Panem et circenses. The Latin expression means bread and spectacle, and was coined in connection with the Roman gladiatorial games. Panem is also the name of Suzanne Collins dystopian North America, which she writes about in the Hunger Games trilogy. The books are about how the regime in Panem uses a bestial entertainment show to get its inhabitants to direct dissatisfaction and aggression towards one another, instead of against the real power. In the control room, and on the throne, sits President Snow - a plastic-operated despot that stinks of artificial roses and blood.
In the new book , President Snow's evil will get an explanation. It is a so-called prequel that takes place 64 years before Katniss Everdeen's story begins. Coriolanus Snow is a teenager in the Capitol, where his wealthy relatives have suffered great losses in the war against the district rebels. He is short-lived after starving as a child and determined to restore the reputation and position of ancient days.
The villain prequel is a popular genre. Movies like Star Wars 1 - 3 and Joker testify to our desire to understand perpetrators; they nuance old portraits of banal evil. Suzanne Collins here draws a picture of the future dictator as heart-breaking self-conscious and so calculated that he kind of suggests a love for a scholarship. It is an interesting theme that recurs from the first books: the motives of love in times of crisis.
Coriolanus Snow is forced to enlist as a peacekeeper, the regime's euphemism for a soldier. Eventually, he betrays his friends by letting mutant songbirds record their trust. The so-called rat screams are just one of the all-natural inventions Kapitolium uses to curb resistance. Collins is very much inspired by the history of literature and on the front page is quoted Mary Shelley. Coriolanus is said to have been a mob-despising ruler and has named one of William Shakespeare's Roman plays.
There are many raised warning fingers here: against class society, emerging technology, urbanization, docus openings and of course against totalitarian states. It might be the most magnificent team, but unlike in the earlier books, Collins has released the vulgar satire on the city's decadence and replaced it with a slightly more nuanced critique of civilization.
The weakness of the book is instead the large person gallery ; many figures are conferred on only one significant feature. Three times a list is given of the participants in the tenth Hunger Games, as the author himself perceived the difficulties for the reader to keep up with. During the long battle scenes in the arena, it is sprinkled with bestial murders of characters you find difficult to keep track of.
If the Hunger Games were about investigating the circumstances in which people can commit atrocities against each other, and if circumstances ever make the atrocities justifiable, Balladen is about songbirds and snakes rather about examining the political principles of systematic cruelty.
The chief ideologist behind the Hunger Games is a Doctor Frankenstein-like figure named Doctor Gaul, and her thesis is that man is belligerent by nature and that freedom leads to chaos. Coriolanus Snow is initially skeptical of her methods, but in his case, ethical doubts weigh fairly lightly on bread and glory. Collins has written a psychologically interesting account of how a villain is born.