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The18-year-old protagonist begins the novel as an ambitious and impressionable student still capable of empathy, but by the novel’s end, he has become a ruthless, selfish villain. He's also extremely intelligent and a uniquely gifted problem solver, qualities necessitated by the complex situations he often finds himself in.
The Capitol’s war with the Districts has cast a long, cold shadow over Coriolanus' life. The once-illustrious Snow family, built on a fortune of war profiteering, now have no money and no prospects. His father Crassus Snow was killed by a stray bullet, and his mother died in childbirth. While glimpses of empathy regularly show themselves in Coriolanus’s early life, by the time he becomes a mentor, Coriolanus ultimately prioritizes self-preservation and his own private goals. He’s watched those around him live in a luxury he has to pretend to possess in order to stand a chance at succeeding, and it’s made him bitter and suspicious. He quickly sees the potential in Lucy Gray Baird as a tribute, even though she hardly looks like a seasoned killer. Together they form a surprisingly unstoppable team, as Lucy wins The Hunger Games against all odds. Their relationship is one of the novel’s most consistent threads. Coriolanus’s feelings for Lucy are one of the only things still tying him to his humanity. When she’s gone, he hardens his heart toward the world.
Although Coriolanus doesn't get what he thinks he wants at several points in this story, he proves himself to be extremely adaptable. He manages to find his way to success in every situation that seems like a disaster, to the benefit of his few remaining friends and the alarm of his many opponents. Unfortunately, Coriolanus’s morals also prove to be adaptable. It’s gradual, but he appears to lose all sense of right and wrong by the end of the book. The more power he accumulates, the less ethically he uses it. He's obsessed with control, a quality that the calculating Dr. Gaul successfully nurtures in him at every turn. He grows to detest a lack of order in any context, eventually seeing all forms of freedom and spontaneity as dangerously close to chaos.
