Over 3 and a half million people have purchased The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, the latest installment in The Hunger Games series. While this book was originally published in 2020, the words “hunger games” are back on our minds thanks to the recent release of the movie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
The world first met the people of Panem, the fictional country set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic setting, way back in 2008. Since then, Collins’ dystopian series has taken the world by storm, resulting with this recent resurgence of hungry fans, racing to the theaters this past Thanksgiving weekend to see the prequel to it all, the origin story of Coriolanus Snow, the man who would one day rule Panem. (This is not a spoiler, but if it is, I highly recommend setting this blog down for a moment, reading the first 3 books in the series and then checking back in to this post).
The Story
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place during the 10th annual hunger games, sixty-four years before Katniss Everdeen volunteers to be the tribute for District 12. As the prequel to the rest of the series, we are given insights into the post-war environment and the psycho-social-political dynamics of the capitol citizens, healing from the cost of war. While the capitol emerged as the victor to the rebellion from the other thirteen districts, their people are struggling to rebuild following the devastation of the war and are losing interest in the games, which had been designed as reminders for the people of the control of the capitol. The “reasons” behind the games evolve (or devolve) deeper into macabre entertainment throughout the prequel as we descend alongside the main character.
This tale is a villain’s backstory and it is not for the faint of heart or for people who are looking for “happy endings.” In this prequel, we are riding through a dictatorship with the boy who will someday rule it with an iron fist and a poisoned rose.
The Main Character
I like to refer to Snow as a “classy psychopath.”
When I was teaching the earlier released Hunger Games books to my high school students this year, I would refer to Snow as my favorite character – not because I have a soft spot for villains, but because he is fascinating. It’s evident even from the minimal interaction we originally had with Snow in the first book that he is a meticulously strategic leader in a position of seemingly ironclad power, sentiments we see being developed in the prequel. He’s not merely a power-hungry, mustache-swirling antagonist; he’s a character who was begging to have his own tale of stakes, trials, and tragedies to be told and that is precisely what we received in a rainbow of songbirds and snakes.
In the prequel, Coriolanus is preparing to graduate from his secondary school, an academy, where all the children of the well-a-do members of society in the capitol attend. While Snow’s family once boasted a legacy worthy of Midas, their capital fell victim to the war. Coriolanus is an orphan – his father died in battle, killed by a rebel, and his mother passed in childbirth. Coriolanus and his cousin, Tigris, live with their grandmaam, in their once proud apartment, dangling deep in poverty, unable on most days to have proper food to eat. Regardless of their dire circumstances, Coriolanus must maintain appearances, feigning an air of wealth and pride to his comrades in school, while his stomach stabs him with hunger pains.
I loved reading about the dynamics within Coriolanus’ family. His grandmother’s love of her roses and her devotion to the capitol was chilling; how this woman clung to her roses even though the world around them was falling apart. I read the roses as representing the wealth and the beauty of her family, of luxury, and of strength.S Like the roses, the Snows knew how to protect themselves, and, as is the family motto, “Snow lands on top.” While grandmaam offers endearing guidance to her grandchildren, her nationalism is paired with her declining mental state. She regularly mentions how “districts” can never truly be capitol and how they are lowly, subhuman, while also regularly filling her grandson’s head with the notion that one day he would be “President Snow.”
Coriolanus’ cousin Tigris is a thrifty go-getter who sacrifices everything to try to bring her family out from the trenches. She helps Coriolanus in more ways than can be counted and my heart broke for her along the way as we realize that everything she’s trying to do for her cousin to make his life better is coming from a place of love, but what he turns out to be in return… well… this is a no spoiler zone, so you’ll just have to read the book to find out what I mean.
To receive his diploma and to possibly earn a full scholarship from the school so he could attend university, Coriolanus and twenty-three of his other classmates are assigned to be mentors to the tributes from the districts, a bid from the game makers to try to get more people from the capitol to tune in as interest in the games had waned. The idea behind this is twofold: 1) that people from the capitol might be more invested if they could see their own participating in a safe manner. And 2) that the mentors might help to encourage and guide their tributes into being more entertaining for the audience.
Meanwhile, the tributes were treated like animals, brought in to the capitol without food or water in cattle cars on trains, making me cringe to think of the haunting connection of the poor souls taken by trains to concentration camps during the Holocaust. The tributes were then dumped, literally, into an animal pen at the zoo, continuing the metaphor of them being dehumanized.
Coriolanus is assigned to Lucy Gray from District 12, a young lady who makes quite an impressive scene during her reaping. While again, this is a no-spoiler zone, I made several comments in my notes as I read about Coriolanus reminding me of a trainer showing off his prize horse before the ticket-holding gamblers on race day. While I would really like to believe that Coriolanus’ eventual feelings toward Lucy Gray are genuine, I couldn’t shake the idea of him seeing her as just a prize.
The Author
Author Suzanne Collins is the creator of this series. She has mentioned in many interviews that the original inspiration for these books came from a time when she was channel surfing during the Iraq war. There were many times when I was reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes when I thought of post-war zones, such as Europe after World War 2 or more recent events, where the victors seek revenge on the survivors of the other side. How sometimes, places devastated by war choose to leave rubble monuments from the war as reminders of the devastation because, “People [have] short memories ” (Page 16 Collins). And for Snow, his stakes couldn’t be more intertwined with the city’s; trying to pull the dignity of his family out from the rubble, to rebuild stronger than ever before.
Major Themes of The Hunger Games
In a word, survival. While Katniss disregarded her personal safety to protect those she loved, Coriolanus was willing to sacrifice those who loved him, except for his family. While the exact motivations for them diverge, in this way, Coriolanus and Katniss are very much alike. Both assume tremendous personal risk with that meticulous internal strategy to safeguard their stakes, their family. For Coriolanus though, I wonder if his determination to keep his cousin and grandmother safe are for their own protection or for his glory.
There were a number of references to the circus and to slavery – how both were so intertwined in a city that needs to heal, but instead of letting scars be, they choose to pick at them instead.
This post is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I’ll continue this conversation on over in the following post about the recently released movie, which you may view by clicking right here.
Bonus Note
Reading this book helped me craft a digital reading log download I’m developing to help guide readers (and myself) into a deeper appreciation of what we’re reading. This idea spawned from the AP Literature class I teach where I’ve created worksheets for my students to develop their literary analysis skills. Because not all of us are reading books for an AP test, I’ve restructured these guides to be more applicable for anyone from a casual reader who’d just like to keep track of their books and reviews, to someone who rolls up their sleeves to find every literary device possible. So if you’re interested or curious about it and the free reading downloads that will accompany it, be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you’ll be among the first to receive access to these products, which will be coming soon.
Thank you for reading and see you in the next post!
