Morphling is a medication that dulls people’s experiences of pain and extreme emotions, both good and bad. It’s used medicinally, but it’s also prone to abuse—Dean Highbottom is a known morphling addict.
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Morphling Term Timeline in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
The timeline below shows where the term Morphling appears in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...Hunger Games, will oversee the mentor program. As usual, he’s clearly on a drug called morphling, so he slurs as he reads the assignments. As Dean Highbottom goes down the list,...
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Chapter 4
...will receive a demerit for being reckless—three demerits, and he’ll be expelled. Dean Highbottom drops morphling on his tongue.
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Chapter 10
Soon after this, Dr. Wane removes Coriolanus’s morphling drip. This makes him feel even more suspicious and upset. He watches the funeral broadcast...
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Chapter 13
...steer Sejanus toward a seat near the doors. Highbottom turns away to dose himself with morphling and Lysistrata rushes up, angry that Coriolanus is destroying her strategy with Jessup.
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Chapter 25
...locker and digs through Sejanus’s box of personal items. There are some mementos, pills and morphling, and a class photo with Sejanus and Marcus in it. At the bottom is Sejanus’s...
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Epilogue
...Highbottom points out that Dr. Gaul is still staging the Hunger Games. He started taking morphling when she first proposed putting the Hunger Games in practice and he hasn’t stopped. Coriolanus...
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...a pinch of rat poison in the nearby alley and painstakingly put it into Sejanus’s morphling bottle. Dean Highbottom will never suspect the bottle now in his trash can. As Dean...
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