Reading this book was like being hit on the head with a baseball bat over and over again
Warning: This review contains spoilers
Ever since I finished Sunrise on the Reaping, this passage kept repeating in my head:
“I tried to keep that sun from rising on another reaping day, I tried to change things, and now everybody’s dead. You don’t want me.”
“We do want you. You shook up the Capitol, both figuratively and literally, with that earthquake. You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?”
Sunrise on the Reaping follows young Haymitch Abernathy, who in the original Hunger Games series was Katniss Everdeen’s and Peeta Mellark’s mentor. The book takes place during the 50th Hunger Games, which is a Quarter Quell.
Quarter Quells are games that take place every 25 years, with a new sadistic twist for each one. Haymitch won his games by figuring out that if you throw something at the arena forcefield, it would bounce back in your face. He threw his axe into the forcefield and it killed his opponent, making him the victor of his games. In the original Hunger Games series, President Snow kills Haymitch’s family and girlfriend. The reason given to us was for using the forcefield to win his games.
However, this plot point in the original series never made any sense to me. Many victors won their games by outsmarting the arena. For example, Wiress, the victor before Haymitch, found a spot in the arena where no one, not even the cameras, could find her until she was the last one left. It just didn’t seem fair to me that they punished Haymitch for using the arena to his advantage, while other victors did the same thing, and Snow didn’t seem to mind.
Sunrise on the Reaping clears up this plot hole. It is revealed to us that Haymitch was punished because President Snow found out he was actually part of a plan to break the arena in hopes to end the games forever. Snow killed his whole family and girlfriend because of Haymitch’s repeated attempts to sabotage the games. Because of what Snow did, Haymitch became a chronic alcoholic, always trying to escape the horrors of his games and the horrors of his loved ones coming back to him in his dreams.
The characters other than Haymitch in this book are fleshed out and entertaining, particularly Haymitch’s girlfriend, Lenore Dove, and Maysilee Donner, another District 12 tribute. The amount of disdain these characters (as well as almost everyone in the book) have for the Capitol and their overt rejection of everything the Capitol stands for shows just how long the rebellion took to plan before Katniss effectively helps stop the games 25 years later. Collins really drives home the fact that change doesn’t happen overnight.
This book further solidified my feelings about the Hunger Games, which is that the whole series is way more than just another cheesy young-adult dystopia. Collins always does a fantastic job making a digestible story for readers to understand and grasp real-world issues such as war, killing, poverty, exploitation and greed.
I feel like a lot of mainstream media tends to glorify death and war. Superheroes take the lives of “dispensable” guards but can’t kill the final villain, white women are victims of a serial killer and video games make killing others a fun way to pass the time. The Hunger Games makes people have empathy for the people whose lives are taken away. Collins reiterates the point that death is always personal and cruel.
Because I, and others who read the original series, know how Sunrise on the Reaping ends, reading it was like reading the story of Eurydice and Orpheus or Romeo and Juliet. You read or listen to these tales knowing that they’re not going to make it, and yet you find yourself having a sliver of hope that they will survive. Maybe things aren’t always set in stone and maybe the foundation is breaking this time.
And because you carry that hope, you’re crushed over and over again when the tale ends the same way you’ve always known it’ll end. Romeo and Juliet die and never get to be together. Eurydice gets sent back to the underworld, and Orpheus is forced to live without her for the rest of his life. Haymitch will live out the rest of his life as an alcoholic haunted by the shadows of his loved ones.
The point of Sunrise on the Reaping, other than making us bawl our eyes out every other chapter, was for people to hold onto that feeling of hope. That gut feeling that finds you rooting for change and finding happiness.
The main theme throughout the whole story is that the sun will always rise, but it doesn’t always have to rise on another reaping day. I think this is an important theme to remember, especially in our current political world. Billionaires are having joyrides in space while eggs have become unaffordable. People are being deported and sent to foreign prisons without due process. Women are dying because doctors refuse to treat them when they’re miscarrying. Companies are rolling back their DEI initiatives, making it okay for them to discriminate hiring based on gender and race.
Not all of the elite’s wrongdoings, not all of the hateful ideologies used to marginalize, oppress and kill groups of people have to be true. Just because things have been unjust doesn’t mean that everything will always be unjust. And change may take centuries and many lifetimes, but progress is still progress. Failed rebellions are still rebellions, and the hope that things could change someday is really our only weapon to fight against those who set us up to fail and reap the benefits.
Header image “Sunrise on the Reaping book cover” by Suzanne Collins is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
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