Back to Panem We Go!

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE ORIGINAL HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY, A BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES, SUNRISE ON THE REAPING, ALONG WITH ALL AUTHOR APPROVED COMPANION BOOKS… YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED 😉

In case you’re not a fan, have been living under a rock, or, like me, believe Battle Royale did it first, there’s a NEW Hunger Games MOVIE, based off of the “newest” book in the series, which I truly hope you already know about, because the movie is landing in November, so let’s start collectively losing our minds because I AM SO EXCITED!! So, let’s do what we do best, Internet: break this down and fall in love again… but be warned: Panem has changed…

THIS time, we’re getting something wholly different from Collins. For a very prominent character who appears throughout the entire series, minus one book, helps keep TWO Tributes alive, is instrumental in a successful revolution while STILL keeping said Tributes alive—even though they NEVER LISTEN — and somehow manages to be both incredibly irritating and useful at the EXACT SAME time, but we honestly know next to nothing about Haymitch Abernathy.

This is the Mentor who bucked the Capitol not once, not twice, but multiple times, yet all we are really given is a drunken fool who doesn’t seem to take anything too seriously. Which can be annoying—at least to me, but I’m annoying—but we, the readers, only ever had a very surface-level understanding of who this man was and why he acted this way.

But seriously, think about it! Before Sunrise on the Reaping, what could you tell me about Haymitch that wasn’t just the basic information on the page? He never even says the names of the people he lost to Katniss or Peeta in Catching Fire when he walks in while they’re watching the tail end of his Games, and even that is handled in an almost joking manner. So, in that regard, Collins created a polarizing yet lovable character that we never actually knew… until now. And honestly, that’s impressive.

I think this book has hit a lot of people hard and in different ways, and I’m not even going to touch how relevant it is in today’s climate. Battle Royale should do that for you if you somehow missed why I will forever die on that particular hill… but we finally get to understand this drunk, gross man who somehow manages to keep two Tributes alive and still walks out of it all to become a key player in overthrowing the dictatorship that is Panem.

Not many authors are brave enough to throw their characters under the bus while redeeming them at the same time, so I think that’s a huge part of the excitement.

But, in my opinion, this time it’s different because we are actually meeting Haymitch—not the Haymitch that was constructed over years we didn’t know about. We meet Lenore Dove, and Haymitch is such a romantic sap! I was like, is this the same guy? We meet his adorable brother, Sid, and see how loving and caring Haymitch is. We meet his Ma, who is, like almost every woman in Panem, a friggin bada**, and we see Haymitch’s love for her.

We never saw Haymitch love in the original trilogy.

And maybe that’s part of why I love prequels and sequels so much—or maybe that’s just me shoving my opinion onto all of you—but there’s always a character I want to know more about who eventually gets shunted aside, and I’m always sitting there like, COME ON… please, lol?

And I think that’s why The Hunger Games suddenly feels different here: more adult, darker, and maybe the most truthful book in the series.

Every moment hit so hard because we only ever knew the shadow of Haymitch.

When he tells Plutarch he doesn’t drink, I was floored! I was also so sad because it immediately becomes, what happened? And that’s not even midway through the book. The reader is automatically locked in because suddenly everything we thought we knew about this character is being challenged.

We may resist it because we are a stubborn people lol, but once we put our little tantrums down, ya know, we’re left with a whole new book that has reframed our view of an entire series. That’s an incredible thing for a work of fiction to do.

And I have to say, I love The Hunger Games fans. Any fandom makes me laugh because we essentially don’t like each other—we all think we appreciate the books, movie, show, whatever it is, correctly—while I’m just sitting there like, tell me ALL of it. You could probably make 50 books out of fandom disagreements alone and have a pretty epic series.

And I think that’s something Collins managed to understand.

She’s smart, she knows her fans, she is a talented writer, and she’s savvy. She wanted to give us more, but she waited. She didn’t push her fans into new territory until it was the right time, and then we all accepted it almost immediately.

That is NOT easy to do with fandoms.

Just ask anyone who isn’t a 100% Swiftie lol… actually don’t. I worry for your safety, and I love Taylor lol.

But what struck me most about this book were the twists Collins threw at us, particularly the brutality of Panem.

Drusilla, the District 12 Escort, is absolutely terrifying, a huge 180 from Effie’s treatment of Katniss and Peeta… so, we know about it in the original trilogy, obviously, but it is presented in a much tamer way than Haymitch’s Panem. Haymitch knew The Hanging Tree, had seen rebels hanged, and had knowledge about Panem through the Covey that we simply weren’t given before.

Even introducing the Covey reframes the entire series, because wait… there’s no fence? They could just go to Katniss’s lake?

Everything about Peeta and Katniss’s Panem is different, and we are shown how the brutality used to be so obvious. But because people kept buying into it, that brutality had become almost normalized by the time Katniss and Peeta landed in their first Arena.

I think a great example of this is the relationship between Effie and Haymitch.

They actually are friends, and Sunrise gives us a WHY for once.

Because in the original trilogy, it feels like they loathe each other. Then you read Sunrise and realize Effie has been with Haymitch since the beginning and has tried to help him. She DOES understand that the Games are brutal and gross, even if she won’t say it out loud. Her treatment of the Tributes speaks a lot louder than the propaganda she has been taught is the only safe way to avoid getting some gross poisoned oysters sent your way.

So not only are we getting Haymitch’s true story and meeting Haymitch for the first time, we’re also meeting Effie and getting a much better understanding of who she is.

“She wasn’t born evil, she just had a lot of unlearning to do…”

Haymitch is right.

Unlike so many of the Capitol adults around him, Effie sees the humans behind the Tributes. She sees the children being sacrificed for an idea she knows is wrong. It changes so much about what we thought we knew, and that’s what I love about it.

I love an author challenging me to like a character, to hate one, to let one remain mysterious for now, or to make me try to figure out what might happen. It’s like playing a game of chess you know you’ll win but have zero patience for—like me.

But that’s what this book has done: it has made longtime fans, new fans, and even non-fans think.

That’s what makes a book great: the challenge to think for yourself, to own your opinions, to prove yourself wrong or right… doesn’t matter! All that matters is loving something and letting it be what it needs to be, and Collins did that… for us.

I will say I was shocked, and I love Tarantino and gratuitous violence probably more than your average person, but Wellie’s scene had my jaw on the floor.

You hear about one death like that—ONE—and it’s in reference to Annie Cresta and why she lost it after her Games. But that level of brutality was not present in Katniss and Peeta’s Games. I’m very curious how they’re going to handle that scene because I genuinely stopped and went, whoa, wait… what did I just read?

And that is the crux of Haymitch.

He carries immense guilt over Maysilee, Wellie, then his entire family, and finally the love of his life—all of it ripped away from him the second he is allowed to return to District 12.

So he builds a fake Haymitch.

Not to protect himself.

To protect anyone who might get close enough to him for Snow to notice.

Because Snow was never going to let Haymitch have a happy life, no matter how many years passed. No one can hold a grudge like good old Snow, right?

And when all of this finally comes together toward the very end of the book, my reaction was basically, “Well, f**k me. This is so tragic, I’m proud that Haymitch is still even here!”

Because then you think about what came next.

He had to mentor two kids every year who he knew were almost certainly going to die—not because they were weak, but because Snow was never going to hand Haymitch another victory of any kind.

What would you have done?

It also kind of makes me dislike Katniss more—and I’ve got some issues with that girl, but I won’t go there… yet—because she blames Haymitch constantly, while using her own past to define so many of her decisions, without ever really stopping to think that maybe somebody else is doing the exact same thing.

And I think that also shows how much Panem has shifted.

Katniss can look at Haymitch and see a drunken mess without really thinking about what this man has been forced to do every single year since he was sixteen… until she wins the Games herself. Then she understands, but really only as much as we do, so it’s interesting how Collins used that literary trick to set herself up for future installments. Pretty ballsy and brilliant considering writers are notoriously grumpy curmudgeons like myself lol.

But this book was so good! I’ve read it so many times, and I’m so happy Collins finally gave us a WHY while also reframing our thoughts on other major players and the entire series.

I had no idea how tragic Haymitch’s life truly was.

There’s tragic, and then there’s, “HOLY F**K I WOULD HAVE DIPPED OUT,” tragic, and Haymitch is very firmly the latter.

I think this book arrived at the perfect time, and Collins did an amazing job of not forcing the story. She gave us what we’ve been yelling at her for lol—we are so demanding—but she delivered.

Now we have to wait and hope the movie does the same.

From what I’ve seen, it looks amazing. Just using The Who’s Love, Reign O’er Me remixed for the trailer was SO EPIC that I remade the mix myself because I couldn’t find one.

And that’s what I think Collins has managed to do that very few authors successfully pull off: stay true to herself and her original story while still growing with her fans, constantly pulling the lens farther back and showing us that the story we thought we knew was only ever one version of it.

We knew Haymitch Abernathy.

Or at least we thought we did.

Turns out, we had only ever met the version of him that survived.

See you there… And May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor