Summary
As Chapter 19 opens, Coryo is conflicted over his ploy to save Lucy: dropping a handkerchief with her scent into a tank full of mutated snakes, in the hopes that these animals will recognize the odor and not attack. He feels that he has crossed a line, and reflects that he did something similar in sneaking her food from the Academy earlier on. Coryo then pays a visit to the Plinths. Ma Plinth shares some of her delicious pie with him, and Pa Plinth thanks Coryo for saving Sejanus. According to Pa Plinth, Coryo's own Capitol elite father would not have taken a similar risk.
When the Games resume, a tribute named Wovey dies - a possible victim of Lucy Gray's poison. A new threat emerges when the mutated multicolored snakes are released. These creatures swarm the tributes who remain on the ground and kill two, Circ and Coral, while other tributes climb to safety. Then, Lucy Gray's voice emerges. She sings a few simple notes as the snakes swarm around her, harmless, their varied colors echoing her own multicolored skirt.
In Chapter 20, Lucy Gray turns the spectacle with the snakes into an opportunity for another musical performance. Once again, Capitol audiences are impressed. Coryo, however, wonders about Dr. Gaul's reaction; she was on the broadcast for the snake attack, but her expression is indecipherable. The next day finds Lucy among the final five surviving tributes. Of the remaining competitors, Mizzen is killed when Teslee disorients him with a reprogrammed drone, causing him to plummet to his death. Teslee is then killed when Treech attacks her with an ax, and Treech is killed when Lucy attacks him with a snake. Lucy then spends her time dodging Reaper until he too dies, a possible victim of Lucy's poisoning.
Coryo is delighted with his win. Though he expects a reversal in his family's fortune and a meeting with Dr. Gaul, he is confronted by Dean Highbottom instead. The Dean has found three pieces of evidence - a napkin used to transport food from the Academy, the compact from Coryo's mother, and the handkerchief that Coryo dropped into the snake tank - of Coryo's "cheating" in the Games. Coryo, in response, signs up as a Peacekeeper.
Chapter 21 begins Part III ("The Peacekeeper") and finds Coryo on a train bound for the Districts, namely District 12, where his Peacekeeper assignment will station him. Becoming part of the law enforcement arm of Panem is Coryo's way of avoiding expulsion and disgrace - an Academy lifeline offered by Dean Highbottom, who harbors a grudge against Coryo's dead father. Coryo bids farewell to Tigris and to his grandmother. Soon enough, he arrives in the gritty District 12 and takes his place in the Peacekeeper barracks. Coryo is distressed by a letter that he receives from Tigris, since the Snows are in effect being evicted from their apartment. Though Coryo begins to bond with recruits named Smiley, Bug, and Beanpole, he is agonizing over the possibility of a routine, unremarkable life when a new recruit walks in: Sejanus Plinth.
At the start of Chapter 22, Coryo is delighted to see Sejanus again. Sejanus, for his part, explains the fallout of recent events from the Capitol: Coryo was in fact allowed to graduate from the Academy (with the diploma conferred in his absence) and may be able to take a test to enroll in officers' training. Thanks to a payoff - in the form of a new Academy gymnasium - from Pa Plinth, Sejanus was allowed to join the Peacekeepers and is now free of a Capitol lifestyle that he always despised. Other bright spots for Coryo and Sejanus include rumors that Lucy has returned to District 12 to resume her musical career and parcels of delicious baked goods, courtesy of Ma Plinth. The two young men are also assigned to attend the hanging of Arlo Chance, a man accused of murder. When Arlo is executed, his last words - apparently a command for a woman named Lil to run - haunt Coryo.
Chapter 23 opens with the eerie after-effects of Arlo's hanging. His words set off an echoing response from nearby mockingjays, which can imitate human speech and which immediately disturb Coryo. When Coryo returns to the Peacekeeper base after the hanging, he finds a letter from Pluribus Bell. Fortunately, Pluribus has offered Tigris and the Grandma'am lodgings. He also explains that there was once a close friendship between Casca Highbottom and Coryo's father, but that the two had a falling-out during their University days.
Sejanus, for his part, is increasingly disconcerted by life as a Peacekeeper; he wants to be a doctor or a medic, and his current duties seem to be ways of perpetrating new violence against the districts. Coryo and Sejanus nonetheless take part in some of the District 12 festivities at the Hob, a makeshift assembly hall. A local alcoholic beverage known simply as white liquor is available, and Lucy Gray's band, the Covey, is playing. Led by the diminutive Maude Ivory and by a fresh-from-the-Capitol Lucy Gray herself, the musicians entertain with casual jokes and folksy tunes. After the show, Coryo is weighing how to approach Lucy. Before he can talk to her, he notices that the band is being approached by an intoxicated young man - apparently, the former love interest that Lucy mentioned in one of her Capitol songs.
Early in Chapter 24, Maude Ivory and the other members of the Covey stand their ground against Billy Taupe, Lucy's former flame. The musicians no longer want to be associated with him, and this confrontation sparks a quick scuffle between the Peacekeepers and some of the people of District 12. As the gathering breaks up, Coryo sees a few Peacekeepers escort Mayfair, the Mayor's daughter, home. She and Billy Taupe, it seems, are now a couple. In terms of his own romance, Coryo learns that Lucy lives in a part of District 12 called the Seam. He and Sejanus use some of their time off to visit her. After stopping by the Covey house, Coryo goes to find Lucy Gray in a meadow, where she is singing a song reminiscent of Arlo's hanging, "The Hanging Tree." The two kiss and reflect on a few Capitol events; Lucy explains that Dean Highbottom, oddly enough, had given her money before sending her back to District 12. When Coryo and Lucy return to the Covey house, they find Billy Taupe hanging around the premises and talking to Sejanus. The two young men, in fact, are contemplating an image that has been scratched in the ground: a map of the Peacekeeper base.
Analysis
Examined critically, the idea that Coryo has "cheated" to win the Hunger Games is counterintuitive - if not borderline absurd. Far from undermining the Games, his snake-tank ploy has created exactly the kind of spectacle that would draw a larger audience to future versions of the event. Punishing Coryo for turning Lucy into a crowd-pleaser prioritizes technicalities over totalities. In any case, the totality of the Hunger Games as a state of war makes the concept of "cheating" seem inherently out of place. What, after all, does "cheating" have to do with fighting to the death? In a war of all against all such as the Hunger Games (and such as reality, in Dr. Gaul's opinion) hoping that the other side will not "cheat" is a principled and self-destructive approach.
Collins's agenda in these chapters, however, extends even beyond examination of the moral implications of the Games. By sending Coriolanus to District 12, the novel opens new possibilities for topics that are by now quite expected: Coryo's difficult quest for self-promotion, his bond with Lucy, and his vexed memories of the District-led rebellion. Some world-building, though, also comes into play. When Coryo is on the train out of the Capitol, he stares "out the windows at the dead cities they passed, now abandoned to the elements, and wondered what the world had been like when they'd been in all their glory. Back when this had been North America, not Panem" (Ballad, 331). Any readers who have wondered exactly how large Panem is and have suspected that it simply consists of one smallish city and twelve smallish towns will realize that the country really is that small - and that decimated.
The other element of world-building is the novel's firsthand view of the Peacekeepers. These law enforcers have literally been present since the beginning of the series, with the District 12 Reaping ceremony that starts off Collins's original The Hunger Games. Until now, the Peacekeepers have remained largely in the background, though occasionally a particularly sadistic officer - like Romulus Thread in Catching Fire - will make an impression. Still, the impression that Peacekeeper training gives is by no means one of sadism. After seeing plenty of Panem's disregard for simple comfort and basic humanity in the Hunger Games, readers might expect Panem to exert considerable brutality on its Peacekeepers, several of whom hail from the Districts. Instead, Coryo and his fellow recruits experience a quasi-military lifestyle that is tedious, limited, and otherwise not too problematic day to day. Here, readers who were expecting the Hunger Games equivalent of Platoon or Full Metal Jacket will be sorely disappointed.
A more fraught training experience could have deflected too much attention from the problematic situations that Coriolanus does face. He already faces difficult odds of restoring his family to glory; even if he does ace the officers' training test, he will simply be on his way to a better Peacekeeper career, not necessarily to fame and fortune. He also has a teen love triangle to deal with. Coriolanus's relocation to District 12 has given him a very real chance at romance with Lucy, all while turning the spurned young man from one of Lucy's songs - Billy Taupe - into a real source of discomfort. Indeed, the arrival of this new character promises intrigue. Coriolanus is being asked to trust that Lucy is done with Billy - a difficult proposition in a society as premised on scheming as Panem, but a proposition that Lucy and Coryo's existing bond makes plausible.
The deeper intrigue, apparently, involves Billy and Sejanus. For a time, Sejanus is a reassuring presence, as is evident from Coryo's reflections on his odds "of seeing the Capitol again": "Before Sejanus came, he'd thought they were zero. But if he could return as an officer, maybe even a war hero, things might be different" (Ballad, 374). The Capitol's seeming lenience towards Sejanus, a District sympathizer, is for a time a hopeful sign, complemented by the rapport among the recruits and the homely comforts of Ma Plinth's pastries. Situated at the end of its chapter, in a position that Collins often reserves for pivotal plot points, that meeting between Sejanus and Billy is positioned as a critical moment, one that could undermine Coryo's life of easy-enough romance and easy loyalty to the Capitol.
