Quick Links
- What Happened to Prim?
- District 13’s Violent Strategy
- Who’s to Blame?
- Is Coin Better Than Snow?
After Katniss’s rescue from the Hunger Games in Catching Fire, the final installments of The Hunger Games trilogy reveal a much larger insurrection campaign against the Capitol- and who is behind it. Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2 follow the underground District 13, led by President Coin and supported by the efforts of war strategist and soldier Gale Hawthorne and medic Primrose Everdeen, among others. It quickly becomes clear that both Katniss and Prim are merely filling pre-determined roles in a much larger plot that was put in place without their input.
Eerily similar in many ways to her role as tribute in the Games, Katniss is once again relegated to being the “star” of the conflict. Donning makeup and outfits that were carefully selected for her, she films ‘propos’- snapshots of video that portray her as a front-woman on the battlefield in the war against the Capitol- a role that, in reality, is kept from her despite great frustration and effort. Katniss only manages to catch snippets of the war effort’s progress and schemes, while Gale and Prim serve as boots on the ground, attacking and healing respectively. Prim’s fate takes a tragic turn in Mockingjay Part 2, but with Katniss’s limited inside information, and President Coin’s ominous nature, it all begs the question: who ultimately is responsible?
What Happened to Prim?
Prim had an interest and skill in medicine as early as The Hunger Games, where she worked with her mother to treat Gale after he was whipped by a peacekeeper, so her interest in supporting District 13 as a medic isn’t surprising. What is surprising, however, is that at the age of only thirteen, she was sent on to an active battlefield- at President Snow’s mansion, no less.
After a wave of bombings, deployed by parachutes strikingly similar to those used to deliver donations to tributes in the Hunger Games arena, injured Capitol children sequester themselves inside the mansion for safety. Prim is among the squad of medics sent in, and she immediately begins tending to the children. Katniss, on the scene herself, has no knowledge of Prim’s being there until she catches sight of her telltale braid and untucked shirt. Spotting another slew of parachutes, Katniss calls out to her sister, but she’s too late; Prim becomes a casualty of a second wave of explosions, with “Katniss” the last word on her lips.
District 13’s Violent Strategy
The ‘propos’ broadcast throughout the districts proved that District 13 had taken a persuasive- and somewhat dishonest- approach to the war. Keeping Katniss largely in the dark about the uprising’s strategy also suggests that there are some unsavory elements to their tactics. It later comes to light that the design of the bombs that killed Prim likely belonged to Gale. They looked like Capitol technology, yet that was exactly the purpose behind them; he created weapons that were meant to convince civilians that District 13 attacks were in fact perpetrated by the Capitol.
The very essence of this idea raises many ethical questions, all of which are evidenced in the attack that killed Prim. An attack must necessarily be unjust to spark civilian outrage, and this was always the goal behind the invention of the deceptive bombs. The attack on innocent Capitol children, and the subsequent second wave of bombings of rebel aid, does indeed spark fury towards President Snow in Katniss and many others. The revelation that the attacks were in fact orchestrated by President Coin doesn’t make them any less inhumane. In fact, deliberately sending her own troops to die on a doomed rescue mission, including a thirteen-year-old girl, is a serious cause for concern about Coin’s intentions.
Who’s to Blame?
After securing a rebel victory, Katniss has an opportunity to ask an imprisoned President Snow himself. He apologizes to her for the death of her sister, going so far as to claim that he was about to surrender when Coin herself released the parachutes. Katniss, at this point still wholeheartedly confident that the Capitol was responsible for the attack, doesn’t believe him. So Snow explains.
It was a masterful move on Coin’s part. The idea that I was bombing our own helpless children to hold back the rebels. It turned the last of my guards against me. There was no resistance left inside the Capitol or the mansion. Do you know it aired live? There’s a particular savvy in that, isn’t there? I’m sure she wasn’t gunning for your sister, but… these things happen in war. My failure was in being so slow to grasp Coin’s plan. She let the districts and the Capitol destroy one another, then she stepped in to take power with 13’s arsenal. Oh, make no mistake, she intends to take my place now… I’m afraid we’ve both been played for fools.
Of course, Coin denies responsibility for the attack. And while Gale admits to designing the Capitol-imitation weapons, with all the questionable implications that come with that, it truly becomes a ‘he-said/she-said” around who is to blame for this particular bombing. When later asked by Katniss if his bombs killed Prim, Gale honestly answers, “I don’t know.” Yet with Snow facing certain death, be it at the hand of execution or his mysterious illness, only Coin has any motive to lie.
Is Coin Better Than Snow?
The reality is that, regardless of whether Coin perpetrated the specific attack that killed Prim, it achieved the exact goal behind the invention of the bombs. If she didn’t kill Prim, she killed other innocents in similar attacks. And while Gale certainly didn’t intend for Prim to die (sending her onto the battlefield at all was Coin’s choice alone, and a deliberate move to put her in harm’s way, regardless of who pulled the trigger), the loss of innocent life was a core element of Gale’s strategy when designing the bombs.
When Coin unveils her post-victory plan to revive the Hunger Games with Capitol tributes, it seems President Snow was correct in thinking that she aimed to take his place. In a flashback to the first rebellion in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a less than ten-year-old Coriolanus Snow searches for food among body-strewn rubble. The scene is strikingly similar to the battlefield in Mockingjay, as is the subsequent, vengeful decision to implement the Hunger Games.
Coin is merely a new iteration in a cycle of war, oppression, and punishment. When it comes to the question of whether she is any better than Snow, Katniss makes her decision, tilting her bow towards the sky and burying an arrow in Coin that was marked for Snow.
Leave a Reply