BLOGGING THE HUNGER GAMES, pt. 12: Vampire/Forest Fire

The next few chapters are long and interesting descriptions of more or less single events, one after another. They're fun to read, but they sort of defy summary. Now, hitting chapters 12 and 13 in one go throws off my perfectly synced numbering system (you have no idea how proud I was of that!) but fuck it, it needs to be done.

Chapter 12

Katniss observes Peeta and the Careers (my new band name) from her tree. Peeta's bruised and cut up, and she realizes that he probably fought it out at the Cornucopia even after he (probably) warned her not to do so. Peeta leaves to go kill the girl they left behind and the Careers whisper about whether or not they should kill him soon. Most of them want to let him tag along because he's their best bet at finding Katniss. They start talking shit about her then, about watching her twirl around in her dress, about how simple she seemed. They see Katniss rollin', they hatin.' Anyway Katniss wonders how aware of their intentions Peeta is, if he's exploiting her to stay alive. At this point it's pretty much just safe to say that nobody knows Peeta's motives, he's like Snape times 1000, and we should just throw up our hands. Not that Katniss is going to do that.

Is he still pretending to love me for the audience? What is going on in his head?

Nobody knows, girl! Don't waste the column inches! But it does warrant mentioning that Peeta comes back and announces that the girl wasn't dead but is now, and a cannon goes off to confirm it. So Peeta just murdered someone. Do you think she had been poisoned by a horcrux and was going to die anyway? Probably not, right? I don't know how Team Peeta can be a thing after that.

The bad guys go in one direction and Katniss goes in the other, seeking water and considering the consequences of Peeta's alliance. It would be considered quite the betrayal in District 12, she says, siding with the rich kids from the upper districts (It's pretty much the same where I'm from). She also considers whether or not it will cost them sponsors, if the “star crossed lovers” angle still plays.

(In New Moon, Bella awkwardly and stupidly invokes Romeo & Juliet, wielding literary allusions like a blunt object. Suzanne Collins has repeatedly referenced this line, one of the more famous ones from that play, for several chapters now without calling attention to herself. Are you taking notes, S. Meyer?)

The need for water becomes more and more severe as the chapter goes on, and Katniss's thoughts become more and more dedicated to her thirst. It's a nice little structural trick; with respect to Katniss's brain, this chapter is a narrowing funnel. A throat closing up. She realizes that Haymitch could arrange for sponsors to send her water and wonders why he hasn't done so yet. For a while she concludes that he's just going to let her die because he's a jerk. Then she concludes that he's not cashing in the sponsor chip because she's close to a water source anyway. Then when she can't seem to go on she collapses, planning to die. She runs her fingers through the mud, decides it's not a bad death venue, then realizes what mud means.

She struggles to the nearby pond and carefully and safely rehydrates herself, purifying the water with iodine and waiting a half hour before starting to slowly drink it. If you're keeping track of the ways in which I would be dead already, “forgetting/being too impatient to wait for purified water” would be another check in that column. So Katniss spends a while recovering in the pond and plans to spend another peaceful, restful day there. Not going to happen, sister! was my first thought. But if you even for a second thought our girl would have a moment of peace, the chapter ends with a “wall of fire” coming abruptly at her. No church in the wild, baby!

Chapter 13

The last chapter was a visually/spatially coherent and clear depiction of a pretty basic series of events: Katniss looks for water, Katniss finds water. This chapter, not so much. Though most of it consists of Katniss running from a fire created by the Gamemakers to shake things up, it's unclear exactly what this fire is or how it behaves. To hear Katniss describe it at first, it's a literal wall of artificial flames of uniform height. But she manages to find shelter from it occasionally? It's moving fast enough that Katniss has to run, but slow enough that she briefly plans to run parallel to it in order to get around it? She surmises that the fire was created to bring the tributes all to the same place, but how does a wall of fire start in such a way that it could force a bunch of far flung people in a forest into the same spot? Her jacket catches fire, she vomits a few times, and a fireball catches her in the leg. Those parts are clear. The rest of it is not, really.

But anyway the important part is the wall of fire creates the desired effect, and the Careers and Peeta catch up to Katniss while she's treating her burns in a spring. She climbs a tree to get away from them, because one thing a bunch of burly, trained-from birth killing machines are not is particularly light or agile (they're also, like Katniss, suffering from burns and the effects of smoke inhalation). Then this happens:

“How's everything with you?” I call down cheerfully.
This takes them aback, but I know the crowd will love it.
“Well enough,” says the boy from District 2. “Yourself?”
“It's been a bit warm for my taste,” I say. I can almost hear the laughter in the Capitol.

Oh Katniss, you're such a cut up! (That will go double if she throws her knife at any of these jagoffs.) So a guy named Cato tries to climb the tree and falls, then a girl called Glimmer (Katniss mocks her name, which is sort of funny but then again “Katniss”) gives it a shot. Literally: they have the bow and arrows, but Glimmer's not good enough to hit our girl. Were the situation reversed it would be raining dead meatheads am I right? But anyway, it starts to get dark and the Careers decide to wait for Katniss, who as always makes her bed high up in the tree (if there's a tree sex scene somewhere in this bitch I'll be impressed). Just as she's about to fall asleep, she sees a pair of eyes in another tree that are too human to be like, a raccoon or whatever. And guess who it is? Well, there are only like three people it even COULD be. (“Katniss! I have a new outfit for you and it was too good to wait!”-Cinna) Rue is there, watching, and then she points to something above Katniss's head. That's kind of a weird cliffhanger, but there you are.

Stray Notes & Questions

• There's a fun recurring motif of media manipulation in these chapters--Katniss often considers whether or not the live cameras are showing her and reacts accordingly. After spying on Peeta and the Careers, she drops from the tree and smiles. When she's worried she's about to die of dehydration, she tries to remain strong for Prim. When she examines her burns, she keeps a poker face because sponsors don't like wimps. Kat is savvy to the games beyond the game, in other words, and it's awesome.
• I wrote semi-coherently about a long and elaborate prank my roommates played on each other in college. Since lots of you are probably back in school now, you should feel free to attempt a variation on this.
• If you've been reading The Hunger Games and wondering, like me, if or how society could become morbid enough to enjoy an actual television event like the Games, please watch this clip from last night's GOP debate in which the audience breaks into applause at the news that Rick Perry executed 234 people as Governor of Texas. We are already there, we are already doomed.