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One of the important aspects of Catching Fire is how it subtly provides plausibility for why Panem’s citizens - who are, even in the most well-off of districts, nothing more than destitute slaves - would allow this autocracy to propagate and even embrace it to a degree. That provision is that the Hunger Games are only the most visible component of a culture that’s bred and trained to fear its own companions and neighbors, and to move toward intimidation and warlike tactics to subdue those fears. Snow, in a final attempt to subdue an uprising, announces a special version of the Hunger Games that will pit Katniss and Peeta against other past winners - thereby almost certainly ensuring their death - and this is what turns the tide of Panem decisively against him.

The final third of the novel details an arena battle that’s shorter, bloodier, more efficient, and much more ambiguous as far as its effect on the public than the one we last saw (where weeks of footage of 20-odd violent killings are edited into a sappy love story for Capitol citizens to fawn over, in one of the grisliest satirical barbs thrown at both the viewer who buys into the artificiality of interpersonal connections on reality TV, as well as the reader who might have been expecting - or hoping for - a redux of Stephenie Meyer’s vapid Twilight quadrilogy). Internal monologue hypothesizes that this is because the Capitol knows this installment of the Games is unpopular with the citizens, and wishes it to be over as quickly as possible.

Since the entirety of Catching Fire is limited to Katniss’ point of view, we are reduced to hypothesizing about the tone and tension behind events. And as it turns out, the Games are a sham from both sides; Snow is using them to surreptitiously rid himself of the symbol of a burgeoning political revolution, while the revolution is using them to reveal itself to the country by saving, extracting, and taking possession of the same symbol (Katniss, in both cases). This theme of manipulation for political gain or progress culminates in Mockingjay, but the seeds were planted and begin to grow here. The first half of Catching Fire is possibly the most solid and structurally-sound writing in the series, and the second half contains most of the foundation upon which the trilogy constructs its final conflicts.


The Movie

As this column is being finalized, Lionsgate CEO Tim Palen has outlined a firm plan to contract out development of several Hunger Games-themed park attractions, ranging from recreations of District 12 to simulations of Capitol train travel to, of all things, Peeta Mellark’s bakery. Mind you, this is the CEO who has shepherded all of the adaptations to the screen. Certainly, the concept of a real-life Hunger Games theme park is astonishingly tone-deaf to what the trilogy concludes about commoditizing violence and death (especially for the sake of pitching a narrative to a mass audience), but it’s even more so coming from a studio that presumably has been aware of these themes for years.

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