The Hunger Games (novel): Difference between revisions

* [[Because You Were Nice to Me|Because You Were Nice To My Friend]]: Thresh spares Katniss because she helped Rue out {{spoiler|before the latter died.}}

* [[Becoming the Mask]]: Katniss pretends to be {{spoiler|in love with Peeta just to keep them both alive in the arena.}} At the end of the first book, she's prepared to kill him to save herself. Contrast the end of the second, {{spoiler|where she's totally prepared to die so he can continue living.}}

* [[Being Tortured Makes You Evil]]: {{spoiler|Peeta, though he got better.}}

* [[Betty and Veronica]]: Peeta is the Betty and Gale (despite being Katniss' best friend from early childhood) is the Veronica to Katniss's Archie: Peeta is nice and fairly sweet, while Gale has a revolutionary mindset and a ruthless streak. [http://apricotteacup.deviantart.com/art/Hunger-Games-Peeta-VS-Gale-152229494?q=sort%3Atime+favby%3ATaylorswifty1&qo=3&offset=130 This picture] sums it up nicely.

* [[Butt Monkey]]: {{spoiler|Poor Boggs. His life is a string of tribulations, from Katniss puking all over him to Gale breaking his nose to getting his legs blown off and dying horribly. The closest he comes to complaining is a sigh when Katniss pukes on him.}}

* [[Call a Rabbit A Smeerp]]: The addictive painkiller in use around Panem is called "morphling" (morphine) and the people addicted to it are called "morphlings."

* [[Cats Are Mean]]: Buttercup is to everyone who isn't Prim. {{spoiler|Until Katniss and he finally bond after Prim's death.}}

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: Nightlock berries and {{spoiler|Foxface's death}}

* [[Costume Porn]]: Each tribute gets a personal stylist. Looking flashy outside of the arena serves a practical purpose, though: tributes who catch the audience's eye are more likely to receive sponsors who can help them survive the arena.

* [[Covered in Mud]]: Peeta uses a large amount of mud with plants on top to disguise himself as part of a riverbank when he is too injured to move. This probably helps his infection along.

* [[Crapsack World]]: Most of the districts are horrible places to live. The people are poor, starving, and oppressed while those in the Capitol live outrageously decadent lives but are also extremely closely watched and more likely to be punished or even executed for speaking out. And that's even without mentioning the eponymous [[Deadly Game]].

* [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]:

* [[Dysfunction Junction]]: Go figure.

* [[Dystopia]]: Panem is not a great place to live.

** Johanna Mason gets a brief mention in the first book, then appears in the flesh ([[Naked On Arrival|literally!]]) a book later.

** Delly Cartwright is mentioned in the first part of the first book in passing, but doesn't appear until the middle of the third.

* [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]: Panem is basically a futuristic, sci-fi version of Rome. The country's name is an adoption of Rome's "Bread and Circuses" motto. The Capitol is an incredibly authoritarian superpower that brutally reigns over conquered territories to feed the decadent desires of its own citizens. The gladiatorial parallels with the Hunger Games are obvious, of course. The parties feature guests who induce vomiting so that they can consume more food, which is popularly thought to have been common at Roman banquets.

* [[Fail O'Suckyname]]: Plutarch Heavensbee, Effie Trinket, and just about everyone in the Capitol. Except Seneca Crane.

* [[Feed the Mole]]

* [[A Fete Worse Than Death]]: The Capitol requires the Districts to treat the Games as a festival.

* [[Fridge Horror]]: [[In-Universe|As Katniss]] sings a song by her father called "The Hanging Tree", she notices, many years after first hearing it, that the point-of-view character is the guy who was hanged there.

* [[Friend to All Living Things]]: Prim seems to befriend any animal she meets, and can't bear to go hunting with Katniss.

* [[Gallows Humor]]: Katniss and some of the other Hunger Game tributes/victors learn to have a very droll outlook on their [[Crapsack World]]. Finnick takes it somewhat literally in ''Catching Fire'' by tying a noose and pretending to hang himself as a joke.

* [[Gender Flip]]: Katniss is the [[Action Girl]] and is proficient at hunting with a bow and arrow. Peeta bakes and paints, and is more emotional of the two. They're an inversion of [[Manly Men Can Hunt]] and [[Feminine Women Can Cook]], respectively.

* [[Good Is Not Dumb]]: Peeta is kind and patient and {{spoiler|totally kills people in the arena, including finishing off one girl in cold blood while he's in the Career pack}}, besides being three steps ahead when it comes to manipulating the on-camera narrative.

* [[Good Scars, Evil Scars]]: [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] in ''Mockingjay'', when {{spoiler|Katniss}} has her uglier scars surgically cleaned up, but is left with some more attractive scars, because she's got to have ''some'' scars to show how bravely she's been fighting. Averted in the end, however, when {{spoiler|she gets ugly skin grafts, and there's no attempt to blend them because District 13 has no more need of her}}.

* [[Gorn]]: How the Capitol citizens view the Hunger Games. In-universe only, hopefully.

* [[Gotta Kill Them All]]: Throughout the Hunger Games, Katniss quite literally counts the number of remaining contestants on her fingers and toes. {{spoiler|Although she only personally kills two or three in the end.}}

** On the male side, Cato uses a [[Cool Sword|sword]], Marvel uses a [[Blade On a Stick|spear]], Thresh uses [[Good Old Fisticuffs|brute force]], and Peeta uses a [[Knife Nut|combat knife]].

* [[Hair of Gold]]: Peeta, Prim, Delly Cartwright

* [[Hannibal Lecture]]: Katniss' last conversation with President Snow. {{spoiler|She decides [[Hannibal Has a Point]].}}

* [[Harmful to Minors]]: Only minors are selected for the standard Hunger Games. {{spoiler|The 75th Hunger Game changes the rules.}}

* [[Nightmare Sequence]]: Katniss's dreams are usually a horrifying mishmash of bad memories and fear-gripped imagination, like everyone getting their tongues cut out or all her loved ones screaming in agony.

* [[Nobody Poops]]: Bears may shit in woods but tributes, apparently, do not. It wouldn't be so noticeable, except that Collins takes pains to make everything about the Hunger Games and the horrors of the arena seem dirty and uncomfortable and horrible, so in the first book at least it's a glaring omission. They do, however, urinate. Possible justification: if you're exercising a lot (say, fighting in an arena) and not getting much to eat (say, fighting in an arena), your body makes use of more of the food you eat. But you'd think Katniss would've noticed the ''lack'' of... [[MST3K Mantra|Well, whatever.]]

* [[No Name Given]]: Katniss never learns the names of most of the tributes. She doesn't find out until well after the games are over that the boy from District 1 was named Marvel, even though {{spoiler|she was the one who killed him}}.

* [[Not So Different]]: {{spoiler|Presidents Coin and Snow.}}

* [[Non-Action Guy]]: Peeta, whose sole moment of badassery is so early on in the games that it's easily outshined by his persistent habit of being [[The Load]].

* [[Non-Action Big Bad]]: President Snow.

* [[Not in This For Your Revolution]]: It takes Katniss a long time to decide to actively help the revolutionaries instead of just looking out for her own survival.

* [[Not Me This Time]]: When confronted with {{spoiler|the bombing of the children in front of the mansion,}} Snow reveals that he had absolutely nothing to do with it, and in fact it was {{spoiler|President Coin}}.

* [[Say My Name]]: Especially Katniss' incident in the tree during the first games.

* [[Scary Black Man]]: Thresh.

* [[Screw the Rules, I Make Them|Screw The Rules We Make Them]]: The Gamemakers.

* [[Sensitive Guy and Manly Man]]: Peeta (sensitive) vs. Gale (manly).

* {{spoiler|[[Ship Sinking]]}}: In the third book, Katniss and Gale's relationship is increasingly strained, especially after {{spoiler|the battle in District 2}}. They may have been able to work past that, but it's when they realize that {{spoiler|Gale made the bombs that killed Prim (not to mention horribly scarring Peeta and Katniss) that puts the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. Possibly for both of them, since Gale didn't seem to upset about losing her.}}

* [[Shoot the Hostage]]: {{spoiler|President Coin orders a bombing attack on children being used as human shields by President Snow - and makes it appear that the attack was initiated by Snow, in order to destroy any remaining public support for Snow's regime.}}

** [[Word of God]] has stated that Katniss's family name is a reference to the Thomas Hardy character Bathsheba Everdene.

** Katniss (the "Girl on Fire") is in Squad Four Five One, a reference to Ray Bradbury's ''Fahrenheit 451'', which is another dystopian novel with a fire motif.

* [[Shout Out to Shakespeare]]: Lavinia, who has no tongue, is a reference to ''[[Titus Andronicus (Theatre)|Titus Andronicus]]''. Titus is also name-dropped, a Tribute who goes cannibal in the games.

* [[Sibling Yin-Yang]]: Katniss and Prim

* [[Simulated Urban Combat Area]]

* [[Slave to PR]]: A dominating theme. A likable persona for a tribute wins sponsors: for example, Finnick. It culminates in ''Mockingjay'' when {{spoiler|it is strongly implied that the rebels ''bomb a town square full of children'', in a Capitol hovercraft, solely to convince everyone in the nation that the Capitol is evil}}. P.R. is possibly ''the'' most powerful weapon in ''The Hunger Games.''

* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]: The cynicism side. Far, far, ''far'' on the cynicism side.

* [[Super Doc]]: Outside the poorer districts, medicine is ''far'' in advance of our own time.

* [[Super Happy Fun Trope of Doom]]: The role of the Peacekeepers isn't as sweet as it sounds. (Bit like in [[Real Life]], then?) Pretty much everything surrounding the Games is treated as fun and entertaining; being a "tribute" is an ''honor.''

* [[Sure Let's Go With That]]: When Caesar Flickerman asks Katniss exactly when she first {{spoiler|fell for Peeta}}, she's evasive at first (since at this point {{spoiler|she hasn't actually fallen for him yet}}) and then immediately goes along with his first guess.

* [[Survival Mantra]]:

{{quote| My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games...}}

* [[Take a Third Option]]: {{spoiler|The climax of Book 1.}}

* [[Take That]]: In universe, the mockingjay becomes an increasingly unsubtle one of these towards the Capitol.

* [[Taking the Bullet]]: During the Quarter Quell, {{spoiler|one of the morphlings is killed by an attack from a vicious monkey that was meant for Peeta}}.

* [[War Is Hell]]: Absolutely nothing [[War Is Glorious|glorious]] about it.

* [[Wartime Wedding]]: {{spoiler|Finnick and Annie.}}

* [[Water Wakeup]]: When Haymitch is in a stupor, only this will rouse him.

* [[Weapons Kitchen Sink]]: Inevitable, given the fact that the Capitol just spreads them around in the Arena and hopes for a sloppy death scenario to increase the "entertainment" value. There's a [[Crosses the Line Twice|blackly-comic]] aside in Book 1 where Katniss mentions how one year the only weapons provided were horribly awkward maces.

* [[What Does She See in Him?|What Do They See In Her]]: It's a bit hard to believe that a girl who is mentally unstable, is [[The Stoic]], rarely shows compassion except in extreme circumstances, and only shows love to her little sister or a surrogate of her would be such a catch. Especially considering that there doesn't seem to be any real basis for a relationship with either [[Love Interest]]; Peeta's love came from a childhood crush from watching her sing, while her relationship with Gale seems to come from more of a familiarity and common interests (that of 'survival' and 'hunting') than genuine friendship. Although they are teenagers, and both of them seem to be catching onto her flaws by the third book. Oddly enough, the [[Love Triangle]] seems to be resolved because Katniss realizes that {{spoiler|she can't love Gale after being partially responsible for her sister's death rather than realizing that she does love Peeta}}.

** The very first chapter of ''The Hunger Games'': {{spoiler|"It's Primrose Everdeen."}}

** Chapters have a tendency to end with these, such as, {{spoiler|"Katniss, there is no District 12."}}

** Or how about {{spoiler|"And then the second round of parachutes goes off."}}

* [[What Happened to The Mouse?]]:

** We never learn ''why'' Cinna requested District 12 (as he says he did in book 1) and we never find out if Portia did the same. We also have no clue why he doesn't have the Capitol accent or the Capitol sense of style, despite that not making much sense if he's a fashion designer who's lived in the Capitol for his entire life. However, there is a theory stating that his mother had an affair with a Victor, perhaps from District 12, although that would kind of complicate things rather than resolve them. On the other hand, we never learn what happened to the other Victor from 12 apart from Haymitch and whether that one came before him or after.

** In the third book Katniss gets a bow with "special properties." She never once mentions them again, uses them, or even explains what those properties are, besides the fact that it can vibrate to say hello. This could be the reason it's able to shoot down planes, though.

** In ''Catching Fire'' Katniss comes across two refugees (Bonnie and Twill) trying to make it to District 13. When Katniss gets there herself, she asks after them, but learns that they never made it. We never find out what actually happened to them.

* [[When the Clock Strikes Twelve]]: [[Race Against the Clock|Given the nature of the arena used by the Quarter Quell.]]

* [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?]]: The Districts have a few geographical clues but otherwise the readers don't really learn where they are. [http://aimmyarrowshigh.livejournal.com/32461.html That didn't stop people from trying to map it, though.]