#cabbage!

I was very amused to see Collins choose to open TBoSaS with a diatribe on cabbage. I love the stuff, but I totally see many folks find it unappealing. It tastes weird. It smells weird when you cook it. And what lowly foodstuff is a better choice to emphasize the divide between the President Snow we know and the Coriolanus Snow at the beginning of TBoSaS? We know champagne on balconies and tea with exquisitely iced cookies. Not cabbage.

It does a great job, in the first paragraph, of telling the reader to leave their expectations and assumptions behind. This is not the Snow we recognize. The poverty and hunger experienced in Panem sound so familiar, but they are wholly unexpected from him. I love the way Collins just changed the whole game on us.

I resolved to continue reading with an open mind about Coriolanus, all while watching for warning signs like a hawk. Now I’ve finished part one. There are definitely warning signs, but there is a lot of unspoiled humanity in Snow, too.

But maybe the cabbage is a little more than a sign of humble beginnings and an equalizer to the reader. I am reminded of a bracelet my grandmother left my mom (see below). When I first looked at it, I saw rosebuds. But my mother said they were actually cabbages, and pointed out that the artist (Georg Jensen) was great because he made them a thing of beauty. Whenever we talk about it, she quotes the movie So Big: “Cabbages is beautiful!”

Online, identical versions of it are described as flower bracelets by multiple vendors. So are they roses or cabbages? I don’t know which of us was right, but that’s my point. Sometimes they look awfully similar:

What is Coriolanus, as the book begins? A cultivated bloom or a straightforward vegetable? With her opening scene, Collins seems to be telling us everything is different than what we might expect, this isn’t a ready-made oligarch, this is a boy who is reduced to subsisting on cabbage. But I still see roses peeking through.

Is my perception too biased by my knowledge of the original trilogy? Surely there’s a blend of unassuming cabbage and ominous rose in Coriolanus already, but how much of each? I would love to know: how do you see in Snow at the beginning of TBoSaS?

Perhaps the two plants aren’t on opposite ends of the spectrum of who Snow is, but are just echoes of each other, and him. Maybe when Coriolanus trades up from the stench of cabbages to that ominous reek of roses, he’s not getting as far away from his humble circumstances as he thinks.

And lastly, with just a little spite, how funny would it have been if these were the roses Grandma’am had placed on his lapel?

8 socks or tights - Socks/thigh highs for wearing and observing.

12 facesitting or breast smothering - I am modestly endowed✨ so I'm not smothering anyone even if I tried HOWEVER I would not pass up the chance to get smooshed into some boobs/pecs/boychest 😳