payment page
Summary
Chapter 4
Coriolanus is horrified to find himself trapped with the tributes in a monkey house at the zoo, on display to the public and being filmed by Capitol News. He’s aware that any misstep will be widely broadcast and mocked, so he proudly introduces Lucy to the children crowded in front of the bars of the cage. She charms them and moves on to flirt with the news reporter Lepidus Malmsey. She explains that she’s really from a nomadic ethnic group called the Covey, not a citizen of District 12, but this is quickly dismissed. Coriolanus is delighted to see them being broadcast on live TV. When he’s returned to school by Peacekeepers, he runs into the formidable Dr. Gaul and Dean Highbottom. The Dean issues him a demerit for his stunt with the tributes. Three demerits, he learns, will result in his expulsion from the Academy.
Chapter 5
Coriolanus leaves the Academy, now having added possible expulsion to his list of anxieties. He decides to use the nervous energy to fuel his work with Lucy, heading back to the zoo. He’s displeased to find Sejanus standing at the cage trying to hand the other tributes sandwiches. Taking two, he sets up a picnic for himself and Lucy. Coriolanus encourages Lucy to sing, and she teases him about getting a better grade if she “shines.” Her song reminds Coriolanus of his mother’s death in childbirth, and he almost cries. He speaks to Sejanus, who reveals that he's been having nightmares about being Reaped himself, and that he knew his own tribute, Marcus, from school in District 2. He pleads with Coriolanus to trade with him, an offer that previously Coriolanus would have jumped at. But Coriolanus decides not to swap, as he feels Lucy is a better chance at glory for him.
Chapter 6
Coriolanus and Sejanus talk about the Games, and Sejanus miserably tells Coriolanus that he wishes he could get out of mentoring. This annoys Coriolanus, but Sejanus decides to keep Marcus and stay in. When he gets home, Coriolanus receives a cold welcome from his grandmother, who chastises him for humanizing Lucy. He gets a warmer one from Professor Satyria Click back at school, who congratulates him on his clever schemes. The mentors go to individual info-collecting meetings with their tributes. Lucy tells Coriolanus that she made a living before the Reaping singing and dancing. He tries to convince her to sing during her upcoming interview, but she refuses. The mentors then attend a briefing with Dr. Gaul, who accuses Sejanus of being a rebel sympathizer. His compassion gives Gaul the idea to allow people to send food and gifts to the tributes. Some of the mentors head back to the zoo, where tributes interact with visitors, receiving food and performing for them. Arachne Crane, a mentor for District 10, cruelly teases her tribute, Brandy, with food. The tribute suddenly reaches through the bars and slits her throat.
Chapter 7
Brandy is immediately shot dead by Peacekeepers. Coriolanus tries to help Arachne but fails: she dies in a welter of blood. The incident causes panic among the audience. This triggers Coriolanus’s PTSD from the bombing of the Capitol, but he cleans himself up, goes home, and works on a proposal for betting on the Hunger Games. He submits it, and the next day Coriolanus and Clemensia—another tribute mentor and Coriolanus’s main intellectual antagonist— are summoned to Dr. Gaul, who asks about the project they submitted on monetizing the Games. He tries to convince Dr. Gaul that Clemensia helped him write the proposal. Gaul is skeptical, and asks them to retrieve it from a tank of genetically modified snakes. The snakes attack the unfamiliar, and so they recognize Coriolanus’s scent but not Clemensia’s. Several bite her, to disastrous effect.
Analysis
Even more so than in the first few chapters of this novel, we can see the extent to which a desire to regain what his family has lost drives Coriolanus. He considers himself to be the last hope of the Snow family. Because of this, he knows that his wits are his greatest asset, and it’s possible to see the cogs of his mind working behind even the smallest action. This is true whether he's manipulating public perception while trapped in the monkey cage, or strategizing how he can use Lucy Gray’s ability to flirt with anything g on two legs to his advantage. Everything he does is a calculated move to climb the social ladder. Even though at the beginning of the novel he's horrified by the idea that he would not be allocated a good tribute, he’s clever enough to almost instantly see the uses to which he can put Lucy’s star power. When he refuses to swap tributes with Sejanus, it's after a lightning-fast round of consideration. In the space of a few seconds, he decides to reject Marcus and keep Lucy.
In these chapters too, we start to see an important class issue raised more and more: whether or not there is something fundamentally different between Capitol children and children from the Districts. To justify an event as brutal as The Hunger Games, Capitol citizens must be able to differentiate themselves from District people. The hatred for the rebels and the trauma from the war only fuels this sense of separateness. From Coriolanus’s interactions with Lucy, it's clear that he has been educated to believe that people from the District are primitive, violent, rude, and unsophisticated. Because of this, to people like Coriolanus and the other mentors, transporting the tributes in cattle trains and horse vans seems perfectly acceptable. So, apparently, is parents bringing small children to see the tributes living in a cage like monkeys. As Coriolanus gets to know Lucy, he starts to feel the creeping sense that there might not truly be a fundamental difference between himself and a person Reaped as tribute. He repeatedly dismisses this idea when it comes up, but it comes up more and more often.
The Hunger Games has a viewership problem, and the mentors are encouraged to suggest changes that will get more eyes on the onscreen violence. Some students respond with enthusiasm, treating the issue as a serious problem. However, some reject the idea that making the Games more entertaining is either useful or ethical. In a class with the other mentors, the District 4 mentor Festus Creed suggests that it should be made illegal not to watch the Games. Clemensia Dovecote and Sejanus object to this idea, as well as the one Coriolanus introduces of allowing betting on the tributes. Sejanus’s compassion in this scene and others is not well received. As a child who came from the Districts himself, his loyalty to the Capitol is always somewhat in question. While Coriolanus is beginning to feel uncomfortably similar to his tribute, Sejanus literally went to school with Marcus. He hates the Games but doesn’t have a choice about participation, as he knows anyone else might not care about Marcus’s life at all.
