The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)

by Suzanne Collins

“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

A tendency toward obsession was hardwired into his brain and would likely be his undoing if he couldn’t learn to outsmart it.

People had short memories. They needed to navigate the rubble, peel off the grubby ration coupons, and witness the Hunger Games to keep the war fresh in their minds. Forgetting could lead to complacency, and then they’d all be back at square one.

If the people who were supposed to protect you played so fast and loose with your life . . . then how did you survive? Not by trusting them, that was for sure. And if you couldn’t trust them, who could you trust? All bets were off.

It matched the one on his lapel, just in case anyone needed a reminder of who Lucy Gray belonged to. “Well, you know what they say. The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings,” she said.

But what he really felt was jealous.

If the cause wasn’t honorable, how could it be an honor to participate in it?

“It means we’re all in the arena together, Lucky.”

The conversation wasn’t going the way Coriolanus had imagined. Where was the talk of reward money? He couldn’t be persuaded to take it if it was never offered.

Yes, the lack of law, that was at the heart of it. So people needed to agree on laws to follow. Was that what Dr. Gaul had meant by “social contract”? The agreement not to rob, abuse, or kill one another? It had to be. And the law required enforcement, and that was where control came in. Without the control to enforce the contract, chaos reigned. The power that controlled needed to be greater than the people — otherwise, they would challenge it. The only entity capable of this was the Capitol.

he got to keep her.

Coriolanus felt sure he’d spotted his first mockingjay, and he disliked the thing on sight.

He was glad about the erasure. It was just one more way to eliminate Lucy Gray from the world. The Capitol would forget her, the districts barely knew her, and District 12 had never accepted her as one of their own. In a few years, there would be a vague memory that a girl had once sung in the arena. And then that would be forgotten, too. Good-bye, Lucy Gray, we hardly knew you.