Day 2 of Sunrise on the Reaping Conversation!
One of the head scratcher mysteries about Sunrise on the Reaping that I returned to repeatedly in the run-up to yesterday’s publication of the second Hunger Games prequel was just how much of the story we had already been given. (See my ‘Everything We Know from the First Four Hunger Games Novels‘ for a full review of what we’d been told about Haymitch Abernathy’s Quarter Quell.) I marveled that Collins was writing a novel whose substance and ending she had already revealed.
It turns out that what we were told wasn’t actually the case, something that I might have guessed when the author saidrepeatedly that the book will be about the propaganda pushers’ power to shape a narrative. From the Reaping day in District 12 forward, the actual events and the official, re-packaged version for the public and for the historical record have little to nothing in common except the cast of characters.
For discussion in the comment thread below, then, two topics: first, let’s list all the things we learned (sic) in, say Catching Fire’s Quarter Quell video tape that Peeta and Katniss naively watch on the train to the Capitol, and what Sunrise reveals was actually the case (or times the events of Sunrise are immediately re-made) and, then, some speculation about where Collins is going with this. is it only an invitation to Young Adult readers to a Humean skepticism about all public messaging as necessarily sanitized versions of the truth to serve the regime power holders or is it something more?
Sunrise on the Reaping Placeholder Posts:
1: First Impressions — Delight or Dismay?
2. The Epigraphs from Orwell, Blake, and Hume
3. Collins’ Signature Story Structure
4. Katniss-Haymitch Parallels (Books 1 and 5)
I just re-read the CF section where Katniss & Peta watch Haymitch’s games on the train. Katniss’s conclusion “It’s almost as bad as us and the berries!”, and Haymitch’s response of “Almost, but not quite” has and impressive depth of meaning now that we know “the rest of the story”! Katniss & Peta on saw the Capitol’s sanitized version of the events; the narrative the Capitol wanted the people to accept. I’ve just been struck by a strange parallel; I’ve spent this week in a client’s IRS audit. There is most certainly a “narrative” we are trying to present to the IRS to reassure them a specific “story”…Do we all just do this naturally as humans? In this instance (and the Capitol’s instance) it’s a coordinated & group effort, with a specific goal in mind. But, I’m wondering if this just happens with all humans constantly across a continuum of levels…