Summary
Chapter 7 traces the aftermath of Arachne Crane's killing. Coryo makes a futile attempt - at Lucy's urging - to save Arachne, and the responsible District 10 tribute is shot by Capitol Peacekeepers. Though rattled, Coryo decides to forge ahead on an assignment for the upcoming Hunger Games. He, Arachne, and another student named Clemensia Dovecote had been given the task of drawing up a proposal for allowing betting on tributes and enabling food to be sent to the arena. With Arachne dead and Clemensia too upset to work, he completes the proposal entirely on his own.
The next day, Coryo attends a school assembly that serves as an early memorial for Arachne. He and Clemensia then report to Dr. Gaul's lab to deliver their proposal. To test whether both students had in fact contributed, Dr. Gaul places the proposal document in a tank full of snakes that ignore familiar scents; any unfamiliar scent causes these reptiles to attack. Put to the test, Coryo reaches in and touches the document unharmed. Clemensia reaches in and is targeted by these creatures.
Chapter 8 opens with Clemensia reeling from the snake attack. Dr. Gaul is unconcerned about Clemensia's safety; she does, however, order Coryo not to be dishonest with her and praises his report. For his part, Coryo is concerned enough to visit the Capitol Hospital for word of Clemensia. There, he learns that she is being treated for a presumed "mishap" and seems to have a chance of survival. Later, Coryo returns to the zoo to check in with Lucy. Security has been heightened, and conditions have deteriorated for the tributes, who must now fend off rats and cope with hunger. Lucy has made a friend and ally in the sturdy male District 12 tribute, Jessup. Coryo, who is now convinced that Lucy's musical abilities are an asset, tells her that he wants to find an instrument for her to play for Capitol audiences.
In Chapter 9, Coryo returns home. He tells his grandmother and a horrified Tigris about the trap that Dr. Gaul set for Clemensia. He also receives a call from his professor Satyria Click, who wants Coryo to sing the Capitol Anthem during Arachne's funeral. Coryo consents. The funeral itself features a profession that showcases the power of the Capitol and - with the remaining tributes dirty and shackled - the apparent subservience of the Districts. The event helps to depict Coryo as a heroic figure, building on his attempt to save Arachne, but it makes Sejanus miserable. After a banquet, the mentors are transported to the Capitol arena that will be used for the Hunger Games; the tributes accompany them, though watched closely. Coryo and Lucy reconnect, and even flirt a little, before a bomb explodes.
As Chapter 10 begins, the mentors and tributes are responding to the bomb attack. Multiple explosions hit the arena, leaving Coryo trapped under a beam. Though presented with a chance to escape, Lucy rushes to Coryo's aid; he loses consciousness and, when he fully awakens, finds himself in the Capitol hospital, his grandmother and Tigris hovering nearby. The explosion resulted in the hospitalization of some mentors and killed two, the Ring twins. Some of the most formidable tributes - the pairs from District 1 and District 2 - also attempted to flee, but were gunned down with one exception: Marcus, whose whereabouts remain unknown.
During his time in the hospital, Coryo is visited by Clemensia, whose snakebites have resulted in a strange mutation that gives her scaly, multicolored skin. The Capitol soon stages a lavish funeral for the Rings; the remaining tributes and mentors also regroup. Coryo faces Lucy again and expresses his thanks to her for saving his life during the explosion. She explains that the best form of repayment for her heroism would be a change in attitude: for Coryo to think that Lucy could win the Games.
Chapter 11 opens Part II of the novel, "The Prize." Coryo and Lucy decide that their best possible strategy involves evading the other tributes and winning sponsors, perhaps with the assistance of Lucy's musical skills. To make the strategy a reality, Coryo promises to obtain Lucy a guitar. First, though, he and the other students have one more meeting with Dr. Gaul, who asks them about the best way to manage hostilities between the Districts and the Capitol; Coryo's sense of an ongoing war with tactics for control makes an impact. Afterward, Coryo checks in with his family friend Pluribus Bell, a former nightclub owner who provides Lucy's guitar.
Lucy's guitar performance is slated for a televised feature called The Hunger Games: A Night of Interviews. Some tributes display their fighting skills or discuss the technicalities of District industries. Lucy, who goes last, sings a moving, personal song about lost love. Although this performance makes a strong impact, the idea that Lucy left a lover behind in District 12 fills Coryo with jealousy.
As Chapter 12 opens, the tension between Coryo and Lucy is palpable, even though Lucy explains that her song, in part, was designed to send a reassuring message to her fellow musicians in District 12. The broadcasted song also wins over some unlikely fans, including Coryo's grandmother. Coryo discovers her positive reaction - and realizes that his family's apartment may soon be put up for sale - when he returns home. He also gets to work on an assignment for Dr. Gaul: a paper on what he liked about the war. Coryo decides that the security that came with the defeat of the Districts was important to him. The next day, the students discuss their assignments; Sejanus is sympathetic to the Districts, and Dr. Gaul herself remains staunchly committed to the Capitol.
Coryo also has one last conversation with Lucy, who is distraught about the prospect of entering the arena. He promises not to abandon her. He also gives her an important present - his mother's silver compact - as a memento of their time together and, more practically, as a possible means of storing poison to use against the other tributes.
Analysis
Even as the relationship between Lucy and Coriolanus intensifies - and leads to new tensions - these chapters place emphasis on a war of ideas between approaches to the Districts. Arachne's killing provokes a brutal and one-sided response from the Capitol. The dead mentor is mourned with pomp, Coryo is elevated to heroic status despite his failure to save Arachne, and the body of the dead tribute - in a possible twisted pun on Arachne's last name - is suspended from a crane during the funeral procession. Dr. Gaul also speaks, promising that "When one of ours is hit, we hit back twice as hard" (130). Already an adherent to a survival-of-the-fittest worldview, Dr. Gaul construes the Hunger Games as a way of striking back at the Districts. In Dr. Gaul's construct, however, there may never be a decisive blow. Indifferent to the misfortune of Capitol student Clemensia, Dr. Gaul may be willing to allow a war of all against all to cull the weaker members on both sides.
Against this harsh view of the world are posed a few examples of compassion. Sejanus is already a foil to his Capitol peers, who are so distant from life in the Districts or perhaps so traumatized by the war itself that they have little trouble going along with the vengeful violence of the Hunger Games. His anguish and guilt also contrast with Dr. Gaul's nonchalance. The real surprise, though, is Dean Highbottom, who finds Arachne's funeral "excessive and in poor taste" and laments "how little things change. After all the killing" (131). While his reasons for such dour reflections are not entirely clear, such reflections themselves set him up as a member of a Capitol cadre that, though not always vocal, find the Hunger Games deeply troubling. Readers of YA genre fiction may also feel that the character dynamics echo a setup from another series: Highbottom's mysterious motives and quiet animosity cast him as the Severus Snape to Coryo's Harry Potter.
Highbottom's critique also points to one of the central problems of the Capitol's approach: the likelihood that the Hunger Games will lead to a cycle of war instead of a cycle of regeneration for Panem. Indeed, the violence of these chapters fits some of the genre prerequisites of The Ballad. Without near-death scenarios such as the bombing, Coriolanus's narrative would seem dispiritingly tame compared to the later adventures of Katniss Everdeen. However, that bombing is also a pointed reminder that regardless of how and when the bombs were set, there are probably plenty of District residents who want to hit back at the Capitol. If anything, seeing a tribute hanging from a crane would make them want to hit back twice as hard.
This possibility of an ongoing yet undeclared war is played against more intimate material: the evolving relationship between Coryo and Lucy. While Lucy's past relationship complicates the bond between mentor and tribute, that bond remains firm in its fundamentals. Coriolanus reflects that even Capitol die-hards are warming to Lucy's singing: "If Lucy Gray had won over the Grandma'am, Coriolanus felt the rest of the nation could only fall in step. If no one else seemed to be bothered by her questionable past, why should he be?" (178). To desert her at this point would be to turn his back on the young woman who saved his life - a level of backbiting that only a true villain, not a conflicted young man, would undertake. Such a turn would also be unwise: regardless of her past, Lucy is Snow's best chance of winning the Games and thus a University education.
Instead, the real drama here involves the Games themselves, particularly the question of whether Lucy's personality, wits, and courage are enough to win the entire contest. The original Hunger Games trilogy did raise the question of whether intellect and appeal are enough to ensure victory, but not through its main characters. Katniss Everdeen possessed deadly archery skills, and Peeta Mellark was physically powerful - despite their gifts of cleverness and persuasion. Reading The Ballad is more like imagining a less imposing tribute from the trilogy - Rue perhaps, or the cunning fox-faced girl who survives almost to the end - at the center of the action. Though the intimidating competitors from Districts 1 and 2 are out of the action, Lucy will need to evade other imposing combatants and wage a war of mind games and patience.
