"Snow lands on top."
———A Snow family expression from Suzanne Collins's new book,The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Suzanne Collins has penned a prequel to the Katniss Everdeen adventures (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay) and it stars an unlikely leading man: President Snow, as a teenager. In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Coryo Snow is struggling to hide the loss of his family fortune and desperately trying to earn a scholarship so that he can afford to attend university; orphaned, sidelined, and perpetually underfed, it's not quite the start we might imagine. The new book takes place during the 10th Hunger Games (64 years before the main trilogy begins) and provides a glimpse into the sordid evolution of the games as well as Panem's rose-festooned president.
With the original Hunger Games now being read in high school English classes, and even prompting a book of essays discussing the more prominent thematic threads, the series is more akin to Orwell's 1984 or Bradbury's Farenheight 451 than to some of its contemporary popular teen fare—while books of the dystopian inclination are a dime a dozen, few contemporaries have executed the genre with the degree of philosophical provocation that The Hunger Games provides. There is a lot of meat to the stories (if you can tolerate the violence): a lot to be said about society, profane waste, the psychology of control, human nature, the sides we take, the subversion of our basic instinct to protect the vulnerable, and (as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) whether or not it is the fighting back in and of itself, and not the outcome, that matters (and can this be done violently or non-violently?). I'll admit, as a person who usually doesn't like violent movies and can't stand gore, I avoided The Hunger Games for a long time, even with its critical acclaim and personal recommendations from colleagues. When I finally did read the books, I physically flinched at many of the parts, looking away as if what was happening was there on the page (which, in a manner of speaking, it was) and could be blocked out. Of course, since it was my own imagination constructing the visual elements of the story, this was not very effective. Much of what The Hunger Games has to convey intellectually is delivered with disturbing force, but nevertheless, I think it is an important series.
Earlier this year, Lionsgate announced that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set to join the successful film franchise based on the books. Production is temporarily halted, but the release of a fourth Hunger Games movie will certainly be something to keep an ear to the ground for.
Onto the book. While the Songbirds and Snakes was interesting for its (fictional) historical interest, I didn't feel it held the same gravity as the three main works. It did offer for me the same fascination as meeting child Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace; how was this adorable little boy possibly going to become Darth Vader? And how was the sentimental, underfed teenager at the beginning of Songbirds and Snakes (who comforts himself with his mother's scent—roses—from her powder compact and with memories of being loved by her) going to morph into Katniss's powerful and subversive tormentor?
"I just wanted to destroy something beautiful"
—Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
So I was thinking about it, and this line from Fight Club came to mind. I was reading some time ago, on Gretchen Rubin's blog, about a prayer which (among the sick and the dying and the suffering) includes a solicitation to "shield your joyous ones." An odd item in that bleak and otherwise categorically sound mix, isn't it? Why is that line even there? Why would happiness merit the concern afforded the other, more congruent categories? I think it is because good and beautiful things are not impenetrable—not just happiness, I mean, but all good things. They need our protection and attentiveness, too, especially where they live within each and every individual. I was reminded of Dumbledore's line, "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities," and I think that this is true. I know someone with a fiery personality and we've had the conversation once or twice that fire isn't inherently good or bad; fire can be used to keep someone alive on a cold night, to warm them, to cook food with (and all of the creative possibilities that brings); it can be used creatively in metalwork too, and contemplatively (oh, the thoughts we can think while staring into a crackling fire!), and it can draw people together as a gathering medium. But fire can also be destructive; it can burn and kill and consume. It can bring pain and desolation, ravaging homes, and nests, and quiet green places. What we do with our capabilities and tendencies, in other words, is far more important than what they are; it is our choices that matter. Dumbledore's got it right. And whether we "land on top" or (like Randle McMurphy or Jerry Renault) fail trying, it is for us to decide if we would sooner protect or destroy the beautiful things within us. I can't help thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. as an an important, real-life example of this. He defended what was right—nonviolently—and made immeasurably positive change in the world. He took enormous risks and demonstrated unspeakable bravery, and although he was killed striving to improve the world around him, he did it all while protecting the beautiful things inside of himself.
If anything, The Hunger Games series will get you thinking! It did for me. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is now available to request from the Essa Public Library.
Victoria Murgante
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