Catching Fire

Katniss wonders if Thread turned on the fence to intentionally trap her in the woods. She manages to climb a tree and jump over the fence to get back into District 12, but she is injured in the process. Katniss believes that someone reported her to the Peacekeepers, just like “Someone reported Gale kissing me in that very spot” (152). Katniss finds two Peacekeepers at her home, and her mother explains that they have been waiting for hours to speak with her. The Peacekeepers say they were sent by Thread, who “wanted [Katniss] to know that the fence surrounding District Twelve will now have electricity twenty-four hours a day” (157). Katniss notices that the Peacekeepers seem surprised to see her, and this confirms her suspicion that Thread intended to trap Katniss in the woods. Katniss feels on edge for the next few days, tormented by thoughts of the women in the woods, her imminent wedding to Peeta, and the fear that she will be arrested by Thread. Katniss starts spending more time with Peeta, and realizes that she has never given herself a chance to get to know him outside of the Hunger Games and their fictional romance. She knows that “[their] whole relationship has been tainted by the Games” (162), and wonders what life would be like if they had met organically. Katniss decides to find footage of District 13 and starts to think that Bonnie and Twill might have been right: the Capitol appears to be recycling old footage of District 13 to maintain the idea that it was destroyed. Katniss wonders what the Capitol might be hiding.

Life in District 12 gets worse as Thread’s control tightens. Katniss watches as “More people [are] punished or dropping from starvation” (164), but in the meantime, Katniss is expected to go through with a wedding dress photo shoot. While her prep team works on her, they reveal that “[people in the Capitol] haven’t been able to get any seafood for weeks!” (165). Katniss suspects this means there is an uprising in District 4, where seafood comes from. She presses her prep team for more information to determine where other uprisings may be taking place.

Katniss is both thrilled and frightened by the thought of widespread rebellion, but she starts to have intense nightmares about running away from muttations, genetically modified animals, in a wedding dress. She tells Haymitch about what she has learned, and he says that if District 12 wants to organize an uprising, “it’s got to be all of us or nothing” (168) because unlike the other districts, 12 is a small community. Katniss is discouraged, and one night there is news from the Capitol. During the required programming, Katniss’s wedding dress photo shoot is broadcast to the citizens of Panem, and the Capitol announces the twist for the Quarter Quell, a special version of the Hunger Games held every 25 years. The tributes for the 75th Hunger Games will be reaped, or chosen, from the pool of existing victors. Katniss is the only female victor from District 12, which means “[she is] going back into the arena” (173).

Katniss runs out of her house in a panic at the news of the Quarter Quell and she begins to scream. She is frozen with terror at the thought of going “Back in the arena. Back in the place of nightmares” (174), and she tries to figure out what to do next. She believes this Quarter Quell is a way to squash the rebellions in the districts, because “victors are our strongest” and “now twenty-three of us will be killed to show how even that hope was an illusion” (176). She realizes that she will be going into the arena with either Haymitch or Peeta, and she knows that she could never kill either of them. She goes to Haymitch, who tells her that Peeta has already come by to say that he wants to go into the arena with Katniss to keep her safe. Katniss tells Haymitch that if Peeta is going into the arena with her, she wants to do everything she can to keep Peeta alive, and Haymitch agrees to focus all of his resources on saving Peeta. The next day, Peeta insists that he, Haymitch, and Katniss begin studying their possible competition and preparing to go into the arena. Peeta is determined that “one of [them] is going to be victor again whether [Haymitch and Katniss] like it or not!” (183). Meanwhile, more Peacekeepers arrive in District 12 in anticipation of an uprising. On the day of the reaping, Haymitch’s name is drawn, but Peeta volunteers to take his place and go into the Games alongside Katniss. Katniss and Peeta are immediately taken away without a chance to say goodbye to their friends and families.

Katniss mourns her opportunity to say goodbye to the people she loves, but she tries to refocus her energy on her mission to keep Peeta alive. That night on the train to the Capitol, Katniss and Peeta can’t sleep and decide to stay up and watch videotapes of the past victors to study for the arena. They come across the tape of the 50th Hunger Games: the year that Haymitch won. As they watch, Katniss learns that her mockingjay pin came from a previous District 12 tribute, Maysilee Donner, who was a friend of Katniss’s mother. Katniss thinks that “my mockingjay pin [...] means something completely different now that I know that its former owner was […] a tribute who was murdered in the arena” (197).

Katniss and Peeta continue to watch the footage from the 50th Hunger Games: Haymitch forms a brief alliance with Maysilee, but dangerous birds designed for the arena kill her and Haymitch holds Maysilee’s hand as she dies. Later, Haymitch tricks the other last remaining tribute into throwing her ax towards a forcefield on the edge of the arena. When the ax hits the forcefield, “it flies back over the ledge, it buries itself in her head. The cannon sounds, her body is removed, and the trumpets blow to announce Haymitch’s victory” (202). Katniss and Peeta are shocked and amused to discover that Haymitch found a way to use the forcefield as a weapon, and Peeta guesses that the Capitol didn’t like that Haymitch used their arena in a way they weren’t planning for. Katniss thinks about how she and Haymitch both used elements of the arena against the Capitol, and decides that “two people who have caused the Capitol so much trouble can think of a way to get Peeta home alive” (203).