marisa marisa marisa. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
heartbeats) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
vilnius2011-02-11 01:46 am
heartbeats) wrote in vilnius2011-02-11 01:46 am
THE HUNGER GAMES SUMMARY
The Hunger Games series takes place in Panem, a dystopian state located in what used to be North America. Panem is divided into a capitol city (very creatively named "The Capitol") and twelve districts set up to meet specific social/material needs for the Capitol. The districts are closely monitored and policed by the Peacekeepers, officials from the Capitol, and are not allowed much contact with each other. There was previously a thirteenth district as well, but prior to the events of the books everyone assumes it has been totally wiped out during the tail-end of a rebellion against the Capitol. As punishment for this rebellion, every year the Capitol throws The Hunger Games, a Battle Royale ripoff televised murder extrrrrrrrrravaganza!! in which one boy and one girl from each district are chosen every year by lottery, taken to the Capitol and prettied up, and then thrown into an arena with everyone else and told: one man standing, everyone else dies, murder each other for the amusement of the television audience!! There are a lot of rules and it is very complicated but this is good enough.
Katniss was born and raised in District Twelve, the farthest district from the Capitol, which is located in what used to be Appalachia and which specializes primarily in mining. She grew up a fairly normal grimdark gritty ya novel heroine; following her father's tragic mining accident/death and her mother's convenient tragic heartbreak catatonia, Katniss has to learn to fend for herself in order to feed both herself and her baby sister Prim, who is the only person she thinks she really loves. She spends her days hunting illegally with her handsome-older-brother-bff Gale, who she would never think of kissing, of course, being really awesome at killing things, selling her bounty on the black market, ostensibly going to school (when?) and selling more chances to be put into the lottery for the yearly Hunger Games in exchange for some food.
All of that changes, however, at the yearly Reaping for the Hunger Games. In the face of truly blinding statistical odds, Prim's name is chosen, and Katniss volunteers to take her place in the Games; no one claps, everyone makes a plot-significant hand gesture that means goodbye to a friend, and it is very silent rebellion-y. Things are made worse (a common theme in these books) by the fact that the male tribute from District Twelve was Peeta Mellark, a boy who did something once that saved Katniss's life (spoilers: like everything else in these books, it centered around food) and who is not even in her top hundred people to kill. After saying some tearful goodbyes (don't be silly - Katniss never cries - but she does get an extremely plot-important pin from her friend Madge), the two take their perpetually drunk sponsor Haymitch and set out for the games. Peeta insists on the train on making things even more terrible by being quite nice, and Haymitch promises to try being sober long enough to try to keep one of them alive.
In spite of the Herculean efforts of Katniss' stylist and new gay best friend Cinna, who designs a dress for her that earns her the nickname "the girl who was on fire" and a reputation for being smokin' hot, things go from bad to worse. Everyone is totally gonna kill them, she and Peeta totally have to fake being friendly, GOD, and a little temper tantrum involving the judges, a roast pig, and an arrow earn her an insanely high preemptive score (a sign that she is Someone To Kill). And then just to make matters worse Peeta confesses his undying love for her on national television, and they are instantly transformed into this year's tragic teen murder romance drama.
The games begin and Katniss sets out on her own, shocked and appalled to learn that Peeta's teamed up with the Careers, douchebag kids who are scary and mean and volunteered for this like total tools. So with the help of one of the other tributes, a little girl named Rue who reminds her of Prim, she drops a hive on them like a boss and they all get stung by psychedelic death bees. She also gets stung twice and hallucinates Peeta totally saving her from a Career named Cato, which is weird, she guesses. A little later she teams up with Rue again and bombs the shit out of the Careers' food supply, learning along the way that Peeta totally did save her and now he is bleeding out somewhere, which she guesses is better than having to kill him herself. Rue is killed by another tribute, and in a small act of rebellion, Katniss braids flowers into Rue's corpse's hair, sings a farewell song, and does aforementioned plot-significant farewell hand gesture to the camera. More small rebellions, etc.
The rules are suddenly changed, and it's announced that if two tributes from the same District are the last two standing they will both be allowed to live, and Katniss sets out at once to find Peeta, who as expected in bleeding out into a lake. She tries to heal his wounds but is not much of a healer. She realizes quickly however that Haymitch rewards her playing up the romance angle with aid, and so she kisses Peeta a whole lot in her quest to beat health back into him. Somehow they manage, and spend a while playing up how totally in love they are for the cameras. Ultimately, they are the last two left standing. Predictably, the announcement is made that the rules have changed back - THERE AN ONLY BE ONE!! Peeta begs her to kill him. Katniss, aware that she'll be a pariah back home if she murders him and also weirdly opposed to murdering this boy who saved her life once and also she has been kissing a lot, offers him poison berries, acting as if they're planning on committing a double suicide because she knows that the Capitol can't let the Games end without a champion. Their lives are spared, and they are sent home heroes, except the Capitol now views them, especially Katniss, as dangerous rebels and also Katniss tells Peeta on the train what a good job they were doing at pretending to be in love, which is tragic since Peeta wasn't faking. Book One ends and everything is miserable.
Book Two begins and President Snow is pissed because there are all sorts of uprisings in the districts and it is pretty much all Katniss' fault because everything always is. He is also not convinced by how totally stupid she and Peeta are for each other since they can barely even look at each other since she tore out his heart by accident at the end of book one. Her case is not helped by how Gale totally kissed her once, which is super confusing for her. So she and Peeta try to fake nice and he even proposes, and the nation's hearts beat as one, but everything is still terrible. And then for funsies President Snow makes up a new rule for the next Games where the tributes will be reaped from the victors who have won previous Games. District Twelve has only three living victors: Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch. As the only female champion from District Twelve Katniss is picked for the girls', naturally, and Peeta volunteers for Haymitch. Secretly, she promises with Haymitch to keep Peeta alive this time. The two lovebirds tell the nation that she is pregnant and everyone weeps uncontrollably because this is so much better than a telenovela, but really everyone feels kind of uncomfortable and depressed about this turn of events, even the dumb rich people. For shits and giggles, President Snow lets her watch as they beat her sassy gay friend Cinna into oblivion, then drops them in the arena. Katniss and Peeta team up with a brilliant old guy, a sassy naked chick named Johanna, and a surprisingly nice hot guy named Finnick. A daring escape is engineered with Katniss at the center (who of course remains clueless) t turns out that several districts had planned to escape from the arena and use a stolen hovercraft to fly to District Thirteen, which turns out to have not been destroyed after all. However, during this daring escape, Peeta and Johanna are captured by the capitol and face certain torture/death. Because this is still not miserable enough, the Capitol firebombs District Twelve into oblivion, although Katniss' family and Gale manage to escape to District Thirteen.
Book Three opens with everything still terrible. Katniss is stuck in the underground civilization of District Thirteen. Unsurprisingly these people are possibly just as terrible as the Capitol. She agrees to be the symbol of their rebellion, the Mockingjay, in exchange for immunity for her loved ones, particularly Peeta, who has been being used as the face of the Capitol. She spends a lot of time being miserable with Finnick and being inspiring. Somehow, she also makes up with Haymitch, who she totally scratched in the eyeball for not rescuing Peeta. Things with Gale are still weird. A rescue mission goes through and Peeta and Johanna are saved, but his memories have been distorted by tracker jacker venom, and he has now been programmed to want to kill her. Katniss becomes even more determined to kill Snow. She and Johanna move in together (hilarious antics) and train to join the rebellion forces, but horrible things happen and she has to leave the other girl in District Thirteen. She, Gale, Finnick, and a number of red shirts sneak into the Capitol. The clearly evil leader of Thirteen, Coin, which btw is a dumb name, sends Peeta too because things weren't going badly enough yet. Nothing goes right and everything is horrible. She makes it to Snow's mansion and weirdly meets up with Prim, her adorable sister who is the only thing she's sure she loves and is the who reason all this shit happened at all.
Then they are firebombed!! Prim especially. Of course!!!!!!
Deeply grieved, Katniss refuses to talk. Meanwhile, President Snow is charged with several crimes, and per Katniss' request, she is the executioner. Before the execution, Snow tells Katniss that the bombs weren't his. She realizes that the attack method was identical to a trap Gale designed. Eventually, Katniss comes to the conclusion that this must have been Coin's doing. Coin bombed the children in order to trick the Capitol citizens into thinking that the government had killed their children, therefore winning their loyalty. Just before Snow's execution, Katniss turns her aim and kills Coin instead.
Katniss goes back to her home in the burned-out rubble of District Twelve, which sounds super healthy. A little later, Peeta, almost completely cured, shows up to plant primroses outside her house, in memory of her sister. She realizes eventually that she loves him. Haymitch moves back in too. Things are slightly less miserable, until you remember that the only good people in these books were Finnick, Prim, and Cinna, and they all died horribly. The end.
Katniss was born and raised in District Twelve, the farthest district from the Capitol, which is located in what used to be Appalachia and which specializes primarily in mining. She grew up a fairly normal grimdark gritty ya novel heroine; following her father's tragic mining accident/death and her mother's convenient tragic heartbreak catatonia, Katniss has to learn to fend for herself in order to feed both herself and her baby sister Prim, who is the only person she thinks she really loves. She spends her days hunting illegally with her handsome-older-brother-bff Gale, who she would never think of kissing, of course, being really awesome at killing things, selling her bounty on the black market, ostensibly going to school (when?) and selling more chances to be put into the lottery for the yearly Hunger Games in exchange for some food.
All of that changes, however, at the yearly Reaping for the Hunger Games. In the face of truly blinding statistical odds, Prim's name is chosen, and Katniss volunteers to take her place in the Games; no one claps, everyone makes a plot-significant hand gesture that means goodbye to a friend, and it is very silent rebellion-y. Things are made worse (a common theme in these books) by the fact that the male tribute from District Twelve was Peeta Mellark, a boy who did something once that saved Katniss's life (spoilers: like everything else in these books, it centered around food) and who is not even in her top hundred people to kill. After saying some tearful goodbyes (don't be silly - Katniss never cries - but she does get an extremely plot-important pin from her friend Madge), the two take their perpetually drunk sponsor Haymitch and set out for the games. Peeta insists on the train on making things even more terrible by being quite nice, and Haymitch promises to try being sober long enough to try to keep one of them alive.
In spite of the Herculean efforts of Katniss' stylist and new gay best friend Cinna, who designs a dress for her that earns her the nickname "the girl who was on fire" and a reputation for being smokin' hot, things go from bad to worse. Everyone is totally gonna kill them, she and Peeta totally have to fake being friendly, GOD, and a little temper tantrum involving the judges, a roast pig, and an arrow earn her an insanely high preemptive score (a sign that she is Someone To Kill). And then just to make matters worse Peeta confesses his undying love for her on national television, and they are instantly transformed into this year's tragic teen murder romance drama.
The games begin and Katniss sets out on her own, shocked and appalled to learn that Peeta's teamed up with the Careers, douchebag kids who are scary and mean and volunteered for this like total tools. So with the help of one of the other tributes, a little girl named Rue who reminds her of Prim, she drops a hive on them like a boss and they all get stung by psychedelic death bees. She also gets stung twice and hallucinates Peeta totally saving her from a Career named Cato, which is weird, she guesses. A little later she teams up with Rue again and bombs the shit out of the Careers' food supply, learning along the way that Peeta totally did save her and now he is bleeding out somewhere, which she guesses is better than having to kill him herself. Rue is killed by another tribute, and in a small act of rebellion, Katniss braids flowers into Rue's corpse's hair, sings a farewell song, and does aforementioned plot-significant farewell hand gesture to the camera. More small rebellions, etc.
The rules are suddenly changed, and it's announced that if two tributes from the same District are the last two standing they will both be allowed to live, and Katniss sets out at once to find Peeta, who as expected in bleeding out into a lake. She tries to heal his wounds but is not much of a healer. She realizes quickly however that Haymitch rewards her playing up the romance angle with aid, and so she kisses Peeta a whole lot in her quest to beat health back into him. Somehow they manage, and spend a while playing up how totally in love they are for the cameras. Ultimately, they are the last two left standing. Predictably, the announcement is made that the rules have changed back - THERE AN ONLY BE ONE!! Peeta begs her to kill him. Katniss, aware that she'll be a pariah back home if she murders him and also weirdly opposed to murdering this boy who saved her life once and also she has been kissing a lot, offers him poison berries, acting as if they're planning on committing a double suicide because she knows that the Capitol can't let the Games end without a champion. Their lives are spared, and they are sent home heroes, except the Capitol now views them, especially Katniss, as dangerous rebels and also Katniss tells Peeta on the train what a good job they were doing at pretending to be in love, which is tragic since Peeta wasn't faking. Book One ends and everything is miserable.
Book Two begins and President Snow is pissed because there are all sorts of uprisings in the districts and it is pretty much all Katniss' fault because everything always is. He is also not convinced by how totally stupid she and Peeta are for each other since they can barely even look at each other since she tore out his heart by accident at the end of book one. Her case is not helped by how Gale totally kissed her once, which is super confusing for her. So she and Peeta try to fake nice and he even proposes, and the nation's hearts beat as one, but everything is still terrible. And then for funsies President Snow makes up a new rule for the next Games where the tributes will be reaped from the victors who have won previous Games. District Twelve has only three living victors: Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch. As the only female champion from District Twelve Katniss is picked for the girls', naturally, and Peeta volunteers for Haymitch. Secretly, she promises with Haymitch to keep Peeta alive this time. The two lovebirds tell the nation that she is pregnant and everyone weeps uncontrollably because this is so much better than a telenovela, but really everyone feels kind of uncomfortable and depressed about this turn of events, even the dumb rich people. For shits and giggles, President Snow lets her watch as they beat her sassy gay friend Cinna into oblivion, then drops them in the arena. Katniss and Peeta team up with a brilliant old guy, a sassy naked chick named Johanna, and a surprisingly nice hot guy named Finnick. A daring escape is engineered with Katniss at the center (who of course remains clueless) t turns out that several districts had planned to escape from the arena and use a stolen hovercraft to fly to District Thirteen, which turns out to have not been destroyed after all. However, during this daring escape, Peeta and Johanna are captured by the capitol and face certain torture/death. Because this is still not miserable enough, the Capitol firebombs District Twelve into oblivion, although Katniss' family and Gale manage to escape to District Thirteen.
Book Three opens with everything still terrible. Katniss is stuck in the underground civilization of District Thirteen. Unsurprisingly these people are possibly just as terrible as the Capitol. She agrees to be the symbol of their rebellion, the Mockingjay, in exchange for immunity for her loved ones, particularly Peeta, who has been being used as the face of the Capitol. She spends a lot of time being miserable with Finnick and being inspiring. Somehow, she also makes up with Haymitch, who she totally scratched in the eyeball for not rescuing Peeta. Things with Gale are still weird. A rescue mission goes through and Peeta and Johanna are saved, but his memories have been distorted by tracker jacker venom, and he has now been programmed to want to kill her. Katniss becomes even more determined to kill Snow. She and Johanna move in together (hilarious antics) and train to join the rebellion forces, but horrible things happen and she has to leave the other girl in District Thirteen. She, Gale, Finnick, and a number of red shirts sneak into the Capitol. The clearly evil leader of Thirteen, Coin, which btw is a dumb name, sends Peeta too because things weren't going badly enough yet. Nothing goes right and everything is horrible. She makes it to Snow's mansion and weirdly meets up with Prim, her adorable sister who is the only thing she's sure she loves and is the who reason all this shit happened at all.
Then they are firebombed!! Prim especially. Of course!!!!!!
Deeply grieved, Katniss refuses to talk. Meanwhile, President Snow is charged with several crimes, and per Katniss' request, she is the executioner. Before the execution, Snow tells Katniss that the bombs weren't his. She realizes that the attack method was identical to a trap Gale designed. Eventually, Katniss comes to the conclusion that this must have been Coin's doing. Coin bombed the children in order to trick the Capitol citizens into thinking that the government had killed their children, therefore winning their loyalty. Just before Snow's execution, Katniss turns her aim and kills Coin instead.
Katniss goes back to her home in the burned-out rubble of District Twelve, which sounds super healthy. A little later, Peeta, almost completely cured, shows up to plant primroses outside her house, in memory of her sister. She realizes eventually that she loves him. Haymitch moves back in too. Things are slightly less miserable, until you remember that the only good people in these books were Finnick, Prim, and Cinna, and they all died horribly. The end.