The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Literary Elements

Dystopian fiction

Panem during the tenth annual Hunger Games

Third-person limited narration from the perspective of Coriolanus "Coryo" Snow

Tone: brooding, thoughtful, and conflicted as Snow considers his family's disadvantages and his moral dilemmas

Mood: tense and suspenseful throughout, with occasional moments of calm and tranquility in the relationship between Snow and Lucy

The protagonists are arguably Snow and Lucy, while the antagonist is the corrupted state of Panem. Ultimately, Snow takes on a few sharply antagonistic roles as well, turning on sympathetic characters like Lucy and Sejanus Plinth in the final chapters of the book.

The major conflict, which places the life of a central character in peril, is whether Lucy can win the games against 23 other tributes. After Lucy wins, Snow's ability to deal with life in District 12 becomes a major point of conflict, while Snow's moral conflicts and compromises create points of conflict throughout the book.

The climax is when Lucy wins the game, at least for the first two major parts of the novel. Climactic points for the novel's closing sections include Snow's betrayal of Sejanus and Snow's falling-out with Lucy.

In several ways, this novel foreshadows elements of the original Hunger Games trilogy featuring Katniss Everdeen. The idea that the annual Hunger Games event combines political revenge and outlandish entertainment is present in The Ballad (10th Hunger Games) and the later books (74th-75th Hunger Games), though the Games in The Ballad are much less lavish.

Symbolism is also involved in some of the most important foreshadowing in the novel. Snow responds to the mockingjays in District 12 with instinctive dislike, hinting at the conflict between himself and Katniss Everdeen, the symbolic Mockingjay of the District rebellion in the trilogy.

The name "Hunger Games" itself understates the brutal nature of the book's central event. Although there are a few game-like elements (interviews, songs, betting on audience favorites) to the Capitol's event, the "game" is premised on a last-one-standing fight to the death involving 24 young people.

Roman culture provides several allusions, from character names to the gladiator-like roles of the Hunger Games tributes.

The poetry of William Wordsworth, the British Romanticist who wrote Lyrical Ballads and the Lucy poems, is alluded to in the name of the book and in Lucy's own name. Lucy also takes a Wordsworth poem as the basis of one of her songs and, like the protagonist of this poem, disappears.

As in the Hunger Games trilogy, Collins pays considerable attention to food and clothing. Imagery is used to describe Snow's impoverished state at the beginning, with opening-scene references to the unappealing cabbage that he boils and the reworked dress clothes that Tigris crafts for him. Later, garments such as Lucy's multicolored dress and Coryo's crisp Peacekeeper uniform become important, as will food images that indicate deprivation (the sparse resources of the tributes) and reassurance (Ma Plinth's desserts).

The Hunger Games should favor physically tough tributes from more prosperous districts, yet the opposite is true in this novel. District 12 apparently has little chance of winning since it is an impoverished district and Lucy has few apparent fighting skills. Nonetheless, she uses her wits to claim victory over athletic, deadly competitors from District 4 and District 11.

Lucy is paralleled with Katniss (the female District 12 tribute from the original trilogy) as a tribute who is easily underestimated but uses cleverness and a few well-chosen allies to win.

Coryo and Dr. Gaul exist in parallel with namesake characters (the title character and Volumnia, respectively) from Shakespeare's drama Coriolanus, a tale of political intrigue. Like the Hunger Games series as a whole, Coriolanus is a retrospective and imaginative response to elements of the Roman Empire.

Metonymy: The terms "District" and "Capitol" are used for broad sets of tendencies and loyalties, not simply for locations. It is possible to have the humbler roots and rebellious tendencies implied by "District" even when living among the aristocratic and conniving residents of the Capitol, as Sejanus does.

Synecdoche: The tributes often have skills that reflect some of the industries in their districts, including aptitude with devices (District 3) and nautical prowess (District 4). In this manner, the two tributes from each district represent some of the qualities of a larger population.

Lucy refers to a snake as a "particular friend of mine" and continues to have an unusual sympathy with the reptiles.

The jabberjays are capable of recording human speech, in a case of animal-to-human resemblance that is quite literal.

In other instances, the Ballad tends to reverse the usual equation for personification. Instead of giving human traits to animals or inanimate objects, the book grants non-human traits to people. Both Snow (with "Snow lands on top") and Lucy (with "pure as the driven snow") employ puns based on Snow's name.