Hunger Games series author Suzanne Collins says she’ll probably never write a sequel to her bestselling original trilogy, which kickstarted the YA dystopian trend of the 2010s. But she continues to write prequels that dive into the inner machinations of the world of Panem and the bloody competition that gave them their collective title. 2020’s The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place 64 years before the main trilogy and focuses on despotic President Snow as a young man. The new book Sunrise on the Reaping takes place closer in time to the original Hunger Games trilogy, leaving room for plenty of familiar characters to appear — including one legacy character from the first trilogy who gets a particularly heartbreaking past, making their eventual fight against the Capitol even more powerful.
Haymitch Abernathy, Katniss and Peeta’s mentor from the first trilogy, narrates the events of Sunrise on the Reaping, which starts when he’s 16 years old. But Collins also gives other players more fleshed-out backstories, adding new insight about their characters.
[Ed. note: This post contains minor spoilers for Sunrise on the Reaping, as well as spoilers for the other Hunger Games books.]
Image: Lionsgate
Sunrise on the Reaping follows Haymitch’s Hunger Games, the annual Battle Royale-style competition where two children from each of Panem’s 12 impoverished Districts are forced to compete to the death for the amusement of the affluent Capitol. Each year, a new group of 24 kids are taken from their homes and paraded around the Capitol (quite literally, in the opening ceremony), given makeovers, and trained in combat and survival before being thrown into an arena, where the games don’t end until all of the competitors are dead except the victor. Haymitch is conscripted for the 50th Hunger Games, the second “Quarter Quell,” where instead, four competitors are “reaped” from each District.
While in the training session, Haymitch meets Ampert, a 12-year-old from District 3 who hopes to form an alliance with the tributes from less prosperous Districts, who historically have lower chances of winning. At one point, Ampert mentions that his father is in the training room, which gives Haymitch pause. Typically, the only people allowed in the training room are Capitol instructors, the Hunger Games staff, and the Capitol’s enforcers, the Peacekeepers.
But Haymitch soon learns that Ampert’s father is none other than former District 3 victor Beetee, a technological genius who won his Hunger Games by electrocuting the rest of his competition.
In the main trilogy, Katniss meets Beetee during the Third Quarter Quell and decides to ally with him. He becomes instrumental in her rebellion against the Capitol, especially when it comes to weapons manufacturing. He makes Katniss the custom bow that she uses throughout all of Mockingjay, the final book in the trilogy. He’s also responsible for hacking into the Capitol broadcast system in order to run rebel propaganda.
As it turns out, Beetee’s rebellious past goes back further than his actions in Mockingjay. In Sunrise on the Reaping, he’s receiving a special sort of sadistic punishment after plotting to sabotage the Capitol’s communication system.
He’s too valuable to kill outright. As with most Hunger Games victors, the Capitol citizens have likely latched onto him as a sort of microcelebrity and symbol. And his technological work in District 3 is crucial for the Capitol’s extravagant way of life. Instead, he’s being forced to watch his son enter the Hunger Games, where he’s almost certainly going to die a gruesome death.
At the same time, President Snow is forcing Beetee to assist Ampert as a mentor, training him for the games. That task typically falls to past winners from a given District, as new victims from their District are called to compete. As Beetee tells Haymitch, he’s even given the special “privilege” of having a booth on the training grounds, so he’s stationed among the trainees, where he won’t miss a second of Ampert’s final moments.
Many previous victors we meet in the main Hunger Games books experienced tragedy and trauma, especially the ones who end up being part of the rebellion. It’s a twofold loop: They likely rebelled because of tragedies they experienced, and they likely ended up with more trauma because of the consequences of any rebellious attitudes or actions. Take Johanna Mason from District 7, who resisted President Snow’s attempts to sex-traffic her after her Hunger Games victory, so her entire family was eventually tortured and killed. And even before the details we learn in Sunrise on the Reaping, we knew Haymitch lost his family and his girlfriend to the Capitol.
At one point in the main trilogy, protagonist Katniss Everdeen says that if she and her fellow District 12 Hunger Games conscript Peeta are forced to get married, she’ll never want to have children, because she’s almost certain that the children of two victors will be forced to participate in the Games — especially the star-crossed lovers of District 12, who defied the Capitol. Thankfully, it never comes to that, but Ampert and Beetee’s fate in this book is evidence that Katniss’s fear was well founded. When the worst possible thing happened, though, Beetee kept on rebelling and fighting against the Capitol.
At the end of Mockingjay, the few living victors in the rebellion vote on whether they should host one final Hunger Games, where the children of the Capitol are forced to kill one another. Beetee, who had no problem coming up with particularly controversial weapons to use against the Capitol, votes no. And that could be because years ago, he had to watch his own child enter in the Games. He gets his justice in the original trilogy by taking the Capitol down, but Sunrise on the Reaping gives us even more context for his vote, and for his perspective on just how horrific the Games were. In the original series, Beetee decides not to stoop to the Capitol’s level. The new book makes that decision seem all the more poignant. Even with all the trauma and tragedy he’s endured, Beetee still keeps his heart.
