‘Sunrise on the Reaping’ Inspired by Hume’s “Implicit Submission:” Three Take-Aways from Her Comments

March 13, 2025 by Leave a Comment

As discussed in the ‘Sunrise on the Reaping: All We Know‘ post, the second Hunger Games prequel is almost unique among Collins’ offerings in that she has spelled out which political message inspired the work and the direction she chose to take the story in light of that point of origin. Per the People magazine article:

Along with unveiling the book’s cover, Collins teased what fans can expect in the new novel which follows her latest prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

“With Sunrise on the Reaping, I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘The easiness with which the many are governed by the few,’ ” she said, per the release. 

“The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative,” she continued. “The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”

There are three take-aways there:

  • Hume’s “idea of implicit submission” was her starting point, what “inspired” Sunrise,
  • the story she wrote “lent itself,” which is to say ‘she chose to make it,’ a  “deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative,” and
  • she tied it into her original series’ primary theme and with the world today by concluding,  “The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”

Let’s go through these one at a time, starting with David Hume. [Read more…]

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Haymitch and the Donner Sisters: Key to the Mockingjay Resistance Movement? Sunrise on the Reaping & the Pearl Plot

March 12, 2025 by Leave a Comment

I am re-reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes tonight after thinking more about David Levithan’s praise for the Sunrise cover. I reviewed Catching Fire yesterday because its Chapter 14 has the thumbnail sketch of Haymitch’s victory in the Quarter Quell that will be the subject of Sunrise. Levithan’s comments, though, I think reflect continuity between Ballad and Sunrise that is as great or greater than that between the second books of each three novel series, a continuity reflected in the Ballad and Sunrise covers.

While I do that reading, though, I want to share links to three Hogwarts Professor posts about The Hunger Games, two that I wrote fifteen years ago in the exciting months before the publication of Mockingjay and one conversation with fans immediately afterward:

(If you only have time for one, make it The Hunger Games ‘Pearl Plot,’ version 2.0.)

The ‘Pearl Plot’ was my guess that, consequent to the Quarter Quell that Haymitch wins, the surviving Donner sister (whom I designate as ‘Pearl’ because she is not given a first name but ‘Madge’ her daughter has a name via ‘Margaret’ that means ‘pearl’) recruits the conspirators and writes the Mockingjay rebellion counter-narrative that leads to the Reaping Day selection of Katniss (via Prim) and Peeta — and almost all the events of the 74th Hunger Games.

Needless to say, I hope, Mockingjay did not deliver on any of the Pearl Plot’s premises being revealed, which should have been no surprise given that District 12 is destroyed by the Capitol at the end of Catching Fire (Goodbye, Undersees!) and the third novel is crowded with Katniss’ victory over the Capitol and District 13 and her eventual apotheosis.

As more than one reader pointed out, though, in the discussion thread dedicated to the Pearl Plot after Mockingjay was published that Collins might be saving all that revelation for a Hunger Games Prequel novel. I hope you’ll read the ‘Pearl Plot’ posts and let me know if you think Sunrise on the Reaping (or the prequel series finale?) will include revelations of what really happened in Katniss’ Hunger Games before the pyrotechnics of Mockingjay!

Post (squared):

If you want to read my book-length discussion of the meaning of The Hunger Games series, it’s available in these three Hogwarts Professor posts:

Unlocking Mockingjay: The Spiritual Allegory’ On Katniss as a Soul Seeking Perfection and Iconological Reading

‘Unlocking Mockingjay: ‘The Literary Alchemy’ On Literary Alchemy and Peeta as Postmodern Christ

‘Unlocking Mockingjay: Katniss’ Apotheosis’ On the Alchemical Arena and Katniss’ Perfection in the Inner Sanctuary

All the Hogwarts Professor Hunger Games  commentary is available at ‘Unlocking Mockingjay: The Complete Set of Posts And a Round-up of the First 30 Discussion Points.‘ Enjoy!

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Sunrise on the Reaping: All We Know

March 11, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Photo by Todd Plitt, Scholastic

With a week to go until the publication of the second Hunger Games series prequel, let’s take a look at the five things we have been told about Sunrise on the Reaping.

(1) The Plot — and the Ending?

From the Sunrise Amazon page:

When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

For readers of the Hunger Games original series, this is not much of tease. We’ve read about the Quarter Quell that Haymitch Abernathy won in Chasing Fire, chapter 14, in which Peeta and Katniss watch the edited tape of how he survived. All Ms Collins’ books are twenty-seven chapters long, which makes chapter 14 of Chasing Fire the central or pivotal chapter of that book and of the entire series. In the coming week we’ll be taking a deep dive into it, as you’d expect.

But we know how Haymitch’s Hunger Games experience ends or at least how the Capitol edited the story. That’s a first for anything Collins has written.

(2) We Have the First Two Pages of the Story

Scholastic released a teaser as a kind of ‘book trailer’ and it has quite a bit of information we didn’t have from Haymitch, who said relatively little about his Games in the Katniss and Peeta Saga. If you haven’t read it, you can read it at one of the several venues that claim to have it exclusively. Here’s the Barnes & Noble version.

I hope to give this excerpt a close reading in the next few days with Elizabeth Baird-Hardy but the top three notes of interest are that Haymitch is the narrator of the opening chapter (and I hope the rest of the book), it is his 16th birthday and as a gift to Abernathy fans we get to meet his younger brother and mother as well as a brief look at their subsistence existence, and, last but not least, it is a Reaping Day times Two because of the Quarter Quell and our hero wants to spend some time with his true love, Lenore Dove. [Read more…]

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Top Ten Pointers to the Trilogy

June 4, 2020 by 7 Comments

It’s been an exciting past week or so here for serious readers, from J.K. Rowling’s new slow-release of The Ickabog to the release of the new Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. We’ve already taken a few looks here at the new prequel, which will doubtless continue to yield further treasures upon repeated readings. If you have not yet checked out The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I hope you will, and that you will join our conversation on its many layers. One of the most interesting features is the way in which the novel uses foreshadowing for events that we, savvy readers of the original trilogy, already know well. Although set 64 years before Katniss Everdeen’s name comes out of the Reaping bowl in the well-manicured hand of Effie Trinket, this novel should only be read by those who have already completed the trilogy. Like the Star Wars prequels, with moments like Obi-Wan Kenobi chiding his friend Anakin Skywalker, “You’re going to be the death of me,” BSS  is an experience that only works if the readers know what is coming. This is a useful technique in literature and film. After all, we cannot gasp with horror when Oedipus declares that the murderer of Laius will be exiled and live in misery, unless we are familiar with the myth, so we know he himself is the man he seeks and that he will indeed be ruined and miserable.  We cannot mentally headslap people in Titanic when they declare the ship’s invincibility if we do not know that the ship is going down, along with many of its passengers and their hubris.

So here are our first “top ten” moments and themes of The Ballad of Songbirds Snakes that point to and set up the trilogy we already know, some of us quite well. This is just the start to a much longer list, one that I am sure will grow with each reading. [Read more…]

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, First Thoughts on a Sad, Familiar Song

May 22, 2020 by 11 Comments

When I first started using The Hunger Games in my college English 111 courses, it was an obscure little book, and I was the only one in any of my classes who had read it before the first day. But times have changed over the past decade. I still use the book in my classes, mainly because I have not found anything else that works so well. In that time, movies have been made(with some of my students as extras), popularity has swelled, and my students who don’t pay attention to my constant harping on the importance of the number three in the trilogy (they are confused by four films), keep saying they want a “fourth” book. Instead of spoiling the beautiful symmetry of the original trilogy, the master Gamemaker herself brings us a prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which is both its own special sort of creature and a perfect companion to the original trilogy.

If you haven’t yet read Suzanne Collins’s just-released prequel to The Hunger Games trilogy, fear not, spoilers won’t crop up until after the break, but, if you have read the novel already, or don’t mind the spoilers, join me for a quick round-up of first thoughts, using the three major elements of the title, Snakes, Songbirds, and Ballads, but in reverse order (why? There are many reasons, actually, but I may fall back on the old excuse that I am an ornery mountain woman with excessive book learning). There will be many more posts to come, but we’ll start the dance here.

[Read more…]

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