The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-10

Part 2, Chapters 11-15

Part 2, Chapters 16-20

Part 3, Chapters 21-25

Part 3, Chapter 26-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

May the Odds Be Never in Your Favor: Love Versus Power

The development of the book’s protagonist, Coriolanus, from conflicted youth to cold-blooded killer, can be traced via his evolving relationship with Lucy Gray. She is first faceless tribute, then potentially unfaithful lover, before finally transforming into a threat to his very survival. Throughout all of this—even as he claims to love her—Coriolanus struggles to see her as fully human. Gradually, the reader witnesses Coriolanus become President Snow, the consummate villain of the original trilogy: He slowly but surely acknowledges that, for him, people are either objects to be used in the service of his ambition or obstacles to be eliminated on his path to power.

He initially views Lucy Gray in terms of how she can be of use to him. She represents a challenge through which he can gain access to greater power; if his mentorship is successful, then he will attend University and ascend to the presidency as is his birthright. His actions can be interpreted as gestures of gallantry—meeting her at the train station; bringing her food; giving her his mother’s compact—or as self-serving measures that further his own agenda. Likewise, Lucy Gray is defined by her attachment to Coriolanus: She is both his possession, alternately his tribute or “his girl,” and his charge. They are tasked with saving each other’s lives—she saves his incidentally; he saves hers deliberately (and dishonestly, according to the powers that be)—and are thus inextricably linked. But, since both have motives to perform for the other—their “love” story being of mutual interest—genuine intentions are difficult to decipher. This is particularly true of Lucy Gray, whose inner thoughts are inaccessible to both Coriolanus and the reader.

Through each iteration of their relationship, there is one constant: She is always an object, not quite human. At one point, Coriolanus recognizes that, “[t]he more he treated her as something special, the more she’d become human” (68). This idea is underscored by the indoctrination Coriolanus experiences at the hands of his elders: His Grandma’am not so subtly tells him “[t]o dine with her suggests that you consider her your equal. But she isn’t. There’s always been something barbaric about the districts” (77). This kind of rhetoric continues in the classroom, under the authority of Dr. Gaul, where the students openly discuss their lack of concern for the sub-human tributes.

When love is subjected to such an unequal distribution of power, it inevitably becomes distorted, deformed and doomed by the pressures of status and the status quo. Coriolanus cannot simply stop being “Capitol,” as much as Lucy Gray cannot stop being “Covey.” And in the world of Panem, that means that only one of them has access to power and control. In the end, Lucy Gray becomes yet another obstacle for Coriolanus to overcome. As Coriolanus himself realizes, as he literally hunts her down, the irony of their star-crossed love story is “how quickly their relationship had deteriorated into their own private Hunger Games” (502).

Governing Principles: Autocratic Versus Democratic

Note: Epigraphs can be found on the unnumbered front of the 2020 Scholastic hardcover edition.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, like many dystopian works, is not merely a novel about particular characters in a fictional place; in this instance, it is also concerned about the nature of power and the strength of the social contract. Through both characters and thematic constructs, the author addresses philosophical ideas about how humans behave and how they should be governed. Her opening epigraphs, among them quotations from Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, signal to the reader that the book grapples with some of history’s most influential ideas.

Hobbes harbors a bleaker view of humanity: His epigraph reads, in part, “during the time men live without a Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre.” That humans would live in a constant state of warfare if no all-encompassing “Power” tames their essentially irrational and violent nature is the view endorsed by Dr. Gaul. Discussing Coriolanus’s near-death experience in the arena, she reminds him “[h]ow quickly civilization disappears” in the face of mortal threat (243). Furthermore, she emphasizes that “who we are determines the type of governing we need,” nudging Coriolanus to develop his ideas about control versus chaos (243-44). By the end of the book, Coriolanus concludes that control is necessary in society: “Didn’t these people [the rebels] understand that the whole system would collapse without the Capitol’s control?” (452).

This is in stark contrast to Sejanus Plinth’s philosophy of “that’s the main thing for me […] living in a place where [the Capitol] can’t control my life” (450). His view is that authoritarian control smothers individual freedom, his voice putting him in league with Locke. The author quotes Locke in another epigraph, expressing with regard to humanity “that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Clearly, this philosophy is the precursor for Thomas Jefferson’s famous words in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence—which paved the way for a democratic system of government. This is the antithesis of the Capitol’s autocratic style of governing—and immediately nullifies both the existence of and justification for the Hunger Games. Coriolanus’s—and by extension, the Capitol’s—views come out on top, however, as Sejanus is branded a traitor and executed. The Games must go on.

Thus, the book is as much an origin story about the Hunger Games as it is about the moral devolution of Coriolanus Snow. The Epilogue reveals that Coriolanus has been working with Dr. Gaul in order to refine this spectacle of cruelty, to make it into the perfect deterrent for rebellion that it was meant to be. They will ensure that it will no longer be the case that “the people in the districts had no stake in the Games” (511). They will use food as an incentive: when a district’s tribute wins the Games, there will be additional food for all residents. They also hope to attract “a better class of tributes to possibly volunteer,” with the promise of a cash reward and a decent home for the winning tribute (511). At last, Coriolanus understands what the Games are really all about: witnessing “the most innocent among us [children] turn to killers in the Hunger Games,” proving that “our essential nature is violent” (515).

More Meditations on Freedom

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes in another epigraph, “[m]an is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” This simple and striking statement illuminates one of the central conflicts of the novel: No one is free, either from the Capitol’s tyranny or from the expectations of their social class. Sejanus yearns to be free of the Capitol’s control, yet Coriolanus rightly believes that its reach is far too great; Coriolanus also wishes to be free of his responsibilities as a renowned citizen. He certainly wishes to be free of having to acquiesce to the demands of amoral characters such as Dr. Gaul in his quest for power. For all his family’s fading glory, Coriolanus is never any freer than Sejanus; the fact that the author repeatedly points out that the mentors and mentees are interchangeable only further emphasizes this. As Dean Highbottom puts it, “we’re all in the arena together” (274). When Coriolanus returns to the Capitol after his brief exile in District 12, Dr. Gaul greets him with “[s]o the victor returns” (508), conflating him with a tribute. The deadly social contract Panem makes with its citizens implicates everyone in their literal and figurative games.

The issue of freedom is further complicated by Lucy Gray’s arrival on the Capitol scene: She belongs nowhere. She is not of the Capitol nor the districts; she is Covey, an outsider and wanderer whose connection to the natural world is made explicit by her association with William Wordsworth, one of the great nature poets. Yet, she too gets caught up in the Capitol’s machinations as a tribute, and later, as a creature at the mercy of Coriolanus. It is fitting that the Wordsworth epigraph expresses the sentiment that the sweetness of “Nature” is distorted by “meddling intellect:” It ends with the line, “We murder to dissect.” The enigma that is Lucy Gray, like the unintended mockingjays, must be culled according to Coriolanus’s rationale. From his perspective, anything beyond the reach of the Capitol’s control is chaotic, dangerous, and “unnatural” (416): He believes that “[t]he Capitol controlled the known world” (394), and furthermore, it should. The mockingjay, and by extension, Lucy Gray and the Covey, are nothing more than “[n]ature running amok” (416). And yet, this is where the Capitol’s limitations are exposed.

In imposing absolute power, the Capitol—and later, Coriolanus—forget the citizens’ desire for freedom, their yearning for self-determination even at the risk of peril. Like nature “running amok,” the force of rebellion becomes a self-replicating organism, gaining numbers and strength as it grows. The ultimate irony is that Lucy Gray leaves the lake house to gather katniss—the edible root of an aquatic plant—when Coriolanus decides to hunt her down (497). If he indeed succeeded in killing her (as the body is never found), then her remains return to nature, feeding the land. The spirit of Lucy Gray lives on, nourishing the katniss plant of which a future heroine, rebel, symbol, and nemesis of President Snow—Katniss Everdeen—is named.