The latest in the Hunger Games series sharpens the focus on the media’s distortions and evasions in support of the tyrannical state in its dystopian scenario, finds Zahid Rahman

‘They will not use my tears for their entertainment.’

Sunrise on the Reaping is a new prequel book from the young adult dystopian Hunger Games series by the author Suzanne Collins. The new addition, set 25 years before the original book, follows the young Haymitch Abernathy, the blunt and frequently tipsy former victor whose role is as the main protagonist’s mentor in the original series.

The Hunger Games is a ruthless form of entertainment involving teenagers from each of the twelve districts of Panem to fight to the death every year. Ever since the ‘Dark Days’ when thirteen districts had rebelled against the Capitol only for District 13 to be bombed into erasure, the games have been a tradition. Originally, the taking of two tributes (a boy and a girl) from each district to take part in the games was seen as an annual horror show meant to punish the districts, but as the decades went by, they became a mainstay of entertainment for Capitol citizens with everything from betting to extravagant pomp and ceremony taking place.

The story begins with sixteen-year-old Haymitch who lives in District 12. His poverty is underscored by the fact he rarely eats meat and his shorts are a piece of a recycled food sack with ‘Courtesy of the Capitol’ written across the back. Haymitch works inside a dangerous coal mine in the district and labours as a bootlegger to earn that bit more cash for his mother and his ten-year-old brother Sid.

Half starving and rotting in the poorest, polluted area of the district, the Seam, probably one of the only things driving his existence is his relationship with Leonore Dove, a girl whose rebellious provocations had previously and continuously landed her into trouble with the authorities.

The year in which the novel is set, due to it being the fiftieth games, the number of tributes demanded from each district is doubled to four. His birthday falls on the day of the Reaping, when tributes for the games are chosen, and he hopes to pass the day without any incident and get back to the girl he loves. Instead, through a series of unfortunate incidents involving a selected tribute being shot through the head by a sniper from the top of the ironically named Justice Building, Haymitch was chosen to replace him and participate in the games.

From there, he is transported to the Capitol, a city that stands as the antithesis of the rest of the country. Collins portrays the Capitol’s citizens as a near-satirical embodiment of fashion and excess taken to grotesque extremes. Haymitch observes a man with tiny mirrors embedded in his skin and a woman sporting surgically implanted cat ears: symbols of a society obsessed with spectacle. Unsurprisingly, the Capitol’s inhabitants are detached from the daily suffering endured in the districts. Instead, they are enthralled by the Hunger Games, a brutal event in which children are forced to kill each other for mass entertainment.

Parallels

Collins’s work offers a pointed critique of the normalisation of violence, particularly as mediated through popular culture. As she herself claims, the genesis of the concept for the Hunger Games was drawn from a night she spent channel surfing between reality TV and footage from the Iraq War. For her ‘the lines between these stories started to blur in a very unsettling way.’

This new instalment sharpens the focus on the media’s role in shaping narratives and distorting truth. When Haymitch is selected as a tribute, his family is coerced into performing exaggerated cries for the cameras, their grief made theatrical for public consumption. Meanwhile, footage of the tribute Haymitch replaced, killed in a chaotic incident, is quietly erased. Later, a live-streamed event that spirals into tragedy is abruptly cut before it can spread. These moments reveal a regime that scrubs any evidence of failure or cruelty, maintaining an illusion of control and compassion. Capitol citizens exist within a carefully constructed bubble of misinformation and denial, which allows them to ignore and even justify the regime’s brutal oppression of the districts.

Amongst all the hopelessness and despair of the narrative, Haymitch comes to learn that hope for a better world exists, hidden beneath the surface. His assumption had been that the games would be the end for him but he is determined that ‘they [the Capitol] will not use [his] … tears for their entertainment’ and to go out with a symbolic gesture of defiance. Since the games continue for another quarter of a century, Haymitch doesn’t succeed in creating an uprising, but the seeds are sown. By the end, he falls victim to the ruthless reprisal of the Capitol, making him the alcoholic he is by the time of the original novel.