The Panem Companion Read online

  What Finnick, Mags, and Annie’s conditions provide, in the context of the Hunger Games, is the same thing District 4 does overall: a greater sense of awareness of Panem and the impact of the Games than Katniss or District 12 alone can give us. All three victors help communicate the breadth of trauma the Games are responsible for; Finnick and Annie’s stories in particular give us a window into the depth of the Capitol and Snow’s depravity, coercion, and abuse. And the cultural differences help us understand, even before the rebellion, not just the diversity of Panem but also the potential Panem holds, once united, to change things for the better.

  4 Side note: In fandom, it is widely believed that the location of the arena moves from Hunger Games to Hunger Games, in part because Katniss doesn’t know where the arena/s are located and in part because they are each so different. Using just one location and redesigning it from scratch seems like a waste of resources, when the Capitol has access to all the many and varied locations they could want. If the arenas are all close to the Capitol, which they seem to be given the single day’s travel Katniss describes from the training center during the two she is in, then, geographically, the dam that broke during the Seventieth Games very well could have been the Hoover Dam.

  10

  Mythology and Music in Panem

  The Hunger Games wears its Roman allusions on its sleeve, from the name Panem (Latin for bread, from the phrase panem et circenses or “bread and circuses”) and the Roman gladiatorial system discussed previously to the names of its Capitol citizens, which allude to figures in Roman history, particularly those included in Shakespeare’s interpretation of Julius Caesar. However, although the majority of the allusions in the trilogy hail from the history of Rome, other historical and cultural practices make significant contributions to Panem’s narrative mythos. Greek mythology and American folktale and oral tradition play a role in the Hunger Games series as well.

  Greek Mythology

  One of the most enduring—or at least most famous—Greek myths is the story of Theseus slaying the Minotaur. In one version of the tale, King Minos of Crete, having waged and won a war against the Athenians, demands as victor that, every seven or nine years (depending on the version of the myth), seven Athenian boys and seven Athenian girls were to be sent to his palace, as tribute, to be devoured by the Minotaur.

  . . . Sound familiar?

  Theseus, like Katniss—and the Careers—volunteers himself to take the place of one of the youths in order to enter the labyrinth and slay the minotaur, and thereby ends the reign of tyranny. In fact, Suzanne Collins told School Library Journal in 2010, just before Mockingjay’s release, that “Theseus and the Minotaur is the classical setup for where The Hunger Games begins, you know, with the tale of Minos in Crete . . . as an eight-year-old, [I was] horrified that Crete was so cruel . . . in her own way, Katniss is a futuristic Theseus.”lxiv

  Theseus is one of the “founder demigods,” one whose stories are tied into synoikismos or the founding or renovation of cities—in Theseus’ case, Athens—and the monsters he fights in various myths are, like the struggles Katniss faces, most closely identified with social order (and religion, although religion doesn’t exist in Panem). Like Theseus with Athens, Katniss helped to forge a new Panem, and also fits Theseus’ moniker, “the great reformer.” Theseus and the synoikismos of Athens are represented in myth as his “journey of labors,” felling monsters and beasts—just as Katniss and other tributes-cum-victors like Beetee, Finnick, Haymitch, and Johanna help unify their nation through taking down political monsters, like Snow and Finnick’s abusers, and battling literal monsters in the form of mutts in both arenas and during the Second Rebellion.

  Theseus is not the only Greek figure that Katniss evokes. Our bow-and-arrow expert could also be seen as a modern take on the goddess Artemis, the hunter, who immortalizes her beloved dead with constellations (as Katniss memorializes Rue with flowers). The “virgin goddess,” Artemis was said to have sworn off men and romance in favor of the hunt—just as “pure”CF216 Katniss has “better things to worry about than kissing!” Artemis was also known as the “Phaesporia,” or the light-bringer, and the bird goddess; Katniss plays a messianic role in Panem, bringing intellectual enlightenment to the Capitol audience and judicial enlightenment to the districts, as the Mockingjay. Artemis also had a kinship with Pan, the god of the forests and wild things, just as Katniss has an extraordinary connection to nature and finds refuge in the wild. If Katniss is an allusion to Artemis, then Gale could play the role of Orion, Artemis’ hunting companion and soul mate, who was later either killed or exiled, depending on the version of the myth, and who Artemis cast into the stars in her grief. (This role could also go to Rue, again in the case of her memorialization with flowers.)

  The story of Finnick Odair also finds a reflection in Greek myth. Finnick’s arc in the Hunger Games series almost perfectly mirrors Odysseus’ journey over the course of the Illiad and Odyssey: he is victorious in battle (the Games) but is not allowed to return home (District 4) to his wife; he has to escape the alleged paradise of the Island of the Lotus Eaters (the Capitol) and is threatened by the Laistrygones and evil witch–queen Circe (Snow); he is forced to endure and must escape the sexual perversions of the Sirens (Capitol citizens, his sex slavery); he has to make his way home between the monsters of Scylla and Charybdis (his choice between slavery and torture in the Capitol or the death of Annie, Mags, and his family if he fails to comply with Snow’s wishes); and he goes to Hades and back to find his wife again (the Quarter Quell and the retrieval of Annie from the Capitol). Further evidence of Finnick’s connection to the Iliad and Odyssey is his chosen talent of poetry.

  Finnick himself, however, most notably mirrors the myth of Ganymede, the water-bearer. Spotted by Zeus for his beauty, just as Finnick was immediately a favorite for his looks during his first Games, Ganymede is kidnapped (often called “the rape of Ganymede”) and given immortality on Olympus. There, he is doomed to bear water or nectar to the gods until they tire of him and find another boy more beautiful, just as Finnick is sentenced to serve his Capitol “admirers”/sexual abusers.

  Finnick can also be tied to other, similar stories of kidnap, capture, or loss, including the tale of Persephone, who must spend her winters in the underworld with Hades, as his bride, while spending her summers happily at home with her mother. Finnick must similarly divide his time between the Capitol, under Snow, and in District 4’s temperate, subtropical, summerlike climate, happily with Annie and Mags. Seen in this way, President Snow represents the figure of Hades; the Capitol his home, the underworld; and its citizens the soulless ghosts that inhabit the underworld’s Fields of Asphodel.

  Like another figure of Greek myth, Orpheus, Finnick is a poet and a romantic. As described in a classic anthology of Greek myths, “The major stories about [Orpheus] are centered on his ability to charm all living things and . . . his attempt to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who could not hear his divine music.”lxv Similarly, Finnick was famous for his charm throughout Panem and used his voice and words to bring his future wife, Annie, back, not only from her flashbacks in Mockingjay but from her torture cell in the Capitol.

  There’s one more character who especially parallels a character from Greek myth: Haymitch, who is reminiscent of other modern takes on Dionysus—most notably Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ Mr. D, a modern variation of Dionysus himself in the modern age—where the god is depicted as a crass alcoholic with untold cleverness. Dionysus bears the epithet Eleutherios (“the liberator”) for helping free people from their normal selves (usually with wine)—a title that could be given to Haymitch, as well, for his role in the rebellion.

  American Folk Music

  Music plays a crucial role in each of the novels in the Hunger Games series, as well as in our understanding of its characters and their relationship to Panem. In the first book, Katniss and Rue communicate, and communicate their alliance, through mu
sic—Rue’s four-note song—and Rue’s last request is for Katniss to sing to her, illustrating the importance of music to the series: it is both soothing and stirring, a way to communicate both camaraderie and rebellion. Mockingjays, who can imitate any song and any voice, are a hallmark motif of the series, and in the final book of the series, as Katniss sings to soothe Pollux, the mockingjays join her in a “freaky”Mj126 chorus of the song Katniss learned from her father, “The Hanging Tree,” once again illustrating the power of music to at once both calm others and rouse them to anger.

  “The Hanging Tree” is a lament of lost love, about a man who works in the orchards and loves a crop-working woman. He watches out for her every day, but one day she doesn’t come; he discovers that she has been hanged from one of his orchard’s trees. The song is most often construed by readers as a social comment on lynching in Panem, as it is very similar lyrically and thematically to the 1939 Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit,” which uses the imagery of orchard trees to comment on lynching. However, during the Second Rebellion, “The Hanging Tree” also serves a purpose similar to the one served by songs such as “Follow the Drinking Gourd” in the antebellum plantation society in the same geographical area: as a covert sign of noncompliance and cultural identity.

  Across much of the Hunger Games, both in District 12 and District 11 as well as during the Second Rebellion, the emotional resonance of music appears intended to be evocative of “slave songs” or “Songs of Freedom.” According to Allana Gillam-Wright, a journalist and historian of Canadian black history, these songs were “seemingly innocent . . . [but] more than simple hymns of endurance and a belief in a better afterlife. As sung by slaves and their descendants, the spirituals allowed the slaves to communicate secret messages and information to each other.”lxvi Although the traditional slave spirituals such as “Follow the Drinking Gourd” and “The Gospel Train’s A-Comin’” commonly communicated literal directions towards stops on the Underground Railroad, the songs in the Hunger Games are more referential of personal narratives—perhaps, given that interdistrict communication in Panem is not possible through letters, digital communiqués, or speech, songs gave district citizens a way to share their stories about the Capitol’s cruelty.

  Darling Nelly Gray

  Katniss ruminates on the factual basis for “The Hanging Tree” in Mockingjay, when she explains the history of lynching in District 12 and theorizes that the song’s history made her mother consider the song dangerous. Was “The Hanging Tree” based, in the world of the Hunger Games, on a true story?

  A lesser-known slave spiritual in our world, “Darling Nelly Gray,” was based on a true story about lost love:

  the story of two young lovers whose romance ended when Nelly was sold and taken to a plantation far away from that of her young man, Ned.

  The two had planned to escape together to Canada and then to Owen Sound. Ned and Nelly lived on plantations close to each other. Due to the plantation owners’ practice of keeping slaves segregated, they met through an intermediary, an old Scottish professor. The professor was to help Ned escape to Canada, with a small amount of money and food. Ned was to find work, make enough money—$200—to send to the professor, who would purchase Nelly’s freedom and send her on to Canada to be with Ned.

  However, on the night before the plan went into action, Nelly disappeared. Upon some careful enquiring, Ned discovered a stranger had visited the plantation, leading one empty horse. He looked over the selection of slaves, made Nelly his choice, and paid a substantial amount of money for her purchase. As no one recognized him, it was believed he was from a fair distance away and tracing Nelly’s whereabouts would be impossible. To complicate matters, slaves were known by their owners’ names, not their own, i.e., Jim Thompon’s Joe, So and So’s Maggie, and so on. Nelly would have a new name in her new home.

  To express his and Ned’s sadness, the professor composed a little verse, and then added a melody. Sung sorrowfully by his glee club, it soon became very popular and he eventually added more lyrics to create a full-blown song. The sheet music was soon for sale on newsstands, and, not long after, was sung, whistled, and hummed in every state.

  The song even had a role in politics: many historians believe it “was a major force in shaping public opinion on the issue of slavery, leading to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States in 1860.”lxvii

  “The Hanging Tree” holds personal significance for Katniss because of its connection to her father. But the reaction Katniss remembers her mother having upon hearing her husband and daughter singing it—panic—suggests that the song held other, more dangerous meanings as well. Given that Mr. Everdeen also spoke openly about the unfairness of the Capitol’s Games–tesserae system, it’s possible to infer that the song is in some way connected to the rebellion, and serves a political purpose not unlike that of “Darling Nelly Gray.” (Mr. Everdeen’s potential connections to the rebellion are further explored in chapter twelve.)

  * * *

  Suzanne Collins has succeeded, with Panem, in creating a nation that is wholly its own, but by building this new, futuristic world around familiar heroes, morals, and tales from our own world, she has made Panem also unmistakably the product of its Western heritage and the millennia of tradition that came before it—and therefore more accessible and resonant for a contemporary audience.

  This technique, in which pieces of our world are used to make Panem feel at the same time both familiar and new, is never more clearly in play than in the district we have seen the most of, after Katniss’ own: District 11.

  11

  District 11

  District 11 is one of the few places in Panem that we see firsthand through the Hunger Games novels. Although Katniss relates and infers information about District 4 and we see the ruins of a war-torn District 8 and the Nut in District 2, Catching Fire brings us directly into the main square of District 11, where we see the populace of the district, its layout and aesthetics, and its relationship to the Capitol (through its reaction to the Victory Tour and the Peacekeepers’ reactions to the District 11 protesters). The amount of time that the novels spend in District 11, compounded by the importance of the roles played by citizens of District 11—Rue, Thresh, Chaff, and Seeder, as well as the protesters in the Victory Tour riot—makes it clear that District 11 is vitally important to the Hunger Games trilogy and Panem itself.

  Our first pieces of information about District 11 come from Rue, in the conversations she and Katniss have in the arena. Rue describes her home district as “strict,” a place with enforced public whippings, constant hard work for all citizens—including children—and harsh punishments by the Peacekeepers. But even her descriptions did not prepare Katniss for her first glimpse of the district itself, during the Victory Tour:

  Rue did give me the impression that the rules in District 11 were more harshly enforced. But I never imagined something like this.

  Now the crops begin, stretched out as far as the eye can see. Men, women, and children wearing straw hats to keep off the sun straighten up, turn our way . . . small communities of shacks—by comparison the houses in the Seam are upscale—spring up here and there, but they’re all deserted. Every hand must be needed for the harvest.CF55

  District 11 reads as a direct slavery allegory. They seem to be alone among the districts in not having a merchant class: instead, their only light-skinned citizens seem to be the Peacekeepers (who are all white in District 12, and so also, we infer, in Panem at large) who rule from guard towers and are quick to fire their weapons. Many times larger than District 12, District 11 is located in the Deep South, with its Justice Building in what seems to be the ruins of either Atlanta, Georgia, or New Orleans, Louisiana; Katniss describes a crumbling arena that might be the Georgia Dome or the Superdome. District 11 specializes in agriculture, the growing of cereal crops and orchard produce, and given the particular focus on fruit orchards, it’s more likely that District 11 is intended to be Georgia, the Pea
ch State.

  Another subtle clue to District 11’s potential antebellum ties and southern location is something Katniss says about how the district is described in Panem’s education system:

  In school they refer to it as a large district, that’s all. No actual figures on the population.CF55

  From 1787–1865, slaves in the United States—located primarily in the South—were counted as only three-fifths of a person each in census counts; further, “slaves were enumerated on all federal census records, 1790–1860, but not by name. From the 1870 census, the researcher should proceed backwards to the 1860 and 1850 separate slave schedules that list, under the name of the owner, each slave by sex, specific age, and color only; no slave names are given.”lxvii However, detailed personal records were kept by slaveowners of the number and condition of their slaves because they were legally considered their property. Although the Capitol clearly keeps track of District 11’s population between the ages of twelve and eighteen, at least, for the reaping, the lack of population counts for District 11 in Panem—according to Katniss, at least—implies that District 11 operates similarly. This lack of population figures may indicate that the Capitol views District 11’s citizens as an expendable resource: it is the largest district, with the most people, and the Peacekeepers there do not seem shy about killing them for rule infractions. The citizens of District 11 may be seen by the Capitol as their property, to be used and disposed of as needed, even more so than the rest of the districts.