A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

By Suzanne Collins

Caution: Spoilers ahead!

Plot:

Coriolanus Snow is the heir to the Snow family, but that does not mean much anymore. The snows have plummeted into poverty and Coriolanus tries his best to keep appearances. If only he can keep impressing people with his charm and intelligence, maybe he will receive a scholarship for University and then he can really turn around the Snow’s fate. As he becomes a mentor to Lucy Gray (from District 12), at the Hunger Games, the complexities of its strategy follow him outside the arena and we get a glimpse at how his mind works when he feels robbed of the privilege he thinks he deserves.

“Wars are won by heads not hearts.”

Coriolanus Snow:

Snow’s struggle to connect with others is apparent from the beginning. At first, we see how hard Tigris, his cousin, and Snow himself, work hard to keep appearances which requires they keep everyone at arm’s length. As the story progresses we see that actually Snow’s standards for who he allows himself to see as an equal are nearly impossible. He despises his classmates for being too loud, or too boring, or even for what their dad’s did during the war and food shortages. Coriolanus completely ignores the fact that his cousin Tigris might have had to make sacrifices too to keep them alive. This pattern of behaviour, the double standards and negligence to empathise, repeats itself again and again throughout the book.

Snow can connect with Lucy Gray because she isn't District. He keeps reminding himself and us that she's not like those other Hunger Games contestants. She cares for her appearance, she has manners, she's Covey. This falls outside his black and white view of the world. It is not Capitol against districts, she’s in a third category. A grey area, if you will ; ) Paired up with the unrestricted feelings of a teenager's first love it's easy to see why his feelings were confusing and extreme. Although I don't believe it was love, I think it was more likely a sort of confused attraction to someone who is so opposite to him but still can follow his rigorous conduct standards. And a need to possess. Again and again, up until Snow leaves Lucy Gray (or she leaves him?), he constantly refers to her as ‘mine’ and ‘my girl’. This possessiveness starts as a need to protect but soon becomes clear that Snow just wants Lucy Gray to be his and for everyone to know who ‘she belongs to’. As if she has no say, or better, he doesn’t believe she would ever not want him. At one point, near the end of the games, he fantasizes that she will stay with him in the Capitol, completely disregarding that she left her family behind and might not want to stay in the city that cheered for her death.

Snow was doomed from the beginning, because he was unable to challenge his notions of privilege, not because he was born mean.

Snow was not born a villain, he was shaped by his circumstances. He was promised luxury, made to believe he deserved it, and then it was taken away. Not by the rebels, but by the capitol's insistence to not forge a fairer society for ALL its citizens. Rebels from District 11 didn't stop the supply of food to the capitol, during the war, to spite its citizens. This was an action taken by a collective tired of asking for rights, left with only the option of violent retribution towards a system that oppressed and imprisoned them. But this is not what Snow is made to believe. He sees what he lacks, all that was ‘taken from him’, added to the fact that he is groomed from birth to believe the district people are below him, subhuman. This notion fortifies his and the privilege of the upper class of the Capitol. They don't have to be smart or good, they are naturally superior and therefore deserve better than everyone else.

“People aren’t so bad, really,” she said. “It’s what the world does to them.”

When they are in the capitol, Snow sees Sejanus as other, but when they meet again in 12, Snow sees him as proof of his pedigree. Sejanus presence cements Snow's belief that they (Sejanus and him) do not belong among those people, completely contradicting his prior belief that Sejanus was District through and through. Only when Sejanus becomes a threat to Snow’s reputation in District 12, does he flip back to believing that Sejanus was never close to being Capitol and therefor cannot be trusted. Rather than allowing his moral compass to dictate his actions, Snow changes and adapts his moral compass to fit whatever action is needed to accomplish his goals.

When Show first sees the impoverished people of 12 he feels disgusted, going as far as blaming them for letting themselves 'go'. Because even though he had struggled, he and his family were able to keep appearances. Snow completely forgets that being from the Capitol and being from a family who holds historical importance, he had access to goods and assets that allowed him to keep up appearances.
In this scene, Snow finds reason for the pride in the fact that he has a gun, and among the peacekeepers he is of pedigree. And that's the first sign of a fascist. The seeking of power above others, to control others, to enact violence without consequence. Snow's future could have been different, we all have ability to choose, but the basic characteristics of his dictatorship were written long before he became president, before even his return to the capitol.

“I think there’s a natural goodness built into human beings. You know when you’ve stepped across the line into evil, and it’s your life’s challenge to try and stay on the right side of that line.”

The writer:

Suzanne Collins portrays the atrocities of war and prejudice in an incredibly clever way. She does not dramatise it or tell us this horrors will never happen, instead, she plays on real-world prejudice and mimics it within the world she has built. Through Snow’s eyes, we see how prejudice and hatred can fuel a damaged person's sense of self. Coriolanus does not have the life he was promised, and failing to see how his government failed him, he instead clutches to the belief that his lack is due to the poorest people's evil nature. Collins has said she will only add to the ‘Hunger Games’ series when she strongly feels the need to add to the story. In my opinion, this addition, given the current Western descent into fascism, is very needed.

5/5*