Shits N Giggles

I think the lack of context we get from Katniss isnt just due to propaganda, but largely due to the fact that she’s so deeply rooted in poverty and survival mode that she simply doesn’t have the mental capacity for anything else. When traumatized, our brains automatically retain less information than they ordinarily would and we see that with Katniss. Not for friends, or school, nor propagandized television lore. Notice how we get descriptions of most tributes before she remembers their names, if she ever does, while Haymitch actually remembers a lot of their names right off the bat. When you’re fighting for your life every day, it really doesn’t leave much energy for anything else. She’s used to saving all of her energy for providing for her family.

But Haymitch isn’t providing for his family. He has several friends, a healthy romantic relationship, and retains information about society because hes not neglected.

I know it’s a running joke that Snow’s a grown man beefing with a seventeen year old and his ex of sixty plus years that he dated for three months, but genuinely. *Genuinely.* This man holds on to even the slightest insult, because he can’t take the idea of something acting or existing outside his perception of the world, and he *despises* when something shatters the perception he has of himself. *That’s* why he hates Lucy Gray so much—because she had the gall to force him to see a District girl as desirable and—heaven forbid—almost human. Because she was able to trick him and catch him off guard. Because she had the *audacity* to disappear, leaving him with the pit in his stomach of never, *never* knowing what happened to her. Because Snow *needs* control, he *needs* things to only exist and work a certain way, and that’s what made totalitarianism so appealing to him. It ensures he has the power he’s been denied all his life, yes, but more than that it allows him to ensure that the world—or at least, Panem—works the way he *thinks* it should work. The Capitol are elites who never question their status and privilege, who never need to live in anything less than luxury (the way he feels he should have). The Districts are barbaric lower class citizens who are only good for labor and entertainment. The regime is all-pervasive and all-powerful. He is the Greatest Man That Ever Lived. The Number One Peacekeeper even. Snow lands on top.

And the Games. The Games are supposes to be a dehumanizing reminder of the Districts’ savagery. That, left to their own devices, humans are selfish and violent and only out for themselves. Like Snow is. Because why would anyone ever be *not* like Snow? He literally calls himself “the best humanity has to offer.” So everyone else is either like him or worse. His experience and thoughts are the default, they are *law.* And if they aren’t? Shut up, yes they are. This is part of why he has Haymitch’s games edited so heavily, to destroy the idea that tributes would ever unite together as anything other than a pack of predators. This is why he has the tenth Games completely scrubbed from existence—so that there will be no memory of the year a “savage” from twelve survived because she won a Capitol boy’s affections. This is why he has the Games so thoroughly processed and manufactured overall—so that the Capitol citizens get their entertainment, yes, but also so that any memory of a Games that didn’t play out the way *he wants*, any example of a Games that defies *his* will, is forgotten. Seneca playing so hard into the “star-crossed lovers” bit is threatening not just because it highlighted how two kids from the poorest district were able to break the rules, but because it focused on a connection that breaks with Gaul’s teaching—that “humanity undressed” is nothing but cruelty and self-preservation.

Love shouldn’t be able to blossom in an arena. And as Snow said, he sees the whole world as an arena. Which is why he tries so hard to get into Haymitch’s head about Lenore Dove, why he hijacks Peeta to hate not the rebellion, not the districts, but *Katniss specifically.* Because as far as he’s concerned, “love” is another word for the possessiveness and obsession he felt towards Lucy Gray. And he *hates* the idea that any other version of love, any kind of love that’s genuine and equal and mutual, can exist. So he projects his feelings for Lucy Gray onto Haymitch and Lenore Dove, why he eventually has Lenore Dove killed with his signature poison when Haymitch survives the Games, when he had his mother and Sid burned alive. Why he has Peeta’s memories of Katniss be the ones targeted when he’s being hijacked. Because Haymitch and Peeta, unlike him, *loved* their girls. Truly loved, the same way Lenore Dove and Katniss love them. The way Lucy Gray most likely loved Snow, and he *can’t stand to let that love exist.* Because just by existing, they defy defies the way he sees love—as something dangerous that will inevitably leave you vulnerable to attack and betrayal.

In Snow’s mind, he’s running the world the way it’s meant to be run. The *natural* way it should be run. The way he sees the world is the *natural* way the world works. And yet, the fact that this world he runs is so heavily manufactured, that he has to go to such lengths to affirm his beliefs and keep this structure strong, is proof alone that there is nothing natural about it. And deep down, I like to think Snow knows that. At least, he’s aware of it, and he refuses to acknowledge it. Which is why he goes to such extremes whenever someone defies him—whether it be by plotting a rebellion, to eating a handful of berries, to finding friends in a death match, to even just being in love. He can’t tolerate the idea of something, anything, not going the way he thinks it should.

He’s your standard dictator, really—a small, small man with far, far too much power, trying with all his might to make himself look big.

In Catching fire, she doesn’t tell us that she’s being going around and bringing food to poor children in the seam until she needs to explain why she had a bag of food and why her mother wouldn’t find that odd.

In the first book, when she’s telling Peeta about the story of how she got Prims goat, she refuses to admit that this wasn’t a selfish move so she could get money out of that goat. (You could also argue that this is her refusing to be vulnerable in front of Peeta and all of Pamen though. I think it’s both, because she doesn’t even admit that she did this purely for her sister in her internal dialogue.)

And in Mockingjay, she never tells us that she’s the one that got Haymitch the goose eggs to help him heal after the games. All she says in the epilogue is that Haymitch raises geese when the liquor runs out. And we would never know otherwise if Haymitch didn’t mention that SHE was the one who got him the geese in sotr.