The Purpose Of Poetry In The Hunger Games

本站添加: 2026-05-05

[00:00:08]Hey guys, what's up? I'm CJ and welcome back to my Galaxy. Today we are talking about the purpose of poetry in The Hunger Games. But before we get started, I wanted to let you guys know about a goal I have for my YouTube channel. I'm aiming to get 5,000 subscribers on my channel and as like a little milestone video, I will be doing a deep dive into Peter Mallard's characterization when I do hit 5,000 subscribers. So if you guys want to see a video on Peter Mallard's characterization, please hit the subscribe button. I post three times a week on The Hunger Games over here on my channel and I also live stream twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays while I'm annotating The Hunger Games novels.

[00:00:52]Currently I'm up to Catching Fire. So tune in for those as well and subscribe and turn on notifications if you want to join in on those live streams so you'll be notified when I do go live. All right, so let's get into the purpose of poetry in The Hunger Games. I've wanted to talk about this on my channel for a while and seeing as The Hunger Games actually uses quite a bit of poetry in the novels, especially in the prequels.

[00:01:16]The prequels specifically have a lot of poems because the Covey members are actually named after poems. Lucy Gray specifically is actually named after William Wordsworth's poem Lucy Gray. So she's kind of special in the sense that her whole name is a poem whereas the rest of the Covey has their first The first part of their name as a poem and the second part a color. This is essentially a part one of my new series where I'm going to be analyzing the Covey members' names and their poems. So first I'm going to get into the purpose of poetry in this video and then the next video in the series is going to be about Maud Ivory and then so on so forth until I get to the end of the Covey and analyze all of their names. When it comes to poetry in Suzanne Collins' novels, it's actually acting as a literary device specifically. When authors write their stories, they need to be able to use literary techniques to engage audiences. And a lot of the time you'll see that authors who have like popular novels and people who are really engaged with their novels, they'll the audience is actually being engaged through unique uses of literary devices and in this case it's poetry and Suzanne Collins is engaging us as the reader through the use of poetry as a literary device to make it easier for us as the readers to consume. Poetry adds more depth to the story of The Hunger Games and it also develops the characterization for each of the characters that we see in Suzanne Collins' novels. One of the literary techniques that poetry actually engages with in Collins' novels is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is a very big literary technique that many writers engage with. Foreshadowing ensures that the novel isn't too predictable, but if you go back and reread it, which authors want you to do so you engage further with their novel, it means you can see where the ending came from or this certain part of characterization, this certain plot point came from.

[00:03:06]Foreshadowing is essentially an easy way to tell the reader, "Hey, this is what's happening now. What do you think's going to happen next because of this thing that I just mentioned?" And with that we have Suzanne Collins presenting poetry as foreshadowing and essentially using that in two distinct ways. The first use of poetry in The Hunger Games are the ballads that we hear throughout the entirety of the novel series. We hear the ballads first in the very first novel, Deep in the Meadow, which is a song Katniss sings to both Prim and Rue as Rue is dying. Ballads as we know from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a type of poetry that is sung and it's like a spoken kind of poetry. These ballads that we see throughout the entirety of the novel series are actually what shapes District 12's culture and eventually the rebellion as a whole throughout Panem. From what I can tell from Appalachian culture, I mention I pronounced Appalachian right or Appalation, I think. It's It might be Appalation. So what I can tell from that culture, Suzanne Collins has pulled a lot of the songs and like the tone of those songs and placed that part of the culture into District 12's ballads and the ballads that Katniss sings, the ballads that Lucy Gray sing. Whilst the ballads themselves are unique, but it pulls from like the history of Appalachia as a whole. There's one point that Peter mentions that Katniss knows the Valley Song. We're not told specifically what the lyrics of the Valley Song are and I think that it is from my research is completely unique to The Hunger Games. We just don't have the lyrics, but the Valley Song potentially pulls from several ballads or in songs from the Appalachian culture. Once again, from what I can tell from my research and if you're from Appalachia, correct me if you're like American who knows about Appalachian culture, correct me if I'm wrong in the comments, but Appalachian culture is something that where the ballads have developed over time as the culture has developed and the ballads have been passed down orally throughout the generations. So when it comes to characters, say like the Covey who passed down their songs and their ballads specifically orally, that's something that reflects the culture of the area itself. Like I said, for example, the Valley Song Deep in the Meadow or even The Hanging Tree which is passed down through the Covey from Lucy Gray likely to Maud Ivory, Lenora Dove and then to Katniss. Somewhere in there Burdock Everdeen heard this song. He's likely connected to the Covey, but we don't know exactly how. But the ballads here, specifically with The Hanging Tree, become a part of the rebellion and a lot of District 12's culture becomes like culturally a part of the rebellion as well and they Katniss then like is the fire and flames to the rebellion and through being the fire, she's also able to add her own Covey rebellion songs, The Hanging Tree. I don't actually know a lot about Appalachian culture, but it seems really interesting. I've seen things here and there. Obviously I looked up some things. I actually looked up the Valley Song to see if it was real and I believe it's not real in the Appalachian culture, but it is something in The Hunger Games and it describes essentially the Valley Song, the history of District 12 which is in like the Appalachian mountain range and the lyrics just aren't in The Hunger Games itself. That's why I went looking for it to see if the Valley Song was real and Suzanne Collins was actually referencing something from the Appalachians, but I think from what I can tell that there are several songs that are reflective of the culture. I couldn't find any specific songs about it or any like ballads, but ballads are a part of Appalachian culture specifically. It's not just like songs, it's ballads. Which like I said earlier in the video, these ballads are orally passed down poetry about the culture of and history of the Appalachians and then a part of District 12 culture. I'm not going to go too in-depth when analyzing poems like Deep in the Meadow and The Hanging Tree because I am actually going to analyze it as a part of this series as well. I'm going to look at both the Covey and the rest of the ballads that are presented to us as readers throughout the entirety of the series. So it includes anything that Katniss has sung as well. Then there is the second use of poetry in The Hunger Games which is specific to the prequels themselves and it is to describe the fate of the Covey. This is where I bring back the idea of foreshadowing in Suzanne Collins' novels and how poetry is in is used in combination with foreshadowing in order to describe the fate of the characters in the prequels. It's very specific to the prequels, this poetry, these ballads. As I mentioned earlier, Lucy Gray is actually named after William Wordsworth's poem Lucy Gray which has an ambiguous ending. It basically describes a girl who gets lost in the snow. Her footsteps basically stop. She's never seen again and there's an ambiguous ending. What happened really happened to Lucy Gray in this poem because nobody ever found her because her footsteps just completely stopped at one point.

[00:07:58]The snow in this poem becomes symbolic when placed in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes because it implies that Lucy Gray, the character in The Hunger Games, disappears into the snow because And I say that with like quotation marks, into the snow because snow in this sense represents President Coriolanus Snow or at the time it was just Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray disappears at the hands of Snow in the books. Lucy Gray as a character in The Hunger Games, she also has an ambiguous ending like the poetry.

[00:08:26]So her poem which is turned into a ballad in the movies to present better on screen and more consumable for the viewer in The Hunger Games movies. This predicts her ultimate fate and ultimately what is probably likely her death. And knowing the Lucy Gray poem predicted Lucy Gray's fate and her death, we're able to actually understand the Covey further and that it's essentially implied that each of the Covey members' fates are predicted by their poems. There is no explicit explanation of this by Suzanne Collins, but that kind of adds to how Suzanne Collins has really enjoyed her ambiguous endings with her characters. She loves ambiguous endings with Lucy Gray and she doesn't give us the full ending of Katniss and Peeta. We are not allowed to know every single detail about Peeta and Katniss' ending, simply that they got a bittersweet ending and that they grew back together and they had kids. We don't get to know everything about their lives. What we're told is essentially that these characters have freedom and that's what's important. But poetry itself invites speculation and engagement from readers as we're allowed to kind of come up with our own endings for each of the Covey members. Suzanne Collins is telling us, "If you read in between the lines, you'll know what happened to each of the Covey members without me explicitly telling you." We know the fate of Lucy Gray and Lenora Dove and Maud Ivory and Bob Azure, but not exactly. We don't know exactly what happened to them, which is what makes Suzanne Collins' writing and her characterization and her world building so amazing in her novels and that's why we engage so well with the text. Another thing I find really interesting about Suzanne Collins use of poetry in The Hunger Games is the fact that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is quite literally a poem as as a whole. It's literally in the name, like it's a ballad. It's orally passed down poetry from generation to generation. The reason it's called the ballad is because of the Covey, it's because of Lucy Gray.

[00:10:20]It's supposed to be a poem in its entirety. There's this form of poetry called prose poetry, which is essentially a story and it like kind of the lines in the this kind of poetry are quite long. It's set out like a short story. It follows the rules and conventions of poetry itself. So there's often like rhyming schemes and rhythm to the poems itself. So it's not exactly a short story or anything, but it is essentially like a combination of prose and poetry, which is why it's called prose poetry. I would say in some way that Suzanne Collins has uniquely written The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as prose poetry. It doesn't follow the typical conventions of prose poetry, but it does have a lot of characteristics of the form of poetry.

[00:11:05]The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes tells a story and is accompanied by a lot of ballads from Lucy Gray and they work together to assist the story to make it engaging for the reader. I would say that's actually probably another reason why that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is in third person because we're supposed to be reading the story as like a person sitting on the outside of the story itself. Since a lot of the poems in Suzanne Collins, I think actually all of the poems in Suzanne Collins writing in The Hunger Games are from third person because it's reflective of the culture and the history of Panem and District 12 specifically. So The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, since it's a poem in The Hunger Games, it has to be from the a third person point of view. I think I can only think of one of Lucy Gray's ballads that's written from first per- from first person point of view and I think that's the one about Billy Taupe, I believe. I think you guys know what I'm talking about. It's the one where Snow gets really jealous of Billy Taupe that there's a feeling of ownership from Snow that he he gets really jealous and is like, "Why is she singing this one about Billy Taupe?" So in order to fit in with the theme of like a third person point of view and this being reflective of history in Panem, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has to be in third person because it's actually us reading the history of Panem and District 12 and of the Covey.

[00:12:26]So therefore, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a collection of ballads and a unique form of prose poetry.

[00:12:32]Overall, Suzanne Collins' use of poetry in The Hunger Games is to tell the reader about the culture and history of Panem specifically in District 12. This then engages us further into Suzanne Collins' world building [clears throat] and it creates a much more rich history in the books themselves. Suzanne Collins' use of literary techniques in The Hunger Games is absolutely phenomenal. You'll notice that whenever write, what really enhances the story itself are the literary techniques and when the story feels really flat, it's because they're not engaging properly with literary techniques. Suzanne Collins also employs motifs throughout her novels as well. One of the motifs is hope and the dandelion in the spring with Peeta. So if you're ever writing, make sure you engage properly with literary techniques and use your own unique version of those literary techniques. Once Once you practice like the actual literary techniques, so you have a base to work off of like how Suzanne Collins has. She used foreshadowing and then wrapped in poetry as a literary technique because these literary techniques will actually add a lot of depth to your writing. Poetry in Suzanne Collins' novels, I would say, is likely why her novels have lasted this long so far. Like and her novels are very much going to become classic novels because we're engaging again and again with these novels, rereading them over and over again because we're looking for new things each time we reread. And one of the things that we can pay attention to in these novels as we're reading it over and over again is analyzing the poems. You don't necessarily have to analyze it, but you can pick up new things every time you read the ballads and the poems in The Hunger Games.

[00:14:08]Suzanne Collins is essentially asking us to notice something new every time we reread her novels. But that is it for today's video, guys. If you liked, please like and subscribe and obviously subscribe so I can make a video on the deep dive of Peeta Mellark's characterization once I hit 5,000 subscribers. Also, comment down below what you think of this video. What do you think of the use of poetry in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games series? Let me know all your thoughts in the comment section down below. Once again, guys, I hope you enjoyed this video, but I've been CJ and I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.