Catching Fire: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Peeta lies on the ground, unconscious, having just been electrocuted by a force field. Over Katniss’s protests, Finnick bends over Peeta, pinches his nostrils shut, and blows into his mouth. Slowly, Katniss realizes that Finnick is saving Peeta’s life by blowing air into his lungs. She remembers seeing her mother performing similar actions as a nurse.

After Finnick blows into Peeta’s mouth, Peeta slowly regains consciousness. Katniss begins to laugh and cry with joy, and she realizes that now there’s no way she could force herself to kill Finnick in his sleep. Finnick laughs off Katniss’s tears, saying that she must be emotional from her pregnancy.

The group of four carries on exploring the jungle. Finnick questions how Katniss saw the force field. Knowing that everything they say is being recorded, Katniss lies and says that she was able to hear it—if the Gamemakers know that she can detect the “ripple,” they might try to change the force fields and make them truly undetectable. The others accept Katniss’s explanation.

Katniss takes the lead in the group, still under the pretext that she has superior hearing. She notices Mags eating a nut growing on one of the trees, and yells for her to spit it out. Finnick only laughs. Katniss wonders how Finnick could be so cavalier about Mags and yet save Peeta’s life.

Katniss realizes that the force field that nearly killed Peeta is guarding the edge of the arena. She tries to find a high-enough point to look beyond the arena. Climbing a tree, she sees the entire arena for the first time. It’s a perfect circle, with the jungle-island in the middle. Katniss can see “rippling squares” in the distance on all sides—they are surrounded by deadly force fields.

Katniss climbs down and reports what she’s seen to Finnick, Mags, and Peeta. It occurs to her that their island is particularly small, and seems not to have any fresh water, perhaps because the government wants these unpopular Games over quickly—and thus, more tributes are supposed to die sooner.

It is late afternoon. Because Mags and Peeta are exhausted, the group sets up camp. They eat more of the nuts that Mags tried earlier, and Katniss says that she’s going to try to hunt. As she walks into the jungle she hears the traditional cannon of the Games, which shoots once for every death so far. She counts eight cannon booms. To her frustration, she doesn’t find any animals to hunt, with the exception of a big rodent, which she shoots. Carrying this, she returns to the camp. Mags, Peeta, and Finnick have built a hut from branches. She tells them that she’s found no drinkable water, but notices that the rodent—which they decide to call a “tree rat”—had a wet mouth, as if it’s been drinking recently. The group cooks nuts and rodent, and eats fairly well.

The group tries to fall asleep. Late at night a loud broadcast is made throughout the arena, naming the 8 dead tributes. All the tributes from Districts 1 through 4 are still alive, but Seeder, a mother of three, has been murdered. Then, a parachute falls from the skies, landing next to the group. Inside the parachute, Peeta finds a small metal rod. No one is sure what to do with it until Katniss remembers that she’s seen something like it before: it’s called a spile. It can be rammed into a tree trunk and used to drain syrup or other fluids. The group collectively realizes that this is how they’ll find water. They jam the spile into a nearby trunk, and slowly, water drips through it. They drink—they’ve been parched all day.

The group finally falls asleep. The next morning, Katniss and Finnick awake to a loud tolling sound. There are 12 rings, which, they presume, stand for the 12 Districts, but they’re unable to determine what the rings mean. In the distance, they see lightning, and it begins to rain. Suddenly, a fog trickles down to where the group is resting. Katniss walks through the fog, and immediately her body begins to blister.