Key Facts

full title · Catching Fire

author · Suzanne Collins
type of work · novel
genre · dystopia; young adult
language · English
time and place written · Connecticut, United States, in the mid- to late-
2000s
date of first publication · September, 2009
publisher · Scholastic Press
narrator · Katniss Everdeen narrates as the events of the novel occur.
point of view · Katniss tells her story in the first person and mixes details
of her personal history in as she describes events that are presently
occurring. She mostly describes events objectively, but often she’ll also
imagine what other characters must be feeling.
tone · Mostly stoic, but occasionally very emotional
tense · present
setting (time) · An indeterminate time more than one hundred years in
the future. The novel specifically centers on the 75th anniversary of the
Hunger Games.
setting (place) · Panem, the country created after the governments of
North America collapsed, and a tropical island in an undisclosed location
protagonist · Katniss Everdeen
major conflict · Having angered the Capitol at the end of the previous
novel, Katniss struggles to keep her loved ones and herself safe as an
undercurrent of rebellion grows in Panem and she finds herself fighting for
her life again in the 75th Hunger Games.
rising action · Katniss deals with threats from President Snow as she tries
not to inflame tensions in the districts and begins to learn about an
underground rebellion growing across Panem.
climax · In the arena, Katniss helps bring down the force field after
realizing there is some sort of plot in motion by the other tributes involving
her and Peeta.
falling action · Katniss learns the full details of a vast plot to overthrow the
Capitol that she has unknowingly become the symbol for and finally
understands the meaning of several unexplained events.
themes · The Duplicity and Power of Appearances; The Struggle for
Control; The Ignorance of the Privileged
motifs · Clothing; Secrets; Mouths
symbols · Mockingjay; Katniss; Bow and arrows
foreshadowing · The refugees from District 8 show Katniss the cracker
with the mockingjay and say Katniss must not know about any of it;
Plutarch Heavensbee shows Katniss his watch with the vanishing
mockingjay on its face and tells her “It starts at midnight”; Cinna rigs
Katniss’s wedding dress to burn away, leaving her in a mockingjay costume;
Wiress and Beetee point out the chink in the force field during training;
Beetee makes a fuss about not losing his wire in the arena

Important Quotations Explained

1. “He means there’s only one future, if I want to keep those I love alive and stay alive
myself. I’ll have to marry Peeta.”
This realization strikes Katniss after she tells Haymitch about President Snow’s visit to
her house, and it ties into the theme of fighting for control that runs throughout the
novel. During his visit, President Snow threatens to harm Katniss’s loved ones, singling
out Gale in particular, if she fails to convince people that she and Peetaare in love. Only
by making people believe that fiction can the Capitol act as if Katniss’s and Peeta’s
threat of suicide at the end of the Hunger Games was just the act of two love-crazed
teenagers rather than open defiance. As President Snow explains, if people think
Katniss was deliberately defying the Capitol, it could encourage others to do the same,
possibly leading to uprisings in the districts. Katniss agrees to do what she can, but
what she gradually comes to understand is that there will be no end point to the lying.
To keep her loved ones safe, she’ll have to continue acting publicly as if she’s in love
with Peeta indefinitely, which means they’ll eventually have to get married to avoid
raising questions.
Katniss is distraught over this realization, but not because the thought of marrying
Peeta is so terrible to her. What she despises about the notion is the Capitol controlling
her for essentially the rest of her life. She recognizes that at no point in the foreseeable
future will the Capitol leave her alone, and that she’ll always be looking over her
shoulder to see if she’s being spied on. Moreover, she’ll have to think through every
public gesture and action to make sure it doesn’t offend the Capitol. A single wrong
move, even if it’s committed out of carelessness and not defiance, could mean her
friends or family being hurt or killed in retaliation. The marriage is just one more way
that the Capitol will have control over her and everything she cares about.

2. “A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist.”

Katniss has this thought as she and Madge talk about the mockingjay pin Madge gave
her before the Hunger Games, and it hints at the symbolic meaning of the mockingjay
in the novel. The origins of the mockingjay represent a lapse of control for the Capitol.
During the first rebellion, the Capitol had genetically engineered a bird called the
jabberjay, which could memorize and repeat long strings of words. It used them to spy
on the rebels, but the rebels then began using the birds to misinform the Capitol. The
Capitol tried to eliminate the birds, but they had already started breeding with wild
mockingbirds, resulting in the mockingjay. It’s a sign of failure on the part of the Capitol,
and the bird is for that reason an appropriate symbol for the current rebellion.

But the quote takes on an additional meaning in the context of Katniss’s discovering
that she’s the symbol of the rebellion. Katniss, like the original mockingjay, also
represents a lapse of control for the Capitol. When she had the idea to threaten suicide
at the end of the Games, knowing the Capitol wouldn’t let her go through with it, she
took back control of her life from the Capitol, even if just momentarily. In addition, that
this event occurred during the finale of the Hunger Games when most of Panem was
watching made it highly symbolic. The Capitol’s attempt to control Katniss essentially
backfired and turned Katniss into a symbol of defiance. Like the mockingjay, Katniss
became a symbol the Capitol never intended to exist.

3. “Why did you do it anyway?” he says.

“I don’t know. To show them that I’m more than just a piece in their Games?” I say.
In this snippet of conversation, Katniss replies to Peeta when he asks why she decided
on her blatantly rebellious demonstration to the Gamemakers. Notably, the quote
recalls something Peeta said in the first novel of the series before he and Katniss
competed in the Hunger Games. In that instance, he was saying he didn’t want the
Games to change his character and change him into a killer. He wanted to maintain his
integrity and humanity. It was a form of rebellion against the Capitol and the Games,
which dehumanize the tributes by turning their slaughter into entertainment. Katniss
echoes that rebellion here, though her reasoning is different. What she did in her
demonstration was pretend to hang a dummy with the name of the previous Head
Gamemaker, Seneca Crane, written on the front. Seneca Crane was executed after
Katniss’s and Peeta’s suicide stunt at the end of the Games, and the act was intended
to remind the Gamemakers of his fate and suggest that they could suffer the same.
Katniss’s act, in other words, was an attack on the Gamemakers and wasn’t about
maintaining her personal integrity.

Maybe more importantly, it was also intended to show them that they couldn’t control
her. The Capitol strictly regiments everything that occurs in Panem using the threat of
violence to keep people in line. The Games are perhaps the best example. They exist
to remind the districts that the Capitol can crush them at will and to make them feel
powerless. It’s that control that Katniss and many of the people in the districts rebel
against. Katniss’s demonstration showed that she wasn’t afraid of displease them and
displayed a contemptuous disregard for their control. When Katniss tells Peeta she did
it to show them she’s more than a piece in their Games, she means quite literally that
she wanted to make it clear that they can’t determine how she behaves.

4. “My prep team. My foolish, shallow, affectionate pets, with their obsessions with
feathers and parties, nearly break my heart with their good-bye.” (p. 247)
This quote appears as Katniss’s prep team finishes her hair and makeup just before
she does the tribute interview with Caesar Flickerman. It reveals the mixed feelings
Katniss has about the team and the people in the Capitol more generally. Katniss feels
consistently shocked by the superficial concerns of her team since her concerns, and
those of everyone in the districts, are far more consequential. While her prep team
worries about parties and how they look, Katniss worries about the safety of her family
and friends and whether they have enough to eat. At the same time, however, Katniss
knows her team genuinely cares about her, and she’s come to feel real affection for
Venia, Octavia, and Flavius. She looks down on them for their shallowness, but she
also recognizes that they’re just a product of the Capitol. They’ve never known the sorts
of hardships that she and the people in the districts endure on a daily basis.

The quote ties directly into the theme of the ignorance of the privileged. At various
times in the novel we see how the people of the Capitol live oblivious to the suffering of
the people in the districts. The most notable example is the feast at President Snow’s
mansion. On learning that people in Capitol make themselves vomit so they can
continue gorging, Katniss’s thoughts turn immediately to the many people she knows
are starving in her home district. She finds the thought anyone would waste food in
such a way when others are in such desperate need appalling and insulting, because
they show no regard for the suffering going on outside the Capitol that could be
alleviated with the food they’re wasting. The Hunger Games themselves are another
example of the ignorance that the privileged enjoy. It’s easy for the people in the
Capitol to view the Games as entertainment because it’s not their children who are
competing. They quite literally don’t know the anguish the Games cause for the families
of the children who are chosen because they never have to experience it firsthand.
Katniss’s quote acknowledges this sort of ignorance, but it also suggests that her prep
team and the people in the Capitol more generally aren’t entirely responsible for it.
They’re products of their environment. If Katniss didn’t take this detail into account, she
most likely wouldn’t feel any affection for her prep team.

5. “The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the watch, the cracker, the dress that burst
into flames. I am the mockingjay. The one that survived despite the Capitol’s plans. The
symbol of the rebellion.” (p. 387)
Katniss has this epiphany at the end of the novel, after Plutarch Heavensbee explains
to her why the rebellion needed to keep her alive through the Quarter Quell. She
suddenly realizes the significance of several events tied to the idea of the mockingjay
and for the first time understands how they’re all connected. The bird refers to the
mockingjay that represents her. The song is what the old man in District 11 whistled,
the same one Katniss and Rue used to communicate with one another through the
mockingjays. The pin is the mockingjay pin Madge gave her that she wore through the
Games and came to be associated with. The berries are the ones she and Peeta
threatened to eat to commit suicide, and in doing so made Katniss a beacon of
defiance to the districts. The watch is the one Plutarch Heavensbee showed her with
the vanishing mockingjay on its face. The cracker is what the refugees from District 8
held out to her with the mockingjay stamped on it. The dress refers to the one Cinna
created for her that burned away, leaving her wearing the mockingjay costume.
At that moment Katniss recognizes that a vast movement has been underway to bring
down the Capitol, and without even knowing it, she has been its symbol. She herself is
represented by the mockingjay that, like herself, the Capitol never intended to exist and
survived despite the Capitol’s plans. And like the mockingjay, she’s also become
something the Capitol can’t control. As Katniss puts all these pieces together, she
comes to other realizations as well. She recognizes that the rebellion has reached
further than she ever imagined if Plutarch, the Head Gamemaker, is part of it. She also
understands that Haymitch has known all of this information all along and not shared
any of it with her. The thought causes her to feel immensely betrayed, since he’s long
been one of the few people she believes she can trust. Instead she feels used by
Haymitch for the sake of the rebellion. As a result, she doesn’t feel any joy about these
revelations, only betrayal. In essence Haymitch and Plutarch used her image for
publicity without allowing her any control over it, in a similar vein to how the Capitol has
used her image to promote the Hunger Games.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

THE DUPLICITY AND POWER OF APPEARANCES

Right from the start, Katniss and many of the people close to her must maintain
appearances that often contrast with reality, and as the story progresses we see
several cases of characters who appear to be one thing but turn out to be quite
another. To begin with, Katniss and Peeta have to act as if they’re in love so that the
Capitol can keep up the lie that their threat of suicide at the end of the previous novel
was simply the desperate act of two love-crazed teenagers and not a gesture of
defiance. That fear speaks to the power of appearances, since as President Snow
explains to Katniss, if people saw Katniss as a rebel, that alone could encourage the
districts to revolt. Katniss, it turns out, has already become a symbol of the rebellion,
but again the appearance doesn’t reflect the truth. Katniss has no involvement with any
organized rebel movement and doesn’t even know one exists for most of the novel.
She even spends the first part of the novel trying to appease President Snow and
keeping up the love act with Peeta in the hopes of subduing any potential uprisings.
(Admittedly, she isn’t very successful and actually does end up encouraging people to
defy the Capitol.) In both situations, however, what’s important isn’t what Katniss
actually believes or feels. Her value to both sides is primarily as a symbol, which
suggests that her image is perhaps more powerful than she is herself.
Gradually, we learn that Katniss isn’t the only character maintaining a public persona
that doesn’t correspond with reality. Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Head Gamemaker,
is revealed to be part of the rebellion. Finnick isn’t the shallow womanizer he appears to
be, and several tributes, including some like Finnick who’ve enjoyed fame and wealth in
the Capitol, are actually part of the rebellion. Many of the events in the Quarter Quell
also turn out to be covers for hidden agendas. The tributes’ efforts to keep Peeta alive
have nothing to do with turning him into a leader, as Katniss believes, but are just to
keep Katniss cooperating with them. Some aspects of the Quarter Quell itself were
even engineered to help the tributes escape, notably the wire Beetee invented being
included among the weapons. The last chapters of the novel largely center on Katniss
finally coming to understand the truth of many of these events. In most of these cases,
the reason for the false public image is fear of the Capitol, which harshly punishes
dissent of any sort. The power of the lie is that, as long as the Capitol believes it has
control, it allows the rebels to work without detection to undo that control.
THE STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL

Much of the conflict in the novel revolves around a struggle for control, with the Capitol
always at one end trying to maintain control and various characters or groups on the
other trying to take back control. Katniss’s confrontation with President Snow
essentially centers on this idea. He wants to dictate nearly everything she does even
down to what she wears, as when he selects the dress she wears for the tributes’
interview with Caesar Flickerman. The control President Snow exerts over Katniss
parallels the control the Capitol wants over all the people in Panem. Through its laws
and the squads of Peacekeepers it deploys to enforce them, the Capitol systematically
maintain control over all the districts. Any act that defies the Capitol’s control results in
harsh punishment. Notably, the Hunger Games themselves are meant as a reminder to
the people that they have no control and that they have to obey the Capitol.

All the forms of rebellion we see in the novel are variations on people regaining, or at
least fighting to regain, control. When Katniss tells Peeta she doesn’t want to be a
pawn in the Capitol’s Games, she’s saying she doesn’t want to be controlled. When we
see how Haymitch rebelliously won his Games, it was by finding a loophole in the
Capitol’s control—since the Capitol never intended the force field to be used as a
weapon—and exploiting it. The reason the mockingjay is symbolic is that it represents
the Capitol’s lack of control, since the bird was actually an unintended consequence of
a weapon created for use against the rebels that ultimately backfired. What the rebels
want is to retake control of their lives and no longer have the Capitol forcing them to live
by its restrictive laws and do things like sacrifice their children in the Hunger Games.
This fight for control is precisely why Katniss has become a symbol of the rebellion. At
the end of the Hunger Games, when she had the idea for her and Peeta to commit
suicide, she was essentially rejecting the rules set up by the Capitol. In doing so, she
denied the Capitol control of her life and took it back into her own hands. The act
evident set a precedent for all the viewers watching at home, suggesting that they too
could take back control from the Capitol.

THE IGNORANCE OF THE PRIVILEGED

The privileged of Panem are chiefly those people who live in the Capitol, and their
ignorance stems from the fact that they’re insulated from the hardships faced by the
people in the districts. They are relatively wealthy and always have enough to eat. They
aren’t forced into exhausting and often dangerous labor. Their children also don’t have
to participate in the Hunger Games. Because their lives are so comfortable and secure,
they generally don’t have to think of things that people in the districts think of, such as
how to feed their families. As a result, many if not all are oblivious to the harsh realities
that most of the people in Panem face.

This ignorance is apparent any time Katniss encounters people from the Capitol, which
usually means her hair-and-makeup team. The first time in the novel that they arrive at
her house in District 12, she notes that their concerns are almost entirely about
frivolous things like parties and appearances. Later, during the feast at President
Snow’s mansion, Katniss and Peeta are both appalled when they’re told that people in
the Capitol will often make themselves vomit at feasts so that they can keep eating.
Katniss thinks of the numerous people starving back home and how insensitive and
insulting her prep team sounds. The scene prompts Peeta to wonder if they should try
to subdue dissent. That same ignorance is apparent in the fact that people in the
Capitol consider the Hunger Games, in which children are forced to kill one another,
entertainment. The example suggests that their ignorance isn’t necessarily of the facts:
they know that the children of people in the districts are drafted into the Games. It’s of
the experience of life outside their privileged bubble. They appear completely unwilling,
and perhaps even unable, to imagine what life in the districts is like, and consequently
they seem to have no compassion for the everyday struggles of people like Katniss
beyond what’s broadcast on their televisions for their amusement.

Motifs

CLOTHING

The novel often pays special attention to the clothing Katniss wears, emphasizing the
theme of the duplicity and power of appearances. At the start of the novel, as Katniss
returns from the woods, she changes out of her old clothes, which she clearly feels fit
her character better, into the new clothes she got after winning the Games. She finds
these new clothes uncomfortable, but she also recognizes they’re more suitable to her
new “status,” as her mother puts it. In a sense they hide her feeling of still being the
same poor but self-sufficient girl she was before the Games. Designing clothes also
happens to be the talent she’s developing, even though it’s really Cinna doing all the
work, which is again a kind of duplicity. After Peeta publicly proposes, Katniss has to
film a special about finding her wedding dress as though she’s thrilled with the events,
when in fact she’s distraught about them.
Later, President Snow tries to demonstrate his control over Katniss by choosing the
dress she’s to wear during the tributes’ interview with Caesar Flickerman, but Cinna
turns that desire for control against him. He rigs the dress so that it burns away when
Katniss twirls, leaving her clad in the highly symbolic mockingjay costume. He turns
President Snow’s bid for control into a statement against the Capitol. He also designs
the costume Katniss wears for the televised introduction to the tributes, and the novel
gives special emphasis to Katniss’s detailed description of the fabric, which mimics a
glowing coal ember to suggest power and also recalls Katniss’s nickname of “the girl
who was on fire.” In each instance, the clothes are significant because they project an
image, one that can be misleading, like the wedding dresses, or extraordinarily
powerful, like the mockingjay costume.

SECRETS

Secrets proliferate throughout the novel, creating much of the conflict that drives the
plot. For the most part, there are two types of secrets: those that characters try to keep
from the Capitol, and those that characters try to keep from Katniss. The first category
includes Katniss’s hunting in the woods and her time spent with Gale. It also includes
the entire rebellion, which works surreptitiously to bring down the Capitol. These things
are kept secret because the Capitol brutally punishes anyone that breaks its law,
though we do learn that Capitol does, in fact, know about Katniss’s rendezvous with
Gale in the woods outside District 12.

The second category, secrets kept from Katniss, include all the rebellion’s plots, which
neither Haymitch nor the other tributes tell Katniss about. Several events in the Quarter
Quell, for instance, like the tributes’ plan to escape and the reason the tributes are
doing everything they can to keep Peeta alive, aren’t revealed to Katniss until the very
end of the novel. Katniss also isn’t told just how highly symbolic she’s become to the
rebellion. She suspects something after meeting the two refugees from District 8 who
show her the mockingjay cracker, but it isn’t until after she’s out of the arena that
Haymitch explains the full scope of her symbolic value. It’s a secret he’s kept from her
throughout the novel, even lying to her at times to protect it. He’s also lied to her to
keep the truth from her about District 13.

The two categories overlap in several instances. The tributes all hid the truth about their
plans to escape during the Quarter Quell from Katniss and the Capitol. There are also
secrets that don’t fall into either category, such as the truth about Katniss’s relationship
with Peeta, which everyone, for various reasons, works to hide from the public.
MOUTHS

Mutliple characters’ mouths disturb Katniss, until finally they become the central image
of a nightmare. As Katniss and President Snow talk in her house at the start of the
novel, Katniss notices his lips and mouth, thinking he must have had cosmetic surgery.
His lips are overly full, suggesting there’s something unnatural about them, and the
effect discomforts Katniss. Later, when Katniss first meets Finnick, she notes how he
wets his lips with his tongue. Rather than make him seem more alluring in her eyes, it
brings to mind Cray, the former Head Peacekeeper of District 12 who was notorious for
luring young girls into his bed. She pictures Cray salivating over a vulnerable woman.
At the end of that same chapter, Katniss learns that Darius, another Peacekeeper from
her district, has been turned into an Avox. The Capitol has, among other things, cut out
his tongue, rendering him mute. Katniss has already been suffering from nightmares,
and shortly after she has a terrifying one about tongues and mouths. In it she watches
Darius’s tongue being cut out, then finds herself at a party where a man with flicking
wet tongue in a mask reveals himself to be President Snow. His lips are dripping with
bloody saliva. The dream ends with her own tongue feeling dried out, as it did when
she nearly died of dehydration in the Games.

Symbols

MOCKINGJAY

The most prominent symbol in the novel is the mockingjay, and its exact meaning shifts
somewhat over the course of the story. Initially, at least for Katniss, it still has a
connection to Rue, the girl Katniss befriended in the Hunger Games. In the previous
book, Rue and Katniss used the birds to communicate by having them repeat a certain
melody. It’s for that reason the old man in the crowd in District 11 whistles a melody to
signal everyone to put up the gesture of respect in District 12. When Katniss sees the
birds in the woods early in the story, her thoughts turn to Rue immediately. It also
represents a mistake by the Capitol, and thus a lapse in its control. As Katniss explains,
the Capitol never intended for the bird to exist. It was an accident brought about by the
Capitol’s genetically engineered jabberjays breeding with wild mockingbirds. The
jabberjays were created to spy on the rebels but they were ultimately used by the
rebels against the Capitol. Thus the mockingjays remind the Capitol, as well as the
people of the districts, that the Capitol can’t control everything.
For the people in the districts, the mockingjay has begun to take on another meaning.
Katniss wore a mockingjay pin throughout the Hunger Games and used the birds to
communicate with Rue. Consequently, the mockingjay has come to be associated with
her. (It’s even become a fashionable accessory in the Capitol because of Katniss’s pin
in the Games.) But since Katniss herself represents defiance of the Capitol, the
mockingjay has taken on that meaning as well and become a symbol more broadly of
the rebellion. That’s why the two refugee women from District 8 in the woods show
Katniss a cracker with the image of her mockingjay, and why Plutarch Heavensbee
uses a mockingjay on his watch’s face to signal to Katniss that he’s allied with the
rebellion. That dual meaning of the mockingjay also explains what Plutarch means
when he tells Katniss they needed to keep her alive and cooperating because she is
the mockingjay.
KATNISS

Katniss symbolizes defiance of the Capitol and the rebellion working to bring it down,
though she isn’t even aware of the full extent of this symbolism for much of the novel.
At the end of the Hunger Games, Katniss defied the Capitol’s rules by threatening to
commit suicide with Peeta. The Capitol intended for there to be only one victor, but
Katniss forced them to accept two or lose both. It’s not until she meets the refugees
from District 8 in the woods, however, that Katniss and the reader begin to see that
people in the districts did, in fact, take her act as a gesture of outright rebellion against
the Capitol. It’s the first inkling Katniss has of her status as a figurehead of sorts.
Further hints crop up that Katniss in some way represents defiance of the Capitol, like
the mockingjay costume Cinna creates for her, but it isn’t until the end of the novel that
the extent of her symbolism becomes clear. As Haymitch explains, Katniss is the
mockingjay, meaning she herself is the symbol of the rebel movement working to bring
down the Capitol.

A BOW AND ARROWS

These weapons have a specific meaning to Katniss: They represent security. First, they
allow Katniss to hunt. It’s because she knows how to hunt that her family has survived
as long as it has, and she’s always felt that as long as she has these weapons and
game to kill she can feed herself and her family. That knowledge brings her a great
deal of comfort, and in the act of hunting in the woods itself she feels more comfortable
than she does anywhere else. In the arena, a bow and arrows represent a different type
of security. They allow Katniss to feel that she’s able to protect herself. Consequently
they give her confidence and a feeling of safety in the midst of uncertainty and hostility.

haracter List
Katniss Everdeen - the strong, intelligent protagonist of the novel. Through her
survival skills and smarts she won the previous Hunger Games and has since become
a symbol of rebellion against the Capitol.
Read an in-depth analysis of Katniss Everdeen.

Peeta Mellark - Katniss’s fellow victor in the previous Hunger Games. Kind, artistic,
and sensitive, he loves Katniss and does everything he can to keep her safe, even
though Katniss isn’t sure how strongly she feels about him in return.
Read an in-depth analysis of Peeta Mellark.

Haymitch Abernathy - Katniss’s and Peeta’s mentor in the previous Hunger Games
and in this novel and a former winner of the Games himself. Though he’s an alcoholic,
he’s extremely shrewd and often seems to know more than he lets on.
Read an in-depth analysis of Haymitch Abernathy.

Cinna - Katniss’s stylist and good friend. He’s a talented clothing designer who uses
his skills to design provocative and symbolic costumes for Katniss.

Effie Trinket - the manager of the District 12 tributes. She’s very organized and
sensitive to slights, but she’s also somewhat oblivious to the inherent brutality of the
Hunger Games and the Capitol.

Gale Hawthorne - Katniss’s oldest friend and hunting partner. He’s in love with
Katniss, and though Katniss loves him back, she isn’t sure she can ever have a
romantic relationship with him.

President Snow - the president of Panem. He is power-hungry, brutal, and

despicable, and he tries to control Katniss by threatening her loved ones.

Finnick Odair - An attractive and seemingly arrogant Capitol celebrity and the male
tribute from District 4. He’s revealed to be loyal, dutiful, and far more thoughtful than his
public image would suggest.
Read an in-depth analysis of Finnick Odair.

Mags - The eighty-year-old female tribute from District 4. She’s kind and very frail, and
she sacrifices herself for the sakes of Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick.

Johanna Mason - the fiery, exhibitionist female tribute from District 7. She always
seems to be trying to get a rise out of Katniss, though ultimately they become friendly.
Beetee - the male tribute from District 3. His high level of intelligence makes up for his
physical weakness compared to the other tributes, and he invented a highly conductive
wire that plays an important role in the Quarter Quell.

Wiress - the female tribute from District 3. Like her district partner, she’s also
extremely smart and figures out the clock layout of the arena before anyone else.

Chaff - the male tribute from District 11 and a good friend of Haymitch’s.

Seeder - the female tribute from District 11, whom Katniss connects with quickly.

Brutus - the male tribute from District 2 and one of the so-called Career tributes.

Enobaria - the female tribute from District 2 and another of the Career tributes.

Prim Everdeen - Katniss’s little sister. She’s very small and gentle, and Katniss will do
anything to keep her from harm.

Katniss’s mother - She’s the mother of Katniss and Prim. Though she can be
emotionally weak, a trait Katniss resents, she is calm and strong when caring for the
sick and injured.

Plutarch Heavensbee - the Head Gamemaker. He pretends to share the agenda of

the Capitol but in fact has been part of an underground rebellion for years.

Hazelle Hawthorne - Gale’s mother. She’s a close friend of the Everdeen family and
the glue that holds the Hawthorne family together.

Darius - a peacekeeper in District 12. He’s easy-going and even friendly with Katniss,
and he’s later turned into an Avox as punishment for trying to stop Gale’s public
whipping.

Romulus Thread - the new Head Peacekeeper in District 12. He is strict and brutal
and whips Gale mercilessly as punishment for killing an animal for food.

Rue - the girl from District 11 Katniss befriended during the Hunger Games. Though
she dies before the novel takes place, her memory and her family play a role in the
novel’s events.

Madge Undersee - Katniss’s friend the daughter of District 12’s mayor. She gave
Katniss the mockingjay pin that she wears in the first Hunger Games and the Games of
this novel.
Flavius, Octavia, and Venia - Katniss’s hair-and-makeup prep team. Katniss finds
them shallow and ignorant in the way many people from the Capitol are, but she also
recognizes that they can be kind and genuinely care about her.

Maysilee Donner - The female tribute from District 12 who died in the 50th Hunger
Games, which Haymitch won. She was a friend of Katniss’s mother and Madge
Undersee’s aunt.