Summary: Chapter 25
Katniss recognizes the strange creatures chasing Cato as muttations,
hybrid animals engineered by the Capitol. These muttations look like giant
wolves but can walk upright like humans. Cato runs to the Cornucopia and Katniss
follows, but she realizes Peeta can't keep up because of his injured leg. Unable
to help him from the ground, she climbs to the top of the Cornucopia and fires
arrows at the approaching muttations, allowing Peeta to climb up just in time to
escape them. When one muttation jumps to reach them, Katniss realizes it’s
Glimmer. The dead tributes have been turned into these creatures. One jumps high
enough to grab Peeta, and Katniss just gets hold of him before he's pulled over
the side. He gets free, but when Katniss thinks he's safe, Cato begins
strangling him in a headlock. Cato threatens that if Katniss shoots him, Peeta
will go over the side too. Peeta reaches to the gash the muttation left in his
leg and draws an "X" in blood on Cato's hand. Cato realizes what he's doing just
as Katniss shoots him, and when he lets go Peeta shoves him to the ground
below.
Cato, in his body armor, fights the muttations off for an hour before he
is dragged into the Cornucopia. Night falls, and still no cannon announces his
death. They can hear Cato moaning as the muttations work away at him, but
Katniss knows they won't kill him. The Gamemakers want to prolong the gruesome
spectacle for the viewers. Peeta, meanwhile, is bleeding heavily from the wound
in his leg, which Katniss has tied with a tourniquet. When morning comes,
Katniss realizes Peeta won't survive much longer. She climbs down over the ledge
and sees Cato, mutilated but alive. Out of pity as much as to win, she kills
him. The cannon sounds and the muttations leave, but still the Games don’t end.
Katniss and Peeta climb down but just as Katniss thinks they've won, Claudius
Templesmith announces that the previous rule change has been revoked: There can
now be only one winner again. Peeta says he isn't surprised, and as he draws his
knife Katniss takes aim at him. Peeta tells her to shoot, but she can't. Then,
realizing the Gamemakers won't allow both of them to die, she has an idea. She
takes the poisonous berries from her pouch. As Katniss and Peeta pop the berries
into their mouths, Claudius Templesmith shouts for them to stop and announces
that they are the winners of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games.
Summary: Chapter 26
They spit out the berries, and shortly after they’re lifted into a
hovercraft. Doctors go to work on Peeta immediately and Katniss is dragged to a
separate room where she's given a glass of orange juice. She catches her
reflection in the room’s glass door and hardly recognizes the feral,
crazed-looking person she's become. After a time they land back at the Training
Center. Katniss has a violent fit when she sees them taking Peeta away, until a
needle jabs her and she falls unconscious. She wakes in a different room and
finds herself clean and healed. She can even hear out of her left ear again. The
redheaded Avox comes in to feed her, and when Katniss asks if Peeta made it, she
nods that he did. Katniss is kept restrained to her bed in this room for an
indeterminate amount of time, possibly days.
Eventually she wakes up and finds her restraint gone. An outfit, the same
one the tributes wore into the arena, is set out for her at the end of her bed.
In the hall, she sees Effie, Haymitch, and Cinna. She runs first to Haymitch,
who hugs her and tells her she did a good job, then Cinna embraces her. Her
reunion with Peeta will be at the closing ceremony, and they take her to be
prepped and dressed. Cinna puts her in a simple dress that recalls candlelight
and makes her look young and innocent. He says Peeta will like it, but Katniss
knows Cinna has some other reason that has to do with the Capitol. She is taken
to a waiting area under the stage where she meets Haymitch. He says she looks
good enough and asks for a hug, but when Katniss hugs him he doesn't let her go.
He tells her she's in danger. The Capitol is furious at her showing them up in
the arena. Her only defense can be that she was madly in love with Peeta. As she
prepares to be raised up to the stage for her interview, she feels terrified
that she, Peeta, and even their families may be in danger.
Summary: Chapter 27
After the District 12 team, including Effie, the stylists, and Haymitch,
is introduced, Katniss is raised up to the stage. When she sees Peeta she runs
to him, knocking him slightly off balance, and she realizes he has a cane. They
embrace for a long time before they're seated together on a love seat. Katniss,
taking a cue from Haymitch, puts her head on Peeta's shoulder. They watch a reel
of highlights from the Games, and after it ends President Snow places a crown on
Peeta and another on Katniss. Though President Snow is smiling, Katniss can see
he’s unhappy with her. When the event is over they go to the president's mansion
for the Victory Banquet, then back to the Training Center. Katniss wants to talk
to Peeta privately, but Haymitch won't let her. That night, she sneaks out of
her room and looks for Peeta but can't find him. She returns to her room, and
when she decides to go straight to his room, she finds her door has been locked
from the outside.
The next day she and Peeta are interviewed by Caesar Flickerman. Katniss
is nervous because she has to be very careful what she says. She stumbles over
her words when Caesar Flickerman asks when she realized she was in love with
Peeta, until Caesar suggests it was when she called out Peeta's name to find
him. Katniss shrewdly replies that prior to that she didn't want to have
feelings for him, but that's when she knew she could keep him. Caesar asks Peeta
how his new leg is, and Katniss learns that Peeta now has a prosthetic leg.
Finally, Caesar asks Katniss what was going through her mind when she pulled out
the berries. Katniss realizes this moment is critical: she can frame the
decision as a rebellion against the Capitol or as an act of desperation at the
thought of losing Peeta, and she says she couldn't bear the thought of losing
Peeta. Haymitch tells her later that she was perfect.
On the train back to District 12, Katniss thinks of her family and Gale.
During a refueling stop, Haymitch tells Katniss to keep it up in the district
until the cameras are gone. Peeta doesn't know what Haymitch is talking about,
and Katniss explains that the Capitol is unhappy about the stunt with the
berries and that Haymitch has been coaching her. Peeta angrily asks if Katniss
has been acting the whole time. She says not everything has been an act, but the
closer they get to home the more confused she becomes. As Peeta walks off she
wants to explain that she can't fully love him or anyone else after what they've
been through, but she doesn't. The train arrives in District 12, where crowd of
cameras awaits on the platform. Peeta takes her hand, saying they'll pretend one
more time, and Katniss fears the moment when she'll finally have to let
go.
Analysis
The theme of suffering as entertainment reaches its greatest extreme in
Cato’s slow death at the Cornucopia. The real-life suffering of the tributes is
essentially what makes the Hunger Games entertaining to watch, much like the
real deaths of the gladiators made the gladiatorial Games entertaining to the
Roman populace. The finale of the Games, being ideally the most dramatic and
entertaining part, should therefore entail the most suffering. Katniss comments
on this fact as she and Peeta wait for Cato to die after he is knocked off the
Cornucopia. She realizes the Gamemakers won’t simply have the muttations kill
Cato because prolonging his agony increases the drama of the finale. When
Katniss climbs over the ledge and sees him, she describes him as looking like a
“raw hunk of meat,” indicating that he has been savagely mauled and undoubtedly
in intense pain. By this point, Cato no longer has any chance of surviving, and
it’s clear that the Gamemakers haven’t ended the competition because of the
entertainment value of the grotesque spectacle.
The muttations play a central role in making the finale grotesque and
dramatic, as being turned into savage hybrid animals is the ultimate form of
dehumanization for the tributes. Throughout the Games, the Capitol has treated
the tributes as commodities whose purpose is foremost to entertain the viewers
at home. In other words, the Capitol turns them into objects and dismisses their
humanity and individuality. Here, the Capitol literally dehumanizes the dead
tributes, turning them into vicious wolf-like creatures. These tribute
muttations are vicious, strong, and fast, but they’re most horrifying to
Katniss, and presumably fascinating to the viewers at home, because they retain
some of the physical characteristics of their human selves, allowing them to be
recognized. Their former personalities, however, are completely stripped away
and replaced by a single-minded drive to kill Katniss, Peeta, and Cato. In this
way they’ve become the perfect tool for the Capitol: they are both a new danger
for the living tributes to overcome and they are in themselves a spectacle to
amuse the viewers at home.
The Gamemakers try to make the finale yet more “entertaining” by
announcing that there can only be one winner again. Katniss realizes the
Gamemakers never intended to let both her and Peeta survive, suggesting they
wanted to manufacture a dramatic fight to the death between the two. The
scenario would, of course, be exceedingly awful for two tributes who are
supposed to be in love, but ostensibly it would be great entertainment for the
viewers. This intent is thwarted, however, by Katniss’s idea for her and Peeta
to eat the berries. The book never makes it entirely clear why their suicide
would be more objectionable to the viewers than having them fight each other to
the death. But it suggests that, had Katniss and Peeta actually carried out
their suicides, the Games would have been deeply upsetting to the viewers at
home. The suffering that was supposed to provide entertainment would have become
too emotionally charged as a result, turning the Games from amusement to a
real-life tragedy.
Katniss performs the novel’s greatest act of rebellion against the Capitol
when she has the idea for her and Peeta to eat the poisonous berries. As Katniss
explains, the Hunger Games are the Capitol’s weapon against the districts, but
they are also a popular form of entertainment. But having the two finalists, who
are supposedly madly in love, commit suicide would be extremely unpopular among
the viewers, and therefore potentially troublesome for the Capitol. Thus
Katniss’s idea with the berries essentially turns the Capitol’s weapon back on
itself. The Capitol’s concession of allowing two Hunger Games winners after
declaring there would only be one makes the Capitol look weak, however. More
specifically, it makes them look as if they’ve lost control. Since the Capitol
needs to keep strict control over its populace to maintain the status quo, this
defeat, the story suggests, could ultimately cause problems, though it’s never
stated exactly what these problems might be. Katniss, as a result of her
rebellion and the problems it may cause, becomes a target of the
Capitol.
Because of Katniss’s defiance of the Capitol, appearances become perhaps
more important than ever in the novel. The Capitol is furious with Katniss for
her stunt with the berries, which was essentially an outright rebellion against
the Capitol’s declaration that there would be one winner of the Hunger Games.
The only defense that will allow Katniss to avoid the Capitol’s retribution is
that she was so in love with Peeta she couldn’t bear to be without him. In other
words, she needs to make her defiance look like an act of love and not
rebellion. This need to frame her behavior as love motivates essentially
everything she says and does, notably laying her head on Peeta, in her interview
with Caesar Flickerman after the Games. Cinna is aware of this need as well, and
knowing that Katniss’s physical appearance will affect how the audience and the
Capitol feel about her, he designs a dress for her that makes her appear young
and innocent. Ultimately, every public appearance Katniss makes after the Games
requires her to maintain the fiction that she’s completely in love with Peeta.
Failing to do so could put her and her family, as well as Peeta and even his
family, in danger.
The contrast between Katniss and the pristine conditions she encounters in
the hovercraft after being taken from the arena, and later back in the Training
Center, highlight how brutal the Hunger Games have been on her. When Katniss is
given the glass of orange juice after being dragged to a room in the hovercraft,
she immediately notices the incongruity between the clean, crystal glass, filled
with cold juice and a straw with a “frilly” collar, and her filthy, bloody hand.
The cold orange juice, obtained so easily here, stands in stark contrast with
Katniss’s experience of the past weeks, during which she has had to work for all
her food and fight just to stay alive. In the arena she left moments earlier,
orange juice would have been a luxury (it would also be considered a luxury in
District 12). The frilly collar on the straw specifically suggests a
particularly extravagant and indeed needless luxury. Katniss’s appearance,
meanwhile, represents all the hardships she has endured during the Games. She is
unwashed, bloody from the injuries she’s sustained, and as she notices in the
Training Center, extremely thin from lack of food coupled with hard exertion.
This same contrast persists as Katniss rehabilitates in the comfort of the
Training Center, and throughout the section it essentially symbolizes the power
of the Capitol, with its ability to reduce Katniss to her present condition or
grant her luxuries however it chooses.
As the book draws to a close, Katniss still feels ambivalent about Peeta.
While she cares for Peeta and doesn’t want to lose him, she doesn’t love him in
the way that he loves her. Though she has developed a romantic interest in him,
her feelings toward him have always been tentative, even after she realized that
his feelings for her were genuine. Moreover, Katniss still feels torn between
her interest in Peeta and her interest in Gale. She feels more comfortable with
Gale than she does with anyone else, and as she returns home to District 12, she
wonders whether her relationship with Gale could turn from friendship to
romance. Finally, in the aftermath of the Hunger Games, given the horrible
experiences she’s endured she’s not certain she can love anyone fully enough to
marry and start a family with them. (Perhaps it’s a premature concern given that
Katniss is just sixteen, but it’s a concern for her nonetheless). The dramatic
tension in the book’s final line centers on Katniss’s ambivalence toward Peeta.
Though she may not feel for him as he does for her, she acknowledges that she
still fears the moment she’ll have to let him go.