The Old Therebefore: Sunrise on the Reaping’s Success

This year, nearly two decades after the Hunger Games trilogy took the world by storm and five years since the release of its first prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, author Suzanne Collins published Sunrise on the Reaping, a new prequel that explores one of the franchise’s most beloved characters. Sitting at just about four hundred pages, Sunrise on the Reaping is a brilliant stitching between different eras of the Hunger Games’ fictional setting of Panem. In the first book, readers are introduced to the format of the yearly Games in which two tributes are chosen from the districts to fight each other to the death in the Capitol—however, this inclusion details the 50th Games, where there are double the victims, 24 years before the original trilogy begins. By choosing to follow a young version of the drunken and bitter Haymitch Abernathy (Katniss’s mentor in the Hunger Games), Collins set herself on a difficult path to weave in details from her existing works set before and after Sunrise on the Reaping takes place. Because it’s sandwiched between The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and the original three novels, Collins had to create a suspenseful narrative while remaining faithful to the backstories and destinies readers are already familiar with. 

Throughout the book, Collins finds ways to incorporate known characters, locations, and events, giving readers a fresh outlook on the content they already know without overwhelming the new story. In the original trilogy, Katniss’s mother, Asterid March, is not even named, and she simply exists as an entity to demonstrate the loss and tragedy of their world; Asterid has very few lines of dialogue and is supposedly heartbroken by her husband’s death. However, in Sunrise on the Reaping, she is a fully formed character who exemplifies persistence. Before her husband (revealed to be Burdock Everdeen) passes during a tragic mining accident, Asterid is the town beauty and manages to thrive under the world of Panem’s ruthless control; seeing how Katniss’s parents got together and knew Haymitch well deepens the reader’s understanding of the relationship between Haymitch and Katniss as he saves her in her own games later on. Similarly, we learn how Burdock saves the man who later becomes Peeta Mellark’s father, an innovative way to connect two characters who seemingly had no history. 

Another example of these ties is the songs, including “The Hanging Tree,” that play throughout the story, and the Covey, a group of traveling performers. Early on, Haymitch’s girlfriend, a Covey girl named Lenore Dove, is introduced, and she quickly begins quietly forming a bridge between the past and future. Lenore Dove and her family’s songs quickly become anthems of protests at the horrors of the Games and Panem as a whole. Importantly, the songs’ continuity throughout the books—especially songs like “In the Old Therebefore” and “The Hanging Tree”—aids readers in connecting Lucy Gray, a Covey girl who won the 10th Games, and Katniss as heroes of rebellion. For instance, Lucy Gray sang “In the Old Therebefore” as a moment of triumph upon winning the 10th Hunger Games, a song of resistance. She responds to the Capitol’s aggression with resilience, singing, “When I’ve cried all my tears / When I’ve conquered my fears / Right here / In the old therebefore / When nothing is left anymore.” The Covey later sing this song to Lenore Dove as she dies in one final act of rebellion, and Katniss hears this song from others. In other words, the song’s message is carried on throughout time. 

By incorporating details such as these and thus creating a fluid timeline, Collins ensures her overarching themes of humanity and authoritarianism hold firm by showing readers another stage of dictatorship beyond the stages of control and rebellion—the stage of submission. In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the audience is presented with her take on how individuals, even the most promising ones, can turn wicked when they feel that the only way to get what they want is to lose their humanity. A young Coriolanus Snow, just an intelligent man who wanted to feed his family, turns into a deranged and murderous dictator. In the Hunger Games trilogy, they see how such a regime topples when citizens reach their breaking point and resistance bursts. Katniss stands in front of a burning hospital and cries, “Do you see that? Fire is catching… And if we burn, you burn with us!” But what about the in-between, where authority is strong and uncontested, where tributes cannot see a way out? That is the missing stage filled by this new addition. Haymitch, District 12, and other tributes across the Games are not united against Snow as the tributes were in Katniss’s second Games. They are instead scattered and have no hope. Haymitch’s blows to the Capitol were never meant to be an act of resistance; they were simply to survive because he could not see a world where anything more was possible. 

As she mentioned in an early statement released by the AP, Collins was inspired by “David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.’” Hume was a Scottish philosopher and economist who believed that rulers are allowed to rule so long as the public gives them explicit or effective permission, and the rulers provide said public with the appropriate justice and protection as a society. However, if the rulers fail to accomplish this, they void their authority and open the door to rebellion. The state that exists in-between rule and rebellion is evident in the storyline. Readers will note that future leaders of the resistance are emerging but do not openly challenge the dictatorship. An obvious example would be Plutarch Heavensbee, who later leads the revolution behind Katniss, as he works in the Games to learn their ways and begin plotting a revolt. Even as the plot seems to center around one teenage boy in the midst of the Games, diligent readers will notice how the Capitol’s power is beginning to fade and the seeds of resistance are beginning to take root. Haymitch was publicly, yet quietly, against the Capitol—for instance, he played up his sarcastic and rude nature during interviews, but he never outright called out Snow for the death of his friend. Before this book was published, readers knew of his iconic takedown of the arena’s forcefield from Katniss’s research for the 75th Games, embarrassing the Capitol by demonstrating how their technology isn’t flawless and how a tribute can beat them at their own game. Sunrise on the Reaping shows this in detail, but also explains how he simply refused to play with the Capitol. Haymitch did not play up a false romance, beg for sponsors, or celebrate upon survival; by refusing to appear grateful, he sent the message that survival is not the same as success. 

Overall, Sunrise on the Reaping is a wonderful addition to the Hunger Games franchise. By bridging two distinct locations in time, it provides readers with a better understanding of how leaders rise and fall. Its usage of music and previously known characters provides a base for Collins to reveal how revolutions are born and why individuals make the choices they do. Propaganda and dictators go hand in hand in Panem, and those who began to fight back did so out of a necessity to survive, long before anyone was actively trying to take down the Games and become stars. Sunrise on the Reaping thus breathes new life into the fabled 50th victor: Katniss would never have become the victor she was without Lucy Gray’s first song, but this story reveals how Haymitch’s victory was truly the event that set the Capitol on fire.