foul genetic products of the Capitol’s continued quest for means to subdue Panem’s citizens—are another of the Gamemakers’ favorite weapons. In the first book, mutts resembling huge wolves attack Katniss, Peeta, and Cato at the Cornucopia. But it is when Katniss looks into the beasts’ eyes that the true horror of the mutts is revealed: Rue, Foxface, all the dead tributes, allies and foes alike, stare out at
her. In case she is in doubt she sees the number eleven on the collar circling the neck of the one whose eyes belong to District 11’s tribute, Rue. Jabberjays are manipulated to mimic the agonized cries of people dear to the tributes, and in the second Games, they practically drive Katniss and Finnick to suicide. Then there are the tracker jackers, armed with hallucinogenic venom. Katniss herself is stung during the first Games and, even with a mild dose, experiences mind-bending apparitions. One of her ghoulish visions shows “ants crawl[ing] out of the blisters on my hands.” She later she tells us that the “nature of [the] venom ... target[s] the place where fear lives in your brain” (
The Hunger Games
). And of course it is tracker jacker venom that President Snow uses on Peeta to alter his memories of Katniss.

What all these weapons have in common is that, at their core, they are about deception. The snares rely on deception to lure their victims in, whether they appear to be safe, solid ground (but turn out to be a net) or a parachuted care package (but turn out to be a bomb). The jabberjays and the wolf mutts that attack Katniss and Peeta at the end of the first Games are also effective only through deception: it’s the tributes’ belief that they are hearing their loved ones being tortured (or that the jabberjays are repeating their loved ones’ screams) and Katniss and Peeta’s initial belief that they are seeing the dead tributes looking through the mutts’ eyes that makes them truly horrific. And deception is at the very heart of the tracker jackers’ effectiveness; their venom’s power is in rendering victims unable to tell what is real from what is not.

After the initial surprise, Katniss is able to cope with the deceptions used against her by the Gamemakers. What challenges Katniss most are the psychological deceptions she must take part in to survive—the costumes, the interviews, but in particular, the deception involving Peeta. It takes all her willpower
to go along with Haymitch’s strategy, spelled out during their first meal in the Training Center, that she and Peeta are to feign friendship. Katniss is comfortable play-acting the absence of emotion, but pretending that she and Peeta are linked emotionally is repugnant to her. It’s an out-and-out lie, but, like many others in Katniss’ odyssey, one she must embrace. Katniss agrees to it, but she does so with great skepticism. Eventually she will have to kill Peeta, or he’ll have to kill her. Her promise to Prim makes it perfectly clear to her who is going to kill whom in the end. So what is the purpose in pretending?

After all, while the Hunger Games have many rules—and part of the deception is the way rules change midway through the fray—there is one rule Katniss believes is immutable: the lone victor takes no prisoners, leaves no survivors. The Games have always worked that way—until now, when the Gamemakers pull a double switch-a-roo. Their first change—two tributes from the same district can both be victors if they are the last two tributes standing. But when Peeta and Katniss emerge victorious, the rules abruptly change back again—only one of them will be permitted to live. It’s a deception it does not occur to Katniss to be wary of, and one she refuses to abide by. With bold defiance, she uses her knack for circumventing the Capitol’s rules to save both herself and Peeta.

Of course, Katniss’ defiance brings severe repercussions. Midaction Katniss doesn’t consider what this will mean for her after the Games, or for her mother and Prim. In retrospect this seems naïve of her—after her time in the arena, hasn’t she learned that nothing is certain in the shifting realities of Snow’s Panem?

The reward of the Games has always been security and freedom from want for the victor (or in this case, victors) and his or her family. But Katniss’ bitter lesson comes via President Snow. He decrees that if she doesn’t obey his new directives,
everything and everyone she loves will be destroyed. His directives are simple: continue the charade of love for Peeta or else. Later we learn that the idea that winning the Games means safety and happiness is itself a deception, and not just for Katniss. Haymitch should have been a clue, but it is not until Finnick shocks Panem with a tell-all on a rebellion-controlled broadcast that we truly understand how much of a lie it is. “In a flat removed tone ... ” Finnick tells us that his image as “golden boy” back in the Capitol was a sham (
Mockingjay
). The glamor and glitter of his life as a victor cloaks a truly sordid reality: handsome, desirable, idolized by the viewers of the Games, Finnick was condemned by Snow to serve as a sex slave, forced to sell his body to Snow’s allies as a favor or to other wealthy Capitol denizens for great sums of money destined for Snow’s deep pockets. Refusing to follow Snow’s orders was unthinkable. Any protest would doom the people he loved.

Finnick’s revelations unmask the real post-Games plight of the victors: there’s no safe house to return to from the arena. No promises will be kept. As long as they live they can never drop their guards again.

As challenging as discerning the Capitol’s deceptions proves, both inside the arena and out, it is the question of whom Katniss can trust that most plagues her. As the series progresses, Katniss grows increasingly aware of hidden agendas: In
The Hunger Games
, Peeta’s, Haymitch’s, and certainly Snow’s; in
Catching Fire
, Plutarch Heavensbee’s, Cinna’s, and some of the leaders and members of the rebellion’s; in
Mockingjay
, of course there is Coin. Who’s telling the truth? Who knew what and
when? As Katniss puts it very clearly in
Mockingjay
when she critiques her own performance for the propo in support of the rebels, she becomes “... a puppet being manipulated by unseen forces.” Though referring at that point only to her bad performance in the scripted propo, she might as well be talking about her appropriation by the rebellion.

Trust is a dangerous commodity in Panem. In the first book, even in the relative seclusion of the forest Katniss lowers her voice when discussing the reaping with Gale because “even here you worry someone would hear you.” As it turns out, this was not just paranoia—Snow reveals the fact that her hunting excursions with Gale—including the one time they actually kissed—were all reported to him.

Katniss knows she cannot trust the Capitol. But even the behavior of those she should be able to trust is frequently revealed to be questionable—at times even purposely deceitful.

Haymitch—oh, dear drunken Haymitch. The old souse is a walking—more like a
staggering
—conundrum. Rereading
The Hunger Games
I realize even from the moment where Katniss is standing on stage after the citizens of the district give her their silent farewell salute, he saves her losing her stoic demeanor and bursting into tears. Utterly blotto, he stumbles onto the stage and shouts how he likes her, she’s got “spunk,” and then he actually points to the Capitol’s TV cameras taping the whole event, and seemingly taunts the Capitol by saying she has more spunk “than you!” Then he tumbles off the stage.

Haymitch’s continued inebriation is no act, and yet he is startlingly aware—in the way that a long-term alcoholic can be—of exactly what is going on around him and what he is
doing. So is his act spontaneous or staged? Is he calculating to get the cameras off Katniss? Is his boozy diatribe a drunken outburst, or is it a message to the Capitol?

From the very first book we know Haymitch is more than what he first appears. He is more than capable of making decisions without consulting those his decisions affect—as when he has Peeta announce his feelings for Katniss during the pregame interview without warning Katniss ahead of time. Yet Katniss trusts him enough to broker a deal in
Catching Fire
: Haymitch and Peeta collaborated to save her in the first Games; in the Quarter Quell, it’s Peeta’s turn to be saved. But after being rescued from the arena, she is furious to learn that deal was a ruse and the rebellion leaders, with Haymitch’s input, opted to save her, not Peeta. On the hovercraft she physically strikes out at him.

During
Mockingjay
she puts as much distance between them as she can in such tight quarters, still stung by his betrayal. Katniss frequently refuses to obey him, ripping off her earpiece when sent into District 8, ignoring his orders, and almost getting herself killed. Her feelings toward Haymitch are complicated: part of her is glad he is undergoing terrible withdrawal symptoms in the teetotalling environment of District 13. But later she worries he is so sick he might die. Then the next moment she reminds herself she doesn’t care. When they do finally have face-to-face time alone, they both admit they failed to keep Peeta safe—though nothing they could have done in the arena would have saved him. The guilt they both feel is not resolved, and yet they are at least honest with each other. And by the end of the book she at least trusts that he will understand why she says “yes” to Coin’s proposal for one last Hunger Games and that he will back her up by saying yes, too.

Though Haymitch rarely does what Katniss wants him to, he at least does seem to have her long-range interests at heart. The
architects behind the rebellion itself, as we and Katniss eventually learn, have little regard for Katniss’ best interests at all.

I so wanted to root for District 13.

When the mirage is dispelled at the end of
Catching Fire
and we learn that District 13 is a real brick-and-mortar place, I cheered. But this is Panem after all, and what seems to be real never is. For soon the ugly truth is revealed. The district proves to be a distorted mirror-image of the Capitol itself.

District 13’s continued existence is more than hinted at in
Catching Fire
during Katniss’ encounter in the Forest with District 8 escapees Bonnie and Twill, who clue her in to the looped tape of 13’s devastation that the Capitol has been using in its TV broadcasts. Even so, it’s a shock to both Katniss and us when 13 has a hovercraft, not to mention a fully functioning underground society. As Katniss learns, 13 is the real “seat” of the rebellion, the brains and part of the brawn behind it all. Thirteen still possesses nuclear weapons, airpower, and a population where everyone is trained to be a soldier.

When the reader first enters District 13 there is no inkling of how it has managed not just to survive the earlier rebellion, but how it continues to exist. How it is able to welcome the refugees from District 12? It integrated them immediately into its community—under the condition that they adhere to the austere conditions: the strict enforcement of food rationing; the requisite military training; the martinet-like adherence to minuteby-minute schedules.

Along with Katniss, we gradually discover that District 13 has not welcomed the survivors out of kindness—oh, no! It has
acted primarily to replenish its population, recently decimated by a pox that left many of the survivors infertile—Katniss notices the relative paucity of children in the district.