I’ve been slowly analyzing The Hunger Games series under the guides of my Reluctant Revolutionaries series, and with it so fresh in my mind I decided to finally read The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes.
It’s the 10th year of the annual Hunger Games, but it is not the grand spectacle that we have come to know through the original trilogy. Panem is still recovering from the war and many of the games subtle cruelties have not yet been crated. This year is the first year that mentors are involved, but rather than being from the Districts, they are students of the Capital and 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow just happens to be one of them.
Of course, fate (and money) would decide that Snow is to be paired up with the female tribute from District 12. A girl named Lucy Gray Baird who makes quite the debut during the Reaping. As Snow attempts to come up with a winning strategy, he starts to fall for Lucy Gray which adds some new complexities into his life.
For all its 512 pages, The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes was not good. I managed to read it within a week, but there were paragraphs and chapters that I wanted to skip over due to its repetitiveness and predictability. Collins drops a lot of call backs and Easter Eggs to the main Hunger Games trilogy. While at first it was interesting to see some of the groundwork of how the Games developed or why Snow will immediately see Katniss as a threat, but by the end it was causing eye rolls.
Pacing also seemed to be an issue. As with the original trilogy, the The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes is broken down into three parts, the pre-Game, the Hunger Games, and post-Game repercussions. In this case, Part III (“The Peacekeeper”) felt like a separate short story since it takes place in a completely different setting than the first two thirds of the novel. Coupled with the fact that there is no looming threat other than Snow’s own ego, the plot only picks up during the last few chapters.
All that aside, the big issue with The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes is Coriolanus Snow. Despite his many boasts of his charm, he isn’t very likeable. I understand Collins was trying to create some sort of origin story for Snow but she is missing that vital piece. When you think of some great villain origin stories – Arthur Fleck into Joker, Walter White into Heisenberg, Anakin into Darth Vader – they all have something in common they start out as someone you can relate to or empathize with. Snow draws absolutely no sympathy from the reader.
The book summary notes that “the once mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times” which makes it hard for Snow to keep up with his classmates. Though he is likely still wealthier than many other citizens of Panem, he constantly laments about what he deserves. What is strange about that is that according to the timeline, Snow was a toddler when the war began, 8 when it ended, and has been living in this post war state for 10 years. He even notes that as a whole he and his classmates are “still far removed from the opulent life they’d been born into.” So what luxury is he actually accustomed to? He despises the Plinths, despite all their kindness to him. Snow sees as new money and completely undeserving of their status. His entitlement knows no bounds as he considers the Plinths a threat to his way of life “simply by the virtue of their presence.”
Snow’s disdain for Rebels and anyone from the Districts is the most disturbing since one can draw so many similarities between Snow’s opinions and the rhetoric of racists/supremacists. He routinely speaks of people from the Districts as being beneath him and primitive “creatures from another world”. His Grandma’am thinks of them as savages who “only drink water because it doesn’t rain blood.” He likens the Tributes to animals, and doesn’t even bat an eyelash at the inhuman conditions they are left in. When escaping Dr. Gaul’s lab, he stumbles into the section of the lab where human experimentation takes place. He sees Avoxes (typically captured Rebels) with animal parts grafted on to their body, but makes no comment other than his appearance startled them not him. Instead he focuses on the jabberjays as a “failed experiment”. With such a cold and callous character that does not change throughout the story, I found it extremely difficult to become invested in Snow.
Snow’s one redeeming quality could have been his love for Lucy Gray Baird but that too was disappointing. He never really loved her it’s hard to believe she would fall in love with him. Lucy Gray doesn’t seem like a real person, as she has no real motivation. Quite early on, she calls Snow out when she asks what he gets out of being her mentor (“a better grade the more I shine?”) but despite hitting the nail on the head, Collins expects us to believe that Lucy Gray loves him. Later on, Lucy Gray sings a song about Snow and the 32 reasons she trusts him. However those 32 reasons relate directly to the Hunger Games and Snow helping her to survive, despite acknowledging his underlying motives. It becomes clear then that Lucy Gray only exists to put a touch of colour into Snow’s life.
Coriolanus is drawn to her in an extremely possessive way. He claims her as his girl. She should only sing about him. And again, this harkens back to racist rhetoric and master/slave mentality. He views Lucy Gray as his property. His love for her only extends as far when she’s in his company. She saves his life in the arena and suffers some severe burns in the process, but he does nothing to help her afterwards accepting the fact that she is being treated by a veterinarian who he acknowledges would give sub-par support.
Despite Lucy Gray repeatedly showing Snow a kinder side of life, he remains cold-hearted and elitist. He constantly thinks the worst of everyone around him without any provocation. That is, of course, a reflection of his own thoughts and actions, but it leads to a very awkward conclusion. At the very same shack Katniss will steal away precious moments, Snow and Lucy Gray head inside for a brief respite. She goes out to fetch some Katniss (eyeroll) and the second she is out of sight he starts thinking of himself and his future prospects. He affirms that he will abandon her to her fate and return to Officer’s school in District 2. When he calls for Lucy Gray and she doesn’t answer, Snow decides she is hiding from him and just like that he begins to hunt her. To hammer in the fact that Lucy Gray’s only purpose was to be an instrument of Snow’s character development, we never see her. She gets no final words, just a song we’ve already heard. We’re not even sure of her motivation. It’s all about Snow.
If you are looking for a great villain/anti-hero origin story, I would strongly recommend Harleen.
And as I called way back when this book was announced, The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes is currently being adapted into a movie, with the prequel to start production in the first half of 2022.
Elexciss 