The Hunger Games — Chapter 5

About This Passage

Selected for rhetorical sophistication (the iconic naming line followed immediately by Katniss's mistaken interpretation), thematic weight (the irony of calling the chapter's wisest character a madman), and syntactic interplay between two registers — Cinna's quiet pronouncement and Katniss's defensive labeling.

Narration Prompt

Give a concise summary, then identify the single most important sentence or moment and explain why it matters to the book as a whole.

Discussion Questions

1. Cinna designs Katniss into the icon she will become. The flames, the held hands, the upward gaze — every element of the chariot scene was chosen by him before Katniss had any say. Examine the moral status of this authorship. Does Cinna's costume liberate Katniss by giving her visibility and sponsors, or does it reduce her to a screen for someone else's political vision? Defend your reading and engage with the strongest counter-position.
2. The chapter contains an extended embedded calculation in which Katniss converts the Capitol's lunch into District 12 labor units — a wild turkey for the chicken, a second turkey traded for the orange, days of hunting and gathering for the meal she is sitting in front of. Examine this passage as a piece of political economy. What is Collins doing by making her narrator translate consumption into the labor that would have produced its equivalent at home — and what theory of value is implicit in the translation?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide