Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Propaganda, Spectacle, and Morality
Children
Government and Power
Human Nature
Trust and Loyalty
Summary
Analysis
Sejanus asks Coriolanus about the officer test and insists Coriolanus “deserves” to pass. He’s so “duplicitous.” Later, after dinner, Coriolanus has his first hour of guard duty at an air hangar. The old Peacekeeper he’s paired with goes to sleep, so Coriolanus has nothing to do but think of Lucy Gray. He’d much rather be with her than on guard duty. It was really nice at the Capitol, where Coriolanus always knew where she was. Who knows, Billy Taupe could be trying to win her back right now. Coriolanus spends the next few days thinking of her.
In this passage, Coriolanus shows how self-centered he is. It’s inconceivable to him that Sejanus—who seems genuinely nice—might actually want Coriolanus to be happy. And thinking that it was great when Lucy Gray was locked up at the Capitol demonstrates Coriolanus’s desire for control. His relationship with Lucy Gray shouldn’t, he believes, be one of equals. Rather, he should have all the power and the ability to control her every move.
Themes
On Friday, Coriolanus is almost relieved to be working with the birds. After the truck drops the recruits at the hanging tree, Coriolanus finds himself in a group with Bug and Dr. Kay. Dr. Kay knows exactly who Coriolanus is and asks how he’s liking the districts. Coriolanus admits he’s learning more here now than he did during school. Dr. Kay shares that she was in 12 during the war and headed the jabberjay project. This makes Coriolanus feel better; the jabberjays were a major failure. Coriolanus engages Dr. Kay in conversation about the birds. She says, lovingly, that the jabberjays, all of which are male, did surprisingly well in the wild.
Coriolanus is happiest when he’s the most successful person in a given situation. So it’s comforting to be around Dr. Kay, since she’s responsible for such a major failure in the jabberjays. It makes Coriolanus cheating in the Hunger Games seem less meaningful in comparison. But Dr. Kay also gives Coriolanus an opportunity to suck up to her and try to get in her good graces—probably with the intention of Dr. Kay returning to the Capitol and saying nice things about Coriolanus to Dr. Gaul.
Themes
After Bug brings a caged jabberjay down from a tree and runs back up another tree with an empty trap, Dr. Kay shows Coriolanus how the birds work. Pulling out a small device with buttons, she says that now, the bird is in neutral—he can say what he likes. Then, she puts him on record mode and the bird goes silent. Dr. Kay puts the bird back on neutral and presses a third button—and the bird regurgitates the conversation Coriolanus and Dr. Kay just had. Dr. Kay says that in theory, the birds are the perfect surveillance device: they’re undetectable, unlike a microphone, and if rebels catch and kill one, it looks like just a bird. Dr. Kay says the rebels probably figured out what the birds were because the Capitol didn’t cover their tracks well enough. Or there was a spy on base.
The fact that district-born Bug seems to be doing the bulk of the work here shows that even in the Peacekeepers, where people from the districts and the Capitol are supposedly on equal footing, this isn’t actually true. Coriolanus is getting an important lesson on the jabberjays and isn’t doing much, while Bug is doing the difficult work of climbing and carrying the traps. For Coriolanus, this outing is more of a lesson in military surveillance techniques—his schooling hasn’t ended, despite his being in the Peacekeepers.
Themes
Dr. Kay explains that they can’t use the birds’ homing device to call them back because the transmission system has been disabled. She also laughs that she’s not sure how the birds will behave now that they’ve “gone native.” Then, she says that after being released on neutral, they created mockingjays with the local mockingbirds. Dr. Kay notes that the mockingjays can’t speak at all, but they can mimic music better than mockingbirds. She asks Coriolanus to sing, so he sings a few bars of Panem’s anthem. A mockingjay immediately replicates the melody, others pick it up, and soon they sing in harmony.
Interestingly, Dr. Kay doesn’t seem fazed at all by the fact that she might not be able to control her creations. She takes a more relaxed view than Coriolanus, who desperately wants to control everything he possibly can. The fact that Coriolanus sings the anthem rather than any other song speaks to how much a part of him the song is. Its background and the words don’t mean anything to him anymore; he produces the song in an automatic, rote fashion.
Themes
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Without thinking, Coriolanus says they should kill all the mockingjays. To try to cover up this misstep (Dr. Kay is shocked), Coriolanus suggests they’ll push out native species. But Dr. Kay says if they can’t reproduce with each other, they’ll die out anyway; otherwise, one more songbird in the world won’t hurt. Coriolanus agrees the birds are harmless, but he hates them and distrusts “their spontaneous creation.” By the end of the day, the group has caught 30 jabberjays and no mockingjays.
Also unlike Coriolanus, Dr. Kay believes it’s a good thing to put beautiful things in the world, like the mockingjays. (Unlike Coriolanus, she believes the mockingjays are beautiful.) Coriolanus resents the mockingjays so much because he can’t control them. They’re not only more musical than he’ll ever be, he also can’t entirely control what they do with whatever they pick up and turn into a song.
Themes
Back at the base, Coriolanus and Bug help unload the birds into an old hangar and agree to care for the birds. A few days later, on Saturday afternoon, Coriolanus and Bug clean the jabberjays’ cages and help scientists run them through drills. Quietly, Bug suggests the birds would be happier left alone in the woods, but Coriolanus isn’t convinced. The birds might hate 12 as much as he does.
Coriolanus empathizes with the jabberjays because he sees himself in them. Like the jabberjays, he was a government pawn who’s now been banished to District 12. He’s unable to see the birds as living creatures with their own thoughts and feelings, which is how Bug sees them.
Themes
That evening, as everyone prepares to go to the Hob, Coriolanus realizes he’ll have to bring Sejanus backstage if he wants to see Lucy Gray—but will Sejanus then collaborate with rebels backstage? Regardless, Coriolanus and Sejanus head around the bar to what turns out to be a large garage. The Covey are inside and Maude Ivory runs over immediately. She accepts popcorn balls from Coriolanus and, with Sejanus, goes to show the band her treats. Coriolanus kisses and sits down with Lucy Gray.
Keeping Sejanus out of trouble is wearing on Coriolanus. He wants nothing more than to see Lucy Gray in peace, but that’s not possible given how intent Sejanus is on helping the rebels. And note that as Coriolanus worries that Sejanus will get into trouble with rebels backstage, he inadvertently shows that he doesn’t trust the Covey—he lumps them in with the rebels.
Themes
When Lucy Gray says that she has no idea who owns the garage and that the Covey will “just perch here until they shoo [them] off,” Coriolanus thinks that she always uses bird imagery. He tells her about working with the jabberjays, but this makes her sad—she thinks it’s torture to control their voices. Coriolanus insists there’s no human equivalent, and Lucy Gray asks if he feels free to say what he thinks. Coriolanus knows she’s asking about the Hunger Games and the Capitol, but he says he believes people should speak their minds. Lucy Gray says her daddy thought the same—and he died because of that. Knowing a Peacekeeper probably killed her daddy, Coriolanus spits that a rebel sniper killed his father.
Bringing up the jabberjays is an attempt to connect with Lucy Gray by engaging her in a subject she likes: birds. But Lucy Gray makes it clear, much to Coriolanus’s consternation, that she doesn’t agree with him on how the birds should be treated—or on how the Capitol treats the districts. Lucy Gray is right that few people, if any, in Panem are able to say what they want without consequences. Even Coriolanus regularly modifies what he says to look better to others.
Themes
It’s time for the Covey to go on, so Coriolanus swallows his anger. He agrees to join the Covey for a hike to the lake with Sejanus tomorrow and then follows Sejanus back to their bunkmates. Coriolanus decides to get drunk, since he can’t see Lucy Gray after the show. He feels happier and friendlier as the night wears on. At one point, Maude Ivory is onstage with Lucy Gray and says they’re going to sing Lucy Gray’s namesake ballad, which was written by “some man named Wordsworth.” As Maude Ivory sings the ballad, Coriolanus tries to parse the meaning. The song is about a little girl who lives on the mountain and dies after she gets lost in the snow—and then becomes a ghost. Coriolanus hates “ridiculous” ghost stories and thinks it’s terrible. He turns to ask Sejanus about the song, but Sejanus is gone.
Just as setting the reaping on July Fourth established that Panem exists in a future North America, singing a ballad by “some man named Wordsworth” situates Panem as a future iteration of the real world. Wordsworth was a famous Romantic poet; his poems are popular and widely taught. Coriolanus engages with the poem thinking he’s going to learn more about Lucy Gray, but he finds it disappointing. However, this is in part because Coriolanus is so self-centered and struggles to think imaginatively about things. The poem’s Lucy Gray turning into a ghost, however, is ominous foreshadowing for the living Lucy Gray.
Themes
