Cabbage and Other Fare (Symbol)
For Snow, boiled cabbage represents his miserable life of poverty. The novel opens with the following passage, revealing that Snow plans to never eat this food again:
"Coriolanus released the fistful of cabbage into the pot of boiling water and swore that one day it would never pass his lips again. But this was not that day. He needed to eat a large bowl of the anemic stuff."
This symbol reveals a great deal about Snow's position at the beginning of this novel, and Coryo's lingering hunger - alleviated somewhat by the generous Academy meals - continues to indicate his disadvantaged position. In fact, the Snows are not the only family whose status is communicated through food. Some of Coryo's friends were reduced to eating nonstop oatmeal (the Creeds) and human flesh (the Prices) during the siege of the Capitol. In sharp contrast, the prosperity and security of the Plinths are embodied in the lavish, delicious desserts that Ma Plinth concocts.
Birds (Symbol)
In this novel, Collins explains the origin of the mockingjay, which becomes a symbol in the original series for Katniss' revolution. This creature is the product of mating between a Capitol muttation and District 12 mockingbirds. Coryo's reaction is immediate and, in terms of foreshadowing, quite pointed.
"Coriolanus felt sure he'd spotted his first mockingjay, and he disliked the thing on sight" (Ballad, 352).
In this text, Snow is on his way to regarding the mockingjay as a symbol of the original rebellion in Panem, seeing it as representing something instinctively against his own Capitol-aligned personality. The jabberjay also makes a reappearance in this novel, as Snow uses its powers to further his own interests. Here, he proves that he is indeed a creature of the Capitol, impressed by, and comfortable with, even a seemingly "failed" experiment like the jabberjay breed.
Serpents (Symbol)
District 12 tribute Lucy Gray has a connection to snakes, which helps her multiple times during the Hunger Games. She uses snakes to attack Mayfair, Treech, and eventually Coriolanus himself. Still, snakes are infamous as symbols of betrayal and duplicity - ideas that they also embody in The Ballad. Coriolanus himself takes on a famously snake-like appearance and a few snake-like traits (poisoning his opponents) in the Hunger Games trilogy. Here, he double-crosses Lucy at the end of the book, proving his wily nature and indicating that snakes are an appropriate emblem for a member of the Capitol elite. These creatures symbolizee the threat that lurks constantly beneath the corruption of Panem, reminding readers that the characters are never truly safe.
Colors (Symbol)
Linked to the names of the Covey performers, color symbolism is unavoidable in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, although the colors associated with characters are occasionally quite counterintuitive. Lucy is affiliated with gray (by name) and with a rainbow spectrum (by virtue of the dress that she wears in the 10th Hunger Games). Together, these colors suggest that she is mysterious, hazy, and multifaceted. Her colors also avoid easy links with Katniss Everdeen, a fellow District 12 victor who is mostly associated with fiery colors and with the black-and-white of the mockingjay in the Hunger Games trilogy. Collins is sidestepping easy parallels and continues to complicate color expectations by emphasizing Snow's last name. He is "pure as the driven snow," in Lucy's words, but the imagery of snowy whiteness suggests something chilly and inhuman - or a moral blank, a whiteness eventually filled by all the wrong hues.
Wordsworth's Lucy (Allegory)
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes doesn't simply allude to William Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray": Collin's novel quotes the poem word-for-word. This actual ballad of a girl who wanders into a snowstorm and disappears was published in 1799, in the landmark collection Lyrical Ballads. With our own Lucy's disappearance at the end of the novel - at the hands of a young man named Snow, no less - the parallels between the two narratives are unmistakable. Nevertheless, the following lines of Wordsworth's poem also become quite pointed when paired with Collins's writing.
--Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
Snow ends The Ballad convinced that Lucy Gray is no longer a factor in his life, much less a threat. Still, the events of the later Hunger Games trilogy prove that something of Lucy's rebellious spirit lives on - perhaps in District 12 descendants who will one day storm the Capitol, definitely in the antagonism towards Snow that will catch fire right after the 74th Hunger Games.
