Summary
Coryo and Lucy confront Sejanus and Billy Taupe - who seem to be forming a plan centered on the District 12 Peacekeeper base - in the opening of Chapter 25. Lucy asserts that she is done with Billy, and even bites him when he tries to touch her. Although the scene settles down after Billy departs, Coryo cannot stay at the Covey house much longer, since the Covey is playing a wedding gig later in the day. Back at the Peackeeper base, Coryo writes to Dr. Gaul, mostly reflecting on his experiences of chaos and violence. His schedule then undergoes a few interesting changes: he is sent out to trap jabberjays and mockingjays under the direction of Dr. Kay, then sits down to a test for the officer's training program. When Coryo is back in his bunk, he also looks into Sejanus's personal belongings. He discovers that Sejanus is laden with more than baked goods. In fact, Sejanus has a store of cash - despite his claims that he is as broke as the rest of the Peacekeepers - and Coryo's distrust grows.
In Chapter 26, Coryo reflects on Sejanus's untrustworthiness and on the prospect of once again seeing Lucy, before setting off again to work with Dr. Kay. While helping her to trap the birds, Coryo receives a lesson in how jabberjays and mockigjays work. The jabberjays are engineered organisms known as "muttations" and were designed to spy on the Districts in the war. Jabberjays can mimic human speech and operate, strangely, like living tape recorders; mockingjays are a related breed that emerged in the wild, capable of imitating music but not speech.
On their Saturday off, Coryo and the other young Peacekeepers once again attend one of Lucy's performances at the Hob. Lucy decides to sing a Wordsworth ballad, the one that contains the story of her namesake Lucy. Coryo is not particularly impressed by this ghostly composition about a young girl who wanders through a snowy landscape and disappears. He leans over to talk to Sejanus about the song. However, Sejanus has disappeared.
Sejanus and Coryo meet up again before heading back to the barracks as Chapter 27 begins. Coryo remains suspicious, and he continues to spend time with Lucy. On Sunday, both Sejanus and Coryo accompany the members of the Covey to a lake. In the course of a mostly pleasant day, Coryo learns that the Covey musicians all derive their names from ballads and colors. He also hears more about the intrigue that pits the mayor's daughter Mayfair against Lucy. At one point, Lucy and Mayfair were both pursuing Billy Taupe, and Mayfair and her father "fixed" the reaping to send Lucy off to the Hunger Games.
Coryo finds that he is increasingly impressed by the jabberjays. He is working with these birds - mostly classifying them for shipment back to the Capitol - when Sejanus confronts him, determined to tell Coryo about a desperate move. Unbeknownst to Sejanus, Coryo activates a jabberjay to record Sejanus's words.
In Chapter 28, Sejanus reveals that he is teaming up with some of the rebels to rescue a prisoner named Lil and leave District 12. Coryo's jabberjay successfully records all of this information and is sent off to the Capitol; Coryo himself is left feeling morally conflicted, unsure how severely Sejanus will be punished. He attends another one of Lucy Gray's performances when Saturday arrives, and he discovers another sign that Sejanus is deep in rebellion: Sejanus talking with a man named Spruce near a bag of firearms. Lucy, Mayfair, and Billy Taupe all discover this meeting as well, and Mayfair seems ready to flee and tell the authorities. Since Coryo does not want to get mixed up in the rebellion or accused of treason, he shoots Mayfair. Billy Taupe - who also runs the risk of informing - is shot by Spruce. The gunshots do not reach the Hob, since the music of a singalong drowns out the noise.
During the days that follow, Coryo learns that Spruce has been killed. He then receives the disturbing news that Sejanus has been accused of treason and has been sentenced to death. The Peacekeepers bring Sejanus to the Hanging Tree, and nearby jabberjays take up Sejanus's last word: "Ma!"
Chapter 29 begins by tracing the aftermath of Sejanus's death. While Coryo fears that he too will be rounded up as a rebel sympathizer, Commander Hoff, of the District 12 Peacekeepers, has a different outlook: he thanks Coryo for informing Dr. Gaul and the Capitol of Sejanus's treason. Commander Hoff's birthday is also approaching. When the event arrives, the Peacekeepers gather for a party that features music from the Covey, including a song that Lucy directs at Coryo himself; the lyrics reference someone "pure as the driven snow," a clear sign of her trust and affection. During the festivities, Lucy tells Snow that the mayor has been following her and probably intends to kill her. Snow, who fears that the gun he used to kill Mayfair will show up and implicate him in a crime, resolves to escape District 12 with her. However, Commander Hoff has news that complicates this plan: Coryo has been accepted into the officer's training program in District 2.
Early in Chapter 30, Coryo and Lucy put their escape plan into motion, even though Coryo realizes that he now has a chance to improve his life and reputation by becoming an officer. The two young people meet up by the Hanging Tree and move into the forest, making their way to a house beside a lake. As they walk, Coryo mentions that he has killed three people. Stormy weather settles in; at the house, Coryo discovers a store of weapons, including the gun that killed Mayfair. He realizes that he can destroy the gun and that Lucy may run some risk of informing against him. In fact, she may have figured out that his third kill was Sejanus.
Coryo attempts to hunt Lucy down. She briefly reappears and attacks him with a biting snake, but she is not seen again. Coryo then sinks the weapons in the lake and returns to the Peacekeeper base. His snakebite wound is bothersome but not dangerous, and he soon boards a hovercraft for District 2 - yet finds that he has been taken back to the Capitol instead. He is met by Dr. Gaul, who informs him that she saw his stint in District 12 as a necessary learning experience and that he will be one of her University students.
The Epilogue finds Coryo enrolled in the University, studying military strategy under Dr. Gaul. Now that the Plinths have taken him in as an adopted son - making him the heir to their fortune and restoring the Snows to their luxury apartment - his prospects have improved significantly. He also visits Dean Highbottom, supposedly to turn over some of Sejanus's possessions. During this meeting, Dean Highbottom reveals that he and Coryo's father had both studied under Dr. Gaul at the University. Dr. Gaul had tasked her class with devising a powerful punishment for an opponent; Highbottom formulated the Hunger Games in response but was reluctant to share his horrifying conception. However, Snow's father brought the idea to the attention of Dr. Gaul - who later implemented the Hunger Games. Snow leaves Highbottom and plants a poisoned dose of morphling - the drug that Highbottom frequently uses - in the Dean's office. The novel ends with Snow contemplating a life of calculating ambition, reflecting on the necessity of moving past his time with Lucy, and musing about Highbottom's likely demise - a strand of thoughts that ends with the reflection that "Snow lands on top."
Analysis
With these chapters, Coriolanus doesn't entirely complete his metamorphosis into the paranoid, poison-wielding autocrat of the later Hunger Games books. He comes as close, though, as a responsible and decent late-teenager can. The contours of President Snow's later villainy are evident in the kills, both uncertain and successful, that Coryo attempts in these final segments of The Ballad. Some of these (Mayfair) read as matters of self-preservation in the face of District aggression; others (Sejanus, Highbottom, and possibly Lucy) are matters of deception and devilish shrewdness, often directed against characters with their own links to the Capitol. (Lucy, remember, was depicted by Coryo as a roamer with Capitol-like sophistication, not a District bumpkin.) The cumulative effect anticipates the depiction of President Snow that one veteran tribute, Finnick Odair, delivers in Mockingjay: a wily and understated maniac, as eager to subdue the Districts as to kill off suspected enemies within the Capitol's own ranks.
By the time of Mockingjay and the other books in the original Hunger Games trilogy, Coriolanus Snow is nearing 90. He is also, by that point, a firm representative of Dr. Gaul's ideals of cold social control. In The Ballad, his moral code is still being formed - or warped - and he is still capable of agonizing over his choices. His reflections on the death of Sejanus are fraught with emotion: "Coriolanus buried his face in his hands. He had killed Sejanus as surely as if he'd bludgeoned him to death like Bobbin or gunned him down like Mayfair" (Ballad, 472). Yet even here, Coryo's thoughts pivot to the idea that he had "No choice," literally within the same paragraph of the novel. From making hard choices in killing for self-preservation, he has gone on to convince himself that the idea of choice is an illusion in such circumstances.
The reality is that each of Coriolanus's kills is less necessary than the previous one as The Ballad enters its final stretch. Without Coryo's jabberjay trap, Sejanus could be wandering the Panem frontier and could (in hindsight) have disposed of the incriminating guns on his own. He would be at best a distant threat, if Panem's ragtag rebels could become a formidable force. Lucy, at the moment, does seem like a troubling loose end. Again, Coryo contemplates her death as a necessity: "He couldn't risk it. Still no sight of her. She was giving him no choice but to hunt her down in the woods" (501). The "no choice" trend to Coriolanus's thoughts has been well established. Faced with the drama of Coryo's measures to "hunt [Lucy] down," readers may be stunned to recall that, one chapter and a few hours earlier, Lucy was praising Coryo as "pure as the driven snow."
Turning on Lucy is a harsh measure, but it is not a heartbreaking one for Coriolanus. While the earlier portions of the novel create a firm bond between the two, Coryo's ability to move on from the lovers' climactic showdown - with few emotions other than relief - hints at an increasingly sociopathic disregard for all lives other than his own. Whether that disregard could extend even beyond Lucy to Tigris or the Grandma'am is an open question at the end of The Ballad. Ultimately, Tigris's fall from grace by the time of Mockingjay hints that this extension of Coryo's callousness is a very real possibility. The other act of sociopathy - the poisoning of Highbottom - is pointedly unnecessary, except as a way of soothing Coryo's ego and removing an annoyance that is, at best, there but unseen. Highbottom is, after all, an Academy official; Coryo is now under Dr. Gaul at the University. Barring an Academy class reunion, Coriolanus and his academic "nemesis" may never have met or interacted again.
Collins's final chapters are suffused with dark ironies. There is the evident dramatic irony of Coryo becoming the Plinths' adopted son by means that would horrify the Plinths if they knew the full story. There is the situational irony of Coryo ending a journey of heartfelt teen romance by envisioning a future romance with Livia Cardew - whom he sees as an entitled brat - for the sake of political gain. And, once the rest of the published Hunger Games books are factored in, there is the irony of Coryo's final reflections on Lucy Gray and her uncertain fate: "She could fly around District 12 all she liked, but she and her mockingjays could never harm him again" (Ballad, 516). It would take 65 years for this irony to reveal itself, and for Katniss Everdeen - the figurative mockingjay - to prove him wrong.
