The Hunger Games — Chapter 7

About This Passage

Selected for rhetorical sophistication (the calm declarative chain ending in the most courteous possible language at the moment of greatest defiance), thematic weight (the small individual act that makes a regime visible to itself), and syntactic interplay between physical action and ironic civility.

Narration Prompt

Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use?

Discussion Questions

1. Collins has Katniss recall the bakery rain memory not as a flashback in its own scene, but as an interruption in the middle of an argument with Peeta about her hunting skills. Examine the placement. Why does the memory surface here, on this morning, in the middle of breakfast strategy talk? What is Collins suggesting about how moral debts get reactivated by present-day kindnesses?
2. Peeta tells Haymitch, 'She has no idea the effect she can have.' Katniss reads this as either an insult or an unwanted compliment. Examine all three possibilities — insult, compliment, and a third reading where Peeta is genuinely worried that Katniss does not understand her own appeal because not understanding it puts her in danger. Which reading does the chapter best support, and what does each reading reveal about Peeta's actual orientation toward Katniss?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide