By Audrey Elwood, Campus News Editor

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

After five years, the newest book installment in “The Hunger Games” franchise was released last month, making a clear statement: what you see is not always the truth.

“Sunrise on the Reaping,” (SOTR) follows Haymitch Abernathy in the second Quarter Quell, the 50th year of the Hunger Games. The ongoing theme of malleable truths throughout the entirety of the series is exposed when the Capitol repeatedly uses the media and the games to promote its agenda.  

SOTR is Orwellian before the games even start. Haymitch was illegally reaped for his games after the original child was killed. The live broadcast intentionally kept five minutes of buffer time to deal with the problem, and within that time they falsified the narrative to make it appear like he got picked by chance. Haymitch protecting his loved ones and the struggle that ensued after he was picked was completely wiped from the narrative.  

The Capitol continually tried to break Haymitch’s spirit in teaching him the lesson that no good deed goes unpunished. When he took care of his “sweetheart” and friend, Louella, after the procession to President Snow’s mansion went awry and resulted in her death, was all but erased with the use of propaganda. 

Her death is not even revealed to the public, and the Capitol goes as far to drug and kidnap a child from another district and transform her into a body double. During the games, Haymitch’s dedication to keeping her alive is also not shown on the broadcast.  

From false reapings to false people, the Capitol repeatedly rigs the games so their horse wins the race. They send mutts to kill the children they do not want to win. They give Haymitch the lowest skill score of all time to try to impede his access to sponsors. The Capitol even gives him poisoned milk to feed his weak compatriot to make him look like the villain. 

He perseveres throughout, figuring out the traps President Snow sets for him. Haymitch wins the games. 

He is touted as a circus animal throughout the Capitol, as a bad boy rebel. All his compassion was cut from the games, making him look like a killer, instead of a boy who just wanted to see another day. 

He finally gets home and his family’s house is on fire, killing his mother and brother. His one true love is poisoned as a way to keep him in line. To cope, he starts drinking. He is cast aside in the original books as a lazy, ungrateful drunk, when in reality, the games were not the end of his suffering; they were the beginning.  

The message of the book is who controls the narrative controls the people. The people in the Capitol are unaware of the propaganda of the games. The Capitol has stripped humanity from the children in the games, reducing it to a nearly sporting match.  

When people in the modern day get their humanity stripped from them, they are reduced down to numbers. They are seen as violent irrevocable creatures, subhuman and not even worthy of a trial. They are viewed as so helpless and “dumb,” that they should be “put on a registry,” for they cannot enjoy life’s simplest pleasures.  

People are not told about the man who worked at a sheet metal factory, taking care of his disabled children. The cases of mistaken identity that have landed good, hard-working Americans in the worst prison in the world. The narrative is slowly rebuilt around these people, until it has dehumanized them past the point of the human right of due process.  

People are not told about the millions of people who live with autism who work jobs, who pay taxes, who create stories and life. They are reduced to burdens who need to be “solved” and are an “epidemic.” The rhetoric around people with autism snowballs into ideas like an autism registry becoming less of a novelty. 

“The Hunger Games” could not exist without a level of dehumanization, and the media subversion that creates it. For this disconnection to happen, the children needed to be stripped of their humanity, through the constant changing of narratives and rhetoric. Whoever controls the narrative controls the future.  

The Capitol was able to ensure its survival by controlling the beliefs around the Capitol. The citizens of the Capitol did not believe their government would lie to them, so they took the fabricated stories at face value.  

Rhetoric is the first step in building a narrative of dehumanization. Everyone has a civic duty to call out this rhetoric in its tracks, before it is too late. We are not doomed to the narrative. As Suzanne Collins once said, “that’s part of our trouble. Thinking things are inevitable. Not believing change is possible.”