Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest Hunger Games novel by Suzanne Collins, has been out for about a month but has generated a lot of online chatter already.
For those unacquainted with the fandom, it began with the original Hunger Games trilogy. It followed Katniss Everdeen, a seventeen-year-old from a poor District in a bleak future America. The government, run by the rich people of the Capitol, has children from the Districts fight to the death every year in the Hunger Games. The Capitol does this as punishment for when the Districts attempted to rebel against their oppression. They also broadcast the Games as a form of “entertainment.” In the original series, Katniss survives the Games and leads a rebellion to bring down the Capitol and stop the bloodshed.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a prequel novel, tells the story of Capitol dictator President Snow. All these books have been made into movies, with Sunrise on the Reaping to follow suit. Hunger Games fans make up one of the biggest book fandoms online.
Unfortunately, the real-life reception to these books sometimes proves their point. People so badly want to be entertained that they may not engage with that entertainment critically.
I don’t think this is true of all, or even most, Hunger Games fans. And I don’t want to be judgmental of the people I only see through a screen. However, when I see fangirls wanting to “be” Katniss, a person forced to kill to survive, I wonder if we read the same book series. When people call it another “love triangle” story, it shows they did not absorb its lessons on oppression. It’s valid to be concerned about how other online fans discussed how “hot” the young version of Snow, a sociopathic oppressor, was, even if he is just a fictional character.
A big sentiment I’ve seen about Sunrise in the Reaping and Haymitch Abernathy winning his Games is that Suzanne Collins was “disappointed.” I’ll say that it, perhaps even more so than the other books, wasn’t playing any game. There are four quotes by famous authors at the beginning about how propaganda influences people’s sense of truth. The story repeatedly shows how media shapes who people are, and how it can influence the most oppressed. Even Haymitch, a boy marked for death by his government, is forced into what another character calls “implicit submission.”
The main message is that without the Capitol, its police, and its President, “there is no peace.”
We all know, as Haymitch does, that what is happening to him is unjust. But the book doesn’t let us feel smug and righteous simply by knowing this. Instead, it asks, “If you were surrounded by words and images showing you this was the way of the world, would you disrupt what is peaceful and normal for a laughably slim chance of doing what is right?” And I think, with today’s “normal” so different than even a year ago, these questions are (unfortunately) very poignant.
For other Hunger Games fans, it’s not a spoiler to say that Haymitch doesn’t have much of an impact on how things are in Sunrise in the Reaping. He makes some rebellious moves, but most end only with the Capitol erasing the evidence and punishing him ten times over. If not for the end of the original series, it would feel like the end of 1984. There would be an image of a boot “stomping on a human face [f]orever.” While awful, I think it’s poignant because it shows that revolutions can take time. And not everyone, in fact, almost no one, is rewarded for acting against the powers that be.
And yet, although this is acknowledged, so is the fact that resistance can work eventually. It makes the book tragic and heartwarming, realistic and hopeful, all at once.
It’s the kind of down-to-earth, critical narrative I think we all need right now. And what I’ve seen in fan spaces has confirmed that notion. There are certainly a lot of tears on Twitter, Tumblr, and Goodreads, but a lot of conversation, too. People returning to the original series with everything Sunrise on the Reaping showed us. I’ve even seen a TikTok of a girl saying she would no longer make “Snow thirst traps” because she had “learned her lesson.” It made me laugh, but made me hopeful, too.
Featured image via Matias North on Unsplash
