The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes explores how trusting and loyal relationships form and function within the specific circumstances of postwar Panem. Throughout the first two sections of the novel (which detail the week before the 10th Annual Hunger Games—a gladiator-style sporting event where poor children from the districts fight to the death—and then the Games themselves), the Gamemakers (people who design the Hunger Games) and Capitol leaders institute a program so that promising Capitol students can mentor tributes, suggesting that they see loyalty as a compelling phenomenon. The idea is that the trusting relationships formed under these circumstances will encourage viewers to actually tune into the games by introducing an emotional element for Capitol citizens. In the novel’s third part, after the Games end and the story shifts to Coriolanus’s stint in District 12 as a new Peacekeeper, Coriolanus has to think more deeply about trust and loyalty as he embarks on a romance with his winning tribute from the Games, the singer Lucy Gray Baird. Throughout the novel, at least as it pertains to Coriolanus’s life and experience, Ballad positions trust as a tool that’s nice to have, rather than as a necessity for a healthy relationship. And in light of Coriolanus’s selfish goals (which mainly consist of helping the Capitol maintain its power over the districts), the novel suggests that trust and loyalty are less powerful motivators than money, fear, and power.
At first, Coriolanus and his classmates see getting their tributes to trust them as a way to get viewers to tune into the Games and boost their own reputations. The mentorship program itself—and the broader push to make the Games interesting for viewers—indicates that at least when the trust is between mentors and tributes (where there’s a huge power difference), trust is something that adds interest but isn’t strictly necessary. This is best evidenced by Coriolanus telling Sejanus that it doesn’t matter whether his tribute Marcus, a former classmate from District Two, will talk to or trust Sejanus. Marcus is so big and burly that he’s a favorite to win anyway, even if he won’t speak to Sejanus. In Coriolanus’s mind, trust is unnecessary in this situation: both Sejanus and Marcus will benefit when Marcus inevitably wins the Games. Coriolanus, meanwhile, ends up with the female tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird. Because female tributes—let alone those from District 12—never win the Games, Coriolanus initially uses the trusting relationship he forms with Lucy Gray to help cement her status among viewers as a compelling young girl who shouldn’t be in the Games at all, and his own status as a powerful and gracious young man. Even when Lucy Gray and Coriolanus fall in love, her trust in him really just serves to make her and Coriolanus sympathetic to viewers.
In District 12, Coriolanus starts to see that trust is an important element of a healthy relationship. As he and Lucy Gray rekindle their romance, Lucy Gray shares that to her, the most important thing in a relationship—before love, even—is trust. Because Coriolanus so desperately wants to impress Lucy Gray, he considers this idea and tries to show her how much he trusts her (and how much she should trust him), such as by sneaking off base to see her, defending her against her former partner Billy Taupe, and writing to a friend in the Capitol to try to get her band, the Covey, more strings for their instruments. Their trusting relationship deepens when Lucy Gray witnesses Coriolanus murder the mayor’s daughter, Mayfair Lipp, to try to protect himself, Sejanus, and Lucy Gray from being discovered to be associated with rebels in the area. Coriolanus feels as though Lucy Gray is the only person he can trust, which culminates in his choice to run away with her (he believes that if he stays, he’ll inevitably be executed for murdering Mayfair). Their trust in each other, the novel suggests, is strong enough to make running away into the wilderness and inviting the government to label them as rebels seem like a good idea.
However, Coriolanus is ultimately too self-involved to be in a truly trusting relationship. Trust, for him, is something he can abuse to manipulate people—and better his own status along the way. Coriolanus is, throughout the novel, unable to move beyond his belief that as a young man from a wealthy Capitol family, he deserves wealth, power, prestige, and whatever else he wants. And this belief causes him to abuse people’s trust. First, he betrays Sejanus by using a jabberjay to record Sejanus’s admission that he’s conspiring with rebels to run away, knowing Dr. Gaul will hear it and take action. Sejanus erroneously believed he could trust Coriolanus to keep his secret—but for Coriolanus, it’s more important to make sure he won’t get in trouble, and to support the Capitol’s aims, than it is to protect his friend’s secrets. Coriolanus also betrays Lucy Gray’s trust. Lucy Gray first realizes she can’t trust Coriolanus when she puts it together that he’s the one who ratted out Sejanus—and to her, this is an unforgivable offense. Knowing that she doesn’t trust him anymore and is the only person still alive who knows he murdered Mayfair, Coriolanus realizes he can’t trust Lucy Gray: she’s the last thing standing between him and a career as a powerful military commander. So he doesn’t hesitate to betray her by shooting at her in the woods and possibly killing her.
Though Coriolanus is the character who most often betrays others’ trust, the novel is filled with instances where people betray each other, put each other in danger, or don’t uphold their end of a deal. With this, Ballad paints a picture of a world where Coriolanus’s behavior might seem evil to readers—but his world is one where trust, if it exists at all, is a tool to help a person get ahead, and nothing more than that.
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Trust and Loyalty Quotes in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Coriolanus thought about his grandmother’s roses, which were still prized in the Capitol. The old woman nurtured them arduously in the roof garden that came with the penthouse, both out of doors and in a small solar greenhouse. She parceled out her flowers like diamonds, though, so it had taken a good bit of persuasion to get this beauty. “I need to make a connection with her. As you always say, your roses open any doors.” It was a testament to how worried his grandmother was about their situation that she had allowed it.
By now the smell of the car, musty and heavy with manure, had reached Coriolanus. They were transporting the tributes in livestock cars, and not very clean ones at that. He wondered if they had been fed and let out for fresh air, or just locked in after their reapings. Accustomed as he was to viewing the tributes on-screen, he had not prepared himself properly for this encounter in the flesh, and a wave of pity and revulsion swept through him. They really were creatures out of another world. A hopeless, brutish world.
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.
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.
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.
“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!”
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.
Free to speak his mind? Of course, he did. Well, within reason. He didn’t go around shooting his mouth off about every little thing. What did she mean? She meant what he thought about the Capitol. And the Hunger Games. And the districts. The truth was, most of what the Capitol did, he supported, and the rest rarely concerned him. But if it came to it, he’d speak out. Wouldn’t he? Against the Capitol? Like Sejanus had? Even if it meant repercussions? He didn’t know, but he felt on the defensive.
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.
