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In a recent post about casting announcements for the upcoming film adaption of Sunrise on the Reaping, we focused on characters who are doubles—younger versions of characters from the other books or other pairs. That theme–twins, doppelgangers, substitutes, imposters, and pairs—is one that resonates throughout the entire novel and which merits a closer look. So let’s peer into this important feature and spend time with some of the many pairs that Collins includes in her powerful examination of the Games through the eyes of Haymitch Abernathy. Spoilers abound, so if you have not finished reading the novel, you have been warned!

Older and Younger

Since this novel is set during the Fiftieth Games, the Second Quarter Quell, it is no surprise that numerous characters appear whose older selves are already familiar to readers from the original trilogy, while some characters from the other prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes appear as their older selves. Readers certainly appreciate getting to know characters we have heard about but never actually “met” before, like Burdock Everdeen and Maysilee Donner, but is also fascinating to see those we already know, either twenty-some years younger or forty years older. Of course, it is not surprising that Haymitch is the focus on the novel, since we know he was the victor of these Games, but, like Peeta and Katniss when they watch the film, readers may be shocked by a young, friendly, handsome, and optimistic version of Haymitch, whom we have known as a bitter, isolated, and broken alcoholic. Certainly the events of Sunrise explain much about the man we know later. Holding these two characters side by side, we can see many of the elements we know from Haymitch already—his snarky sense of humor, resourcefulness, and, what we always suspected lay under his rough demeanor, a truly good heart. Presenting these two versions of him allows Collins to continue making her powerful points about what trauma, specifically combat, does to people, while also reminding us that inside broken adults are broken children.

Several other characters we have met as broken adults appear as their younger selves, and their experiences in this book help to explain the other versions of them that we have seen before. Katniss’s mother, Astrid, appears as the town beauty Katniss knew she was before her marriage, but we also see her as the young healer trying to help Haymitch before he drives her away, and we see, perhaps, why Burdock’s death sends her into her own downward spiral.

Wiress and Beetee (Nuts and Volts) of District 3 are both younger and less damaged than we see them as adults in Catching Fire. Their experiences in Sunrise explain that transformation, as they are both tortured by the Capitol: Beetee is forced to mentor his son, Ampert, and to watch his horrifying death, while Wiress has been so damaged by torture that, at the Victory Celebration, she is twitchy and incoherent, conditions that she still experiences twenty-five years later. Mags, whom we’ve met as a feeble but determined ally, is here the maternal, caring mentor we expected was still there when she gives her life to help Finnick, Peeta, and Katniss in the Third Quarter Quell, and the torture that puts her in a wheelchair at the end of Sunrise may also account for some of her physical handicaps twenty-five years later.

From Marie Claire

Not every character we see as a younger version shows such a dramatic change. Caesar Flickerman, thanks to copious amounts of plastic surgery, doesn’t seem any different from his older self, of course. One of my favorite characters is our younger version of Effie Trinket. I must confess to saying some pretty unkind things about Effie while reading and teaching the first novel, but it is clear that much of our impression of Effie in the original trilogy is based on the lens through which we see her—Katniss. Haymitch, on the other hand, sees a different version of the flaky, superficial Effie, a version who stands by him and, despite her parroting of the Capitol messaging, tries to help in her own way. She still isn’t very smart, but she is often kind. We have to wonder how much the version of her we see later is different because of time or because of the person telling the story.

This may also be the case with Plutarch Heavensbee, who is still an ambiguous character whose trustworthiness is often a subject of speculation. It is particularly nice to see him in his vast library since, in Mockingjay, he credits history books for his ideas about a representative government. The fact that he and Haymitch have a complicated relationship in Sunrise explains much about the way we see them interact later. When Katniss says one of her Gamemaker observers fell in the punchbowl when she shot the arrow at the pig, Haymitch bursts into laughter. If he put together that Plutarch was that Gamemaker, his amusement has much deeper roots in the long game the two of them are playing.

Since this is our second prequel, we also have characters who appeared in Ballad and are thus older, like the two remaining Covey members, Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine. Both are older and sadder than the versions we saw before, but we learn more about each of them. One character that we see as both an older and younger version is, of course, Coriolanus Snow, whom we have already met as a teenager and an old man, is here middle-aged, but clearly as corrupt as the man who destroyed District 12 or the boy who tried to kill Lucy Gray Baird to achieve his ambitions. His  habit of poisoning rivals and failures is clearly on display. Of all the characters we see matched up with other versions of himself, he seems the most predictable, while also being very disturbing.

Mismatched Pairs

Even before opening the novel, sharp-eyed readers will notice that mismatched pairs will play a powerful role, since there is one right on the cover, the flint striker that Lenore Dove gives Haymitch for his birthday and which he wears as his token. With the head of the snake on one side and the head of the bird on the other, the striker connects to the “songbirds and snakes” of the first prequel while also resonating with this novel’s themes of “odd couples.” Throughout the novel, we have people paired together who seem very different. In the arena, Haymitch has four allies, Lou-Lou, Ampert, Maysilee, and Wellie, but is only paired with one at a time, creating strange match-ups: with a damaged child who doesn’t know who she is, with a spunky but tiny kid from another district, with the meanest girl in town, and with a frail girl he wants to win but fails to save.

The odd couple who truly takes the prize for being the oddest would undoubtedly be Drusilla Sickle and Magno Stift. In fact, only when the stylists and Effie are gossiping is it revealed that these two are actually married. It may be “a tax thing,” but they seem quite attached during the Victory Celebrations despite Drusilla’s earlier furious tirades and threats against Magno for making her look bad by being stoned on toad venom instead of doing his job. These two awful people are strangely bound together. In many ways, they are like those figures on the striker. Magno is obsessed with reptiles, and Drusilla appears wearing a giant stuffed eagle on her head during the Victory Celebration. She also wears feathers in “canary yellow” at the reaping, leading to Maysilee landing some of her best barbs. With his scales and her feathers, they are like lurid, gauche imitations of the elegant piece of jewelry made by Tam Amber’s careful hands, showing that mismatched pairs can be beautifully blended contraries or just ugly chaos.

Twins–Matchy-Matchy

In addition to seemingly unexpected pairs put together intentionally, Sunrise includes a host of matching sets. The “matchy-matchy” theme, as Maysilee calls it, is clear in the eagle and golden staircase motif on the Heavensbees library stairs, cushion, and  milk pitcher, so much so that Haymitch knows the pitcher of milk sent in the arena is the same one or an exact twin.

Literal twins are also prevalent. Maysilee Donner and her sister Merrilee are identical twins; “as like as peas in a pod” (357), Haymitch thinks when he mistakes Merrilee for her dead sister at the communal District 12 funeral. Dressed in black, the tribute color for 12, Merrilee looks identical to Maysilee, whom Haymitch adopts as a sister in the arena, thinking of his own twin sisters who died at birth. With their matching clothes, bicycles, and hairbows, it isn’t surprising that Maysilee has taken to using jewelry to make herself distinct. She and Merrilee also have matching pins, made by Tam Amber decades earlier. Although Merrilee promptly lost hers, a hummingbird, its twin, Maysilee’s mockingjay pin, outlives its owner and most of District 12 to become a rallying symbol for the rebellion against the Capitol.

Replacements and Imposters

Right from the beginning of the novel, it becomes clear that things are not always what they seem, when we learn that Haymitch’s Reaping, seen briefly in Catching Fire, was in fact a replacement for the actual Reaping that occurred. Chance Woodbine is the original second male tribute after Wyatt Callow, but instead of submitting, Chance makes a run for it and it shot, leaving the irascible Drusilla scrabbling for a replacement. Since Haymitch interferes, trying to save Lenore Dove who has been trying to help Chance’s family, he is grabbed as a substitute for Chance, and the name drawing is re-staged to make it appear that Haymitch was the actual tribute chosen.

Actresses cast as Louella and Lou Lou From Hollywood Reporter

Another District 12 tribute is replaced before the beginning of the Games. Louella McCoy, Haymitch’s young neighbor and “sweetheart,” dies in the chariot wreck caused by drunken Capitol revelers and fireworks, but the Capitol, rather than  acknowledging the accident, tries to save face by editing the procession footage and, most monstrously, replacing Louella with a look-alike girl who is fitted with a device that monitors and controls her. Lou-Lou, whose ear bleeds from the implant, especially when she is punished for naming as “murderers” those who have done this to her, is clearly not even from 12, as she seems to connect most with songs and smells from District 11, but the Capitol bets that no one, other than her fellow District 12 tributes will notice the replacement. The horror and tragedy of what has been done to this child just compounds the senseless death of Louella and reinforces the kind of depravation that sees humans, children, as not just disposable, but replaceable, devoid of individual identities.

The EYE of the Beholder

It should come to no surprise to us that the arena is revealed, during the heavily doctored Victory Celebration recap, to be laid out in the shape of an eye, with the cornucopia as the pupil. Haymitch interprets the message as “you are being watched,” which is undoubtedly true, but there is also a very strong message about appearances, a message delivered by all those pairs and duplicates: things are not always what they appear. The arena looks beautiful, but everything in it is determined to hurt and kill the tributes, from carnivorous monsters disguised as cute, fluffy animals, to poisons lurking in every lovely piece of fruit, gorgeous flower, and crystal stream. Eyes, too, generally come in pairs.  With only one eye, perception is altered, skewed. The version of events being broadcast on Capitol television and included in the recap is not just “card-stacked”; it is altered, edited, and transformed from reality into the Capitol’s poster. As Collins has always made clear, the media contorts and controls our perception of reality, creating alternate versions of people and events that appear the way the media wants us to see them, rather than as they really are. Once again, Collins is reminding us that that we must always seek to see what is actual and what is illusion, to discover what is, and what is not, real.

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