In a way, that’s a plus because at least she can be counted on to corral us around to places on time whereas we haven’t seen Haymitch since he agreed to help us on the train. … And, to hear her tell it, Effie knows everyone who’s anyone in the Capitol and has been talking us up all day, trying to win us sponsors.

So here we have Effie, a woman who works her butt off and does all sorts of stuff for the kids, and apparently does well at her job.  She’s basically den mother and chaperone.  On top of that, she’s doing Haymich’s job as well in trying to get them sponsors.  Will the text ever stop treating her like an idiot?  Will Katniss ever come to the realization that Effie isn’t some piece of cotton candy that somehow learned how to walk and talk?  No, of course not, the book is going to spend the whole time heaping praise and sympathy on Haymich instead.

Barbarism? That’s ironic coming from a woman helping to prepare us for slaughter.

Well, technically she’s trying to help you avoid getting slaughtered, but I still see the point.  Hey, you know who else is helping prepare you for slaughter?  CINNA!  Yeah, that guy that made you pretty dresses is helping the process of the Games, doing far more to ‘prepare you for slaughter’ than Effie, but once again, only the woman is criticized for this.  The men, on the other hand, are tragic and wonderful.

Possibly she meant coal turns to diamonds, but that’s untrue, too. I’ve heard they have some sort of machine in District 1 that can turn graphite into diamonds. But we don’t mine graphite in District 12. That was part of District 13’s job until they were destroyed.

Sort of.  Graphite and diamonds are both forms of carbon, and they are closer together than coal and diamonds.  You can turn graphite into diamonds if you have a machine, but they will be tiny and ugly and pretty much only used in industrial applications.  That doesn’t mean that diamonds, as a whole, were all graphite at some point in their lives.  They’re more like the siblings of graphite than the descendents. 

But that’s a commonly held myth, so let’s let that go for a moment.  Katniss is from the Shit District, and we’re told that the districts aren’t told anything about each other.  How does she have the schooling and information required to know that graphite can be made into diamonds and that District 1 can do it?  Education is a great thing and all, but let’s face it, most of what we teach our kids these days isn’t useful.  We keep them in schools to keep them busy until they turn 18, because we don’t need them to be farm hands anymore.  True, the fact that we babysit them this way means we have a culture that can produce technical marvels at regular intervals, but in Panem’s Districts’ cases, they should be educating to the level of basic functioning, to the level required to get good worker drones, and that’s it.  Whereas the Capitol is the prime place to implement the “babysit them with education” tactic.  So how does Katniss know all about the graphite-diamond machine but Effie doesn’t?

It’s because this book will go out of its way to paint Effie as stupid.

I program the closet for an outfit to my taste. The windows zoom in and out on parts of the city at my command. You need only whisper a type of food from a gigantic menu into a mouthpiece and it appears, hot and steamy, before you in less than a minute.

This book really misses out on an opportunity for social commentary here.  Her home district is a horrible mixmash of failure that can’t be identified, but she herself is basically a middle class American girl.  Then she goes to the Capitol, which is basically Star Trek on Earth with worse costumes.  In essence, this makes the Capitol much less of a stand-in for modern day America.  Katniss could have been impressed by anything.  By reliable electricity or every family having a car or TVs that have more than just the ‘official’ channel.  Hell, a functioning shower that never runs out of hot water would have been a luxury to her.  Instead, the book pulls out future-tech that anyone reading this would be impressed by.  Instead of pointing out to the reader that, hey, we live in a pretty luxurious society with lots of nice stuff, we’re right there with Katniss and being impressed by fancy, unobtainable gadgets.  We’re meant to connect with Katniss on such a level that we’re never forced to sit back and take stock of our own lives and what it would be like for someone from an impoverished life.  Instead, we get to think “oh, poor middle class girl who is just like me!  Our lives are so hard, aren’t they?”

Because heaven forbid this book actually challenge the readers and make them uncomfortable.

it’s about planning out our strategies, and Cinna and Portia have already proven how valuable they are.

…at fashion design, yeah.  Unless the rest of the ‘strategy’ involves clothing, I don’t see how those two have ‘proven’ anything.  Yes, it’s possible that they are intelligent and able to comment on more than just clothes, but it’s the “proven” that sticks in my craw.

I’ve never had wine, except the homemade stuff my mother uses for coughs, and when will I get a chance to try it again? I take a sip of the tart, dry liquid and secretly think it could be improved by a few spoonfuls of honey.

You have enough leftover fruit that you can make wine from it?  And you have enough honey to use it as a sweetener?  Tell us again all about how you were starving, Katniss.  I dare ya.

People like sweet things, but honey isn’t actually going to do much for a starving person.  It’s far better to sell it to people who can afford it and use the money to buy actual food.  There’s no reason why Katniss should have enough of the stuff to regularly dump it into her drinks.

Haymich, of course, shows no ill effects from being sober.  Once again, he’s able to pull himself together and drink wine in moderation and act in a perfectly social manner.  Because that’s totally how decades of alcoholism works, right? 

“She’s probably a traitor of some sort. Not likely you’d know her.”

So, the Capitol takes traitors, tortures them, thereby ensuring that they hate the Capitol even more than before, then…makes them servants?  I guess it’s possible that they are only servants in the Training Center, where they can’t put poison in the food of some important official.  Still, if the Games are this big social control thing, how would it look if all your tributes one year keeled over dead before making it to the arena?  Or if they all escaped?  Why would you put traitors that hate you right next to something supposedly so vital for your control over the country?

Delly Cartwright is a pasty-faced, lumpy girl with yellowish hair who looks about as much like our server as a beetle does a butterfly.

Because, come on, when has this book ever passed up an opportunity to call non-Katniss girls ugly?

The energy at the table relaxes. “Oh, well. If that’s all it is,” says Cinna.

Why was everyone tense?  No one at the table has any reason to tell the world that Katniss is ‘friends’ with a traitor, so the more likely scenario is that 1) the adults all know that the room is bugged or 2) everyone, even the Capitol citizens, is so used to having their speech and actions monitored that they instinctively fear any open indication of dissent.  Both of which would be pretty cool options, but they are spottily applied, as we’ll see later.

This chapter is full of food, but it’s still slightly wrong.  Katniss takes the time to describe exactly what she’s eating, but that’s all she does.  Just tells us what it is.  There’s no comment on the way it tastes, no comment on the quantity, no obsession about it.  There’s no reaction to it at all.  They have food, they eat it, they move to the living room to watch TV.  Can you really get more middle class American than that?

Rebellion? I have to think about that one a moment.

Yeah, I did, too.  Because I can’t for the life of me figure out how it’s rebelling.  Katniss, honey, the Capitol doesn’t care if you like your partner or not.  You’re going to die, and if you have to kill or be killed by someone you like…well, that makes for better television.  The Games aren’t about making you all hate each other, they’re about making you all dead and doing it in the most entertaining way possible.

On top of that, what, in 74 years they’re the first couple to be scared and cling to each other for comfort?  The text treats the other tributes as if they’re all serious competitors – as if the Games had already begun – instead of treating them like scared kids who got forced into this Parade of Death.  It reacts to them as if they all volunteered, as if they are willing to be there and willing to play along with the spectacle.  With all-volunteers you have a much better chance of getting a homogenous group who act more or less alike, but when you just pluck kids at random from a crowd, some of them are going to cower and hold hands.

Except in Fictionland, where Katniss is inexplicably special for doing normal things.  Oh, wait, no, Cinna is special.  Katniss just did what she was told.

We both know he covered for me. So here I am in his debt again.

No, you’re not.  He did a thing of his own free will and that’s it.  You did not agree to or ask for him to cover for you, and you are not required to give him anything just because he acted independently. 

Just like you’re not obligated to make out with boys who buy you drinks, or date boys who are “nice” to you.  People will act like they act, and no one is obligated to respond to their independent actions.

How can it hurt really? Even if he repeated the story, it couldn’t do me much harm.

If it doesn’t hurt anyone to have the real story repeated, then it wouldn’t have hurt anyone to just announce it at the dinner table, either.  So not only was Peeta acting as an independent agent when “covering” for her, it wasn’t even a necessary cover.  He didn’t exactly put anything at risk by lying for her.  So she really doesn’t “owe” him for that act.

I try to think if telling Peeta could give him any possible advantage over me, but I don’t see how.

Everything about this is mind-boggling.  What Peeta is doing is fairly normal behavior.  She’s got no reason to believe that he’s doing this for any reason other than “this is how people act.”  This is something a person with a child’s level of social skills should be able to figure out.  Not only that, but Katniss has already acknowledged that there’s 22 other kids, better trained kids in some cases, and those kids will probably kill them before they have any chance to kill each other.

Actually, I think the biggest issue I have with this subplot is that Katniss automatically assumes that Peeta is going to actively try to kill her and is already plotting to do so.  We had that nice little bit in chapter two about how killing a person is different from killing an animal, but then it’s so completely dropped that Katniss doesn’t even think about it in this case.  Her brain completely skips over the part of wondering whether or not Peeta is a sociopathic killer.  (Someone who kills without hesitation or empathy, not necessarily someone who is sadistic and seeks out victims.)

People have a natural aversion to killing other people.  It’s written into our DNA.  It’s what makes the prospect of killing another person so frightening.  We don’t want to kill people.  That initial “do not want” has to be overcome in some way.  Katniss here not only fails to experience that “omg I might have to kill other people” fear, but she assume that everyone around her is going to skip it as well.  And she assumes that’s normal.  She’s not sitting here wondering if Peeta will kill her, if he’s capable of that, if he’ll do it without hesitation, if he’s the kind of person who can do that, or what that says about his person.  She just assumes everyone lacks that fear and is jumping straight into murder-planning mode.

And that’s really fucking creepy on her part.

She has reminded me why I’m here. Not to model flashy costumes and eat delicacies. But to die a bloody death while the crowds urge on my killer.

…Katniss, why did you need a reminder for that?

Electricity in District 12 comes and goes, usually we only have it a few hours a day. … But here there would be no shortage. Ever.

Yes, BECAUSE THEY ARE TAKING ALL THE COAL.  This is even worse than the food, because she lives in a district where she sees people die or get maimed or end up with black lung all for the sake of mining coal, and their only reward is starvation and poverty while the Capitol uses all their coal to keep the lights on all night long.  She should be looking out over this glittering nightscape and thinking “really?  My father died for this?” not “Aw, that’s so awesome, I wish I lived in something that awesome.”

GOD DAMNIT, KATNISS, GET ANGRY!  YOUR FATHER DIED SO THESE PEOPLE COULD KEEP THE GLITTERY LIGHTS ON!  STOP TALKING ABOUT HOW PRETTY IT IS!

“Some kind of electric field throws you back on the roof.”

“Always worried about our safety,” I say.

Safety-shmafety.  There we have the first indication that suicide is a thing and that the Capitol doesn’t want it to happen.  This book will continue to dance around the issue of suicide and bring it up only in cases where it’s impossible to accomplish. 

A net dropped down on the girl and carried her up, fast, so fast like the elevator. They shot some sort of spear through the boy.

Why?  The two were in the same state, they were both hiding in the same place, they were both equally threatening (or non-threatening, as the case may be).  So why stab one and net another?  There was literally no difference at all between these two except gender.  Why kill the boy without even attempting to capture but use a non-lethal method on the girl?

The girl’s scream. Had it been her last?

I doubt it.  Screams don’t require a tongue, and even if they did, I bet she got a few more good ones in as they came at her with the tongue-cutter-outer.

Really, Katniss, this is basic logic here.  Stop trying to make all the pathos revolve around you.  It’s terrible that she got caught and mutilated, not terrible that you heard her ‘last’ scream.

Haymitch had called the Avoxes traitors. Against what? It could only be the Capitol. But they had everything here. No cause to rebel.

And this question will never be answered.  There’s an implication that the Capitol people we see in the rebellion do it out of altruistic reasons, but it’s always an implication.  We never find out if, say, they treat their citizens like shit and just cover it up with pretty baubles, or if the average Capitol citizen is in danger of a corrupt justice system that labels everyone a ‘traitor’ for minor reasons.  Maybe they live in fear of being ‘disappeared’ all the time, they just also have pretty clothes and food while they wait.  Maybe the whole capitol isn’t drowning in riches, just the upper veneer.  But we’ll never know!

He’s covered again. If that’s all you’d heard it would just sound like the words of a scared tribute, not someone contemplating the unquestionable goodness of the Capitol.

Why do they care?  Why not stand there in the middle of the living room and talk about how the Capitol sucks?  What’s the worst they could do, kill you?  Oh, wait, that’s already going to happen.  Cut your tongue out and make you a servant?  …that’s actually looking like a step up right now, so big deal.  Why all this freaking out over if they can hear or not?  It would be one thing if this was just a product of a lifetime of fear of the Capitol, but Katniss isn’t afraid of them in that way.  She’s happy to talk shit about the Capitol when she knows it won’t matter, and it doesn’t matter now.

the redheaded girl is collecting my unitard and boots from where I left them on the floor before my shower.

[…]

But I know that my apology runs much deeper.

Hey, if you feel so bad for the girl, how about you not leave around messes for her to clean up?  How about you actually think about your current actions instead of leaving your shit all over the place like a middle-class brat?