When 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow learns he’s going to be a mentor to a tribute for the 10th Annual Hunger Games, his only goal is to win. But as he and his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird from District 12, get to know each other—both before and after the Games—Coriolanus learns some uncomfortable things. Despite growing up in wildly different circumstances (the Snows are a wealthy Capitol family, while Lucy Gray’s family were traveling performers), they both experienced a great deal of loss, fear, and hunger as children who grew up during Panem’s war with rebel forces, which ended about 10 years before the novel begins. As a result of the war, Coriolanus and Lucy Gray were also forced to grow up before they were ready, as this was necessary for survival. Though Coriolanus’s self-involved nature means he doesn’t fully grasp the implications of what he learns from Lucy Gray, what he and Lucy Gray reveal paints a disturbing message: that Panem might make a show of supporting its bright future leaders by showcasing student mentors in the Games, but on the whole it has done a poor job of taking care of the country’s children, both Capitol and district (to say nothing of how district children are brutalized during the Hunger Games). Through Panem’s cruel and cynical abuse of Capitol and district children, the novel suggests that a society’s treatment of its children reveals what its true values are, regardless of what it proclaims.
At first, Coriolanus believes that Capitol children represent Panem’s future and should be protected and helped no matter the cost, but that district children are subhuman and deserve to die in the Hunger Games. Coriolanus sees the opportunity to mentor a tribute in the Hunger Games as proof that Panem cares about him and wants to see him succeed—it is, he believes, his ticket to becoming another great Snow, like his father Crassus was. And while Coriolanus is extremely self-centered, he also suggests that his classmates are entitled to the same kind of care and support from the government. They’re all from wealthy Capitol families, so Coriolanus’s thinking goes, and thus they should all be treated like bright, valuable future leaders. District children, on the other hand, are thought of among Capitol folk as subhuman—and accordingly, they deserve to live in poverty, go hungry, and die in the Games. This is because the Capitol believes that everyone who lives in the districts—even if they were children, or weren’t even born during the war—is responsible for the war and should continue to be punished. So while the Capitol casts its children as the bright future leaders of the country, it insists, at the same time, that district children must continue to pay for their parents’ perceived transgressions with their lives.
Through Lucy Gray and Coriolanus’s stories, however, the novel shows that the Capitol children actually suffer alongside district children, albeit in different ways—children of all classes suffer in Panem. As Coriolanus and Lucy Gray get to know each other, Lucy Gray shares that her parents died, her father presumably when a Peacekeeper shot him. Coriolanus shares her feelings of loss, as his father also died during the war. But Lucy Gray also suggests that the Hunger Games were a terrible, dehumanizing experience, where she had to do things she’d never consider under other circumstances (such as killing people with rat poison). She suggests that this robbed her of her childhood once again, just as the war did years ago. Coriolanus doesn’t find Lucy Gray’s story as compelling as his own discoveries over the course of the Hunger Games. Coriolanus begins to realize that being from a wealthy Capitol family doesn’t afford him as much privilege as he once thought. As he remembers the war while doing an assignment for Dr. Gaul, he remembers how cold and hungry he was and how adults took food from him. The government, he realizes, didn’t actually do much to take care of the Capitol’s children during the war. Dr. Gaul shows Coriolanus that she—a face of the government—still doesn’t think much of most Capitol children. It’s inconsequential to her when Clemensia is bitten by Dr. Gaul’s venomous snakes—indeed, Dr. Gaul sees it as something Clemensia deserved. She also has no reservations about sending Coriolanus into the arena to rescue Sejanus, something that puts him in danger of being killed by tributes. Most disturbingly for Coriolanus, Dr. Gaul presents it as a good learning experience that Coriolanus felt he had to murder a tribute named Bobbin in the arena. For Coriolanus, this seems like a betrayal of the student-teacher relationship; it makes him feel like he can’t trust any of the adults in his life to care for him.
Ultimately, the novel suggests that Panem doesn’t care about its children, whether district or Capitol—children are primarily tools and examples to frighten Panem’s residents into falling in line. By the end of the novel, Coriolanus understands two major reasons why the Hunger Games features children as tributes. First, children do represent hope for the future, so for the districts, seeing their children sacrificed and murdered in such a brutal way impresses upon them how powerful and heartless the Capitol is. But moreover, putting children in a situation where they’re forced to murder each other proves Dr. Gaul’s belief that humans are naturally violent. If she can get kids to kill each other on national television, she reasons, how could anyone think otherwise? Similarly, the many Capitol kids who die or are injured over the course of the Games—including Clemensia, Coriolanus, and Sejanus—show the kids themselves, as well as those kids’ families, that they must fall into line or they, like the district children, will be punished or disposed of. Hurting, intimidating, and killing children, Ballad suggests, is one of the easiest ways to hurt a whole community and maintain control over a population.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Children ThemeTracker
Children Quotes in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
A self-important little girl marched up beside them and pointed to a sign on the pillar at the edge of the enclosure. “It says, ‘Please don’t feed the animals.’”
“They’re not animals, though,” said Sejanus. “They’re kids, like you and me.”
“They’re not like me!” the little girl protested. “They’re district. That’s why they belong in a cage!”
“Hardly rebels. Some of them were two years old when the war ended. The oldest were eight. And now that the war’s over, they’re just citizens of Panem, aren’t they? Same as us? Isn’t that what the anthem says the Capitol does? ‘You give us light. You reunite’? It’s supposed to be everyone’s government, right?”
“That’s the general idea. Go on,” Dr. Gaul encouraged him.
“Well, then it should protect everyone,” said Sejanus. “That’s its number-one job! And I don’t see how making them fight to the death achieves that.”
It was like the Hunger Games. Only they weren’t district kids. The Capitol was supposed to protect them. He thought of Sejanus telling Dr. Gaul it was the government’s job to protect everybody, even the people in the districts, but he still wasn’t sure how to square that with the fact that they’d been such recent enemies. But certainly the child of a Snow should be a top priority. He could be dead if Clemensia had written the proposal instead of him. He buried his head in his hands, confused, angry, and most of all afraid. Afraid of Dr. Gaul. Afraid of the Capitol. Afraid of everything. If the people who were supposed to protect you played so fast and loose with your life…then how did you survive? Not by trusting them, that’s for sure.
“My condolences on the loss of your friend,” the dean said.
“And on your student. It’s a difficult day for all of us. But the procession was very moving,” Coriolanus replied.
“Did you think so? I found it excessive and in poor taste,” said Dean Highbottom. Taken by surprise, Coriolanus let out a short laugh before he recovered and tried to look shocked. The dean dropped his gaze to Coriolanus’s blue rosebud. “It’s amazing, how little things change. After all the killing. After all the agonized promises to remember the cost. After all of that, I can’t distinguish the bud from the blossom.”
His girl. His. Here in the Capitol, it was a given that Lucy Gray belonged to him, as if she’d had no life before her name was called out at the reaping. Even that sanctimonious Sejanus believed she was something he could trade for. If that wasn’t ownership, what was? With her song, Lucy Gray had repudiated all of that by featuring a life that had nothing to do with him, and a great deal to do with someone else. Someone she referred to as “lover,” no less.
What had mattered then, what mattered still, was living without that fear. So he added a paragraph about his deep relief on winning the war, and the grim satisfaction of seeing the Capitol’s enemies, who’d treated him so cruelly, who’d cost his family so much, brought to their knees. Hobbled. Impotent. Unable to hurt him anymore. He’d loved the unfamiliar sense of safety that their defeat had brought. The security that could only come with power. The ability to control things. Yes, that was what he’d loved best of all.
“But surely, you’re not comparing our children to theirs?” asked Lucky. “One look tells you ours are a superior breed.”
“One look tells you ours have had more food, nicer clothing, and better dental care,” said Dean Highbottom. “Assuming anything more, a physical, mental, or especially a moral superiority, would be a mistake. That sort of hubris almost finished us off in the war.”
“My cousin said to remember this isn’t of our making. That we’re still children, too.”
“That doesn’t help, somehow. Being used like this,” said Lysistrata sadly. “Especially when three of us are dead.”
Used? Coriolanus had not thought of being a mentor as anything but an honor. A way to serve the Capitol and perhaps gain a little glory. But she had a point. If the cause wasn’t honorable, how could it be an honor to participate in it? He felt confused, then manipulated, then undefended. As if he were more a tribute than a mentor.
Another student, or even the Coriolanus of a couple of weeks ago, would have protested this situation. Insisted on calling a parent or guardian. Pleaded. But after the snake attack on Clemensia, the aftermath of the bombing, and Marcus’s torture, he knew it would be pointless. If Dr. Gaul decided he was to go into the Capitol Arena, that’s where he would go, even if his prize was not at stake. He was just like the subjects of her other experiments, students or tributes, of no more consequence than the Avoxes in the cages. Powerless to object.
“What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.”
“So, if I’m a vicious animal, then who are you? You’re the teacher who sent her student to beat another boy to death!”
“I believe I said you could fight for the tributes, meaning you might be able to procure more humane conditions for them,” Coriolanus corrected him.
“Humane conditions!” Sejanus burst out. “They’re being forced to murder each other!”
It reminded me of my stint in the arena. It’s one to thing to speak of humans’ essential nature theoretically, another to consider it when a fist is smashing into your mouth. Only this time I felt more prepared. I’m not as convinced that we are all as inherently violent as you say, but it takes very little to bring the beast to the surface, at least under the cover of darkness. I wonder how many of those miners would have thrown a punch if the Capitol could have seen their faces?
It seemed a waste to be on guard, where clearly nothing ever happened, when he could be holding her in his arms. He felt trapped here on base, while she could freely roam the night. In some ways, it had been better to have her locked up in the Capitol, where he always had a general idea of what she was doing.
Everyone’s born as clean as a whistle—
As fresh as a daisy
And not a bit crazy.
Staying that way’s a hard row for hoeing—
As rough as a briar,
Like walking through fire.
Many fluttered into the sky, but the song had spread, and the woods were alive with it. “Lucy Gray! Lucy Gray!” Furious, he turned this way and that and finally blasted the woods in a full circle, going around and around until his bullets were spent. He collapsed on the ground, dizzy and nauseous, as the woods exploded, every bird of every kind screaming its head off while the mockingjays continued their rendition of “The Hanging Tree.” Nature gone mad. Genes gone bad. Chaos.
He went to the bathroom and emptied his pockets. The lake water had reduced his mother’s rose-scented powder to a nasty paste, and he threw the whole thing in the trash. The photos stuck together and shredded when he tried to separate them, so they went the way of the powder. Only the compass had survived the outing.
“Because we credit them with innocence. And if even the most innocent among us turn to killers in the Hunger Games, what does that say? That our essential nature is violent,” Snow explained.
