Propaganda and Possibilities in Sunrise on the Reaping
Sunrise on the Reaping is a worthy addition to the Hunger Games franchise, fleshing out a character essential to the original trilogy while adding ideas that integrate with those it illustrates.
This is not a review. See why.
Author’s note: Sunrise on the Reaping is a prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy. Chronologically it occurs after the first prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (in which we see the tenth Hunger Games), and before the beginning of The Hunger Games (in which we see the 74th). If you are unfamiliar with the original trilogy, I provided relevant context at the beginning of my article on those books, which you can read here.
Spoilers in this article will be limited to the events of the original Hunger Games trilogy.
Context
When we meet Haymitch Abernathy early in The Hunger Games, he is stumbling drunkenly onstage to mentor Katniss and Peeta, convinced he is about to watch them both die despite his best efforts to prevent that outcome. Throughout the original trilogy, we meet many victors who have developed substance abuse problems while trying to cope with their Games-related trauma; Haymitch is not unique in this. Essentially, Sunrise on the Reaping shows us specifically why Haymitch became a drunk—and why he became a rebel.
When we meet Haymitch at the beginning of Sunrise on the Reaping, it is his sixteenth birthday—and Reaping Day for the 50th Hunger Games, in which, “as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district [is] required to send twice as many tributes.” (Normally it is one boy and one girl from each district; this year it will be two of each, for a total of forty-eight tributes.)
Haymitch’s dad had died in a mining accident, as do so many in District 12. His mother worked tirelessly to support him and his younger brother, and Haymitch worked too, pumping and carrying water for her laundry service and helping a neighbor woman brew illegal liquor. The morning of the Reaping, though, he works only a little before going to see his girlfriend, a musically inclined, deep-thinking young woman named Lenore Dove who fiercely hates the Capitol. But he is torn away from her to fight in the 50th Hunger Games—which, after many trials and tribulations in the arena and out, he eventually survives.
Key Ideas
Dehumanizing others enables tyranny
Propaganda controls people by limiting their view of what’s possible
Just because something has historically happened a certain way doesn’t mean it will continue to
Dehumanizing others enables tyranny
The Hunger Games are not the regime’s only means of oppression and control, but they are its most visible (many of President Snow’s and his supporter’s violent acts, including torture and assassination, are kept quiet). And because the Games are so brutal, it raises the question: How could anyone let this happen? How could Capitol citizens allow so many innocents to die for their entertainment, supposedly to avoid repeating a war many of them weren’t even alive to witness? In this book we get at least part of the answer: Many Capitol citizens don’t look at the District inhabitants as people.
The first hint of this we get is the language used by Drusilla, the Capitol woman employed to select and escort the District 12 tributes from their home to the arena. As she conducts the Reaping by drawing the tributes’ names, she repeatedly refers to the citizens of District 12 as “pigs” and “piglets” (12). Many other such instances follow, but perhaps the clearest image is when Haymitch, supposedly being celebrated as a victor, is put in a cage during the Capitol’s after-party. This echoes the tributes being kept in cages at an old zoo before their Games in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Many Capitol citizens see those who come from the districts as animals rather than people in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of the way Nazis denigrated Jews by referring to them as such unsavory creatures as rats, lice, cockroaches, and vultures—an element of their propaganda now regarded as crucial to enabling the Holocaust.
The simplest way to fight such dehumanization is to refuse to accept it, as Haymitch’s fellow tribute Maysilee does. At first, Haymitch thinks she is stuck-up and snobby because her parents own the District 12 candy store, making her family wealthier than most. But he soon realizes that she insists on being treated with a certain level of respect because, as she puts it, “If you let them treat you like an animal, they will” (42). Maysilee not only gives strength to the other tributes; her firm defiance shows Haymitch that it’s possible to rattle the complacent Capitol citizens even without violence. As Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, “Violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies. . . . Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the simplest way: Let their rule hold not through me!”
Propaganda controls people by limiting their view of what’s possible
All dictatorships employ propaganda to seduce their citizenry and make themselves look more powerful. In China, for instance, movies depicting a criminal escaping political justice are banned or clumsily edited to show the state triumphing (Despicable Me’s Minion: The Rise of Gru had a scene tacked onto the end for the Chinese version in which aspiring super-villain Gru is arrested). North Korea’s Kim dynasty, who have ruled the country since 1948, use propaganda to convince citizens that they are gods. Similarly, in Panem, the government displays posters with slogans such as “No Hunger Games, no peace” and “No Peacekeepers, no peace” (15, 60). Government agents’ errors and wanton use of force are quickly covered up. Tyrannical regimes want the citizens to regard the state as all-powerful and its success over its enemies as inevitable, so that it would not even occur to people to rebel whatever they think of the regime.
In one of the four pre-quotes to the book, we get David Hume’s answer to this question. After noting that it seems strange on the surface that only a few can govern a much larger number of people, and that the governed rarely object to this state of affairs, he concludes, “We shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.” Governments nearly always have at least some public support, even when they’re obviously terrible. How does that work?
One contributing factor the novel focuses on is the use of propaganda. Those who choose not to think, such as Effie Trinket, who want to believe in the status quo will blindly swallow the slogans. Such people, the rank-and-file, support the system passively, which is necessary for it to continue. But for people who don’t like the regime and might consider joining a rebellion, such as Haymitch, the propaganda serves a different function: It creates an illusion of control. If certain simple messages are everywhere, it seems like everyone believes them. If the government appears to handle even logistically complicated operations smoothly, then it seems efficient and well-organized. If the police force (the Peacekeepers) appear to always apprehend those who break the law, they seem unstoppable and their “justice” inevitable. If a person is surrounded by such smokescreens, rebellion seems like suicide. (The fact that many elements of Panem’s government are mirages is echoed in the design of the arena, though I won’t elaborate to avoid spoilers.)
In other words, as Haymitch learns, projecting an obviously shallow view of the government as morally good is only part of the function of propaganda; it also serves to project the government as unstoppable and essential, limiting what critics conceive of as viable courses of action.
Just because something has historically happened a certain way doesn’t mean it will continue to
Early in the novel, Haymitch and his girlfriend Lenore Dove have a conversation that reverberates throughout the rest of the story. They are discussing the fact that there has been a Reaping on every one of his birthdays. He tells her, “The Reaping’s going to happen no matter what I believe. Sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.” But Lenore Dove disagrees: “There’s no proof that will happen. You can’t count on things happening tomorrow just because they happened in the past” (10).
Her statement is strongly reminiscent of David Hume’s repudiation of causality. He wrote, “That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.” It is clear that Hume played a significant role in Collins’s thinking about this book; in addition to two of the four pre-quotes coming from the Scottish philosopher, she states that conversations about Hume’s ideas with her father partially inspired the book (see the “Acknowledgments”).
The fundamental flaw in Hume’s argument is that he ignores the possibility of discovering and understanding causal mechanisms. We know the Sun appears to rise because the Earth is rotating as it orbits the Sun. If something stopped that from happening (such as the Sun dying, as it will do at some point, or a large object dislodging the Earth from its orbit) or obscured our view of it (such as a the explosion of a large volcano releasing ash into the air), then the Sun wouldn’t rise. Barring such freak occurrences, (most of which we can now predict well in advance thanks to the work of scientists) we can count on the Sun continuing to rise each day.
However, the Sun is not really what Lenore Dove is talking about; she’s talking about Snow’s and the Capitol’s tyranny, especially the Hunger Games. The crucial distinction between the sunrise and the government is that the Sun, the Earth, and the interaction of the two are metaphysical facts; they exist independently of any human choice or action. Governments and their institutions, by contrast, exist only because of human choice, and thus can and should be evaluated and, if necessary, changed. Forgetting that fact leads people to be resigned even to the most horrible fate, which is what Lenore Dove is railing against—and it’s an idea Haymitch reflects on throughout the rest of the novel.
The Vibe
The story is often tragic, but Haymitch is not the type of character who wallows in grief, even when it would be understandable. Thus, though the book has moments that are sad, in which Collins is deliberately trying to show us the characters’ humanity through their pain, the overall vibe of the book is resilient and defiant. These characteristics are the essence of young Haymitch, and are still present in the older man who mentors Katniss and Peeta. He wins his Games largely though using his brain, but he rarely comes off as cold or calculating; it’s more that he’s determined to achieve his own purposes and maintain his integrity, whatever the Capitol wants.
Conclusion
Sunrise on the Reaping is a worthy addition to the Hunger Games franchise, fleshing out a character essential to the original trilogy while adding ideas that integrate with those it illustrates.
Why does fiction affect us so deeply? Why is it so key to human culture? How can we get the most out of it? I’ll be presenting some thoughts on these questions in my talk “Fiction as Soul-Fuel: Why Stories Move Us” at LevelUp Orlando on July 18. You can save 20% by registering with the code fictionosophyLU25