for english lesson

1. THE HUNGER GAMES
INTRODUCTION

2. Unit Overview
◦ Overall Expectations
◦ Tentative Schedule
◦ Assignments
◦ Novel Breakdown

3. Part 1: “The Tributes” (127)
Part 1 consists of getting to know
the narrator, Katniss, and the other
twenty-three tributes (or victims)
who have been chosen in the
Reaping to go to the Hunger
Games, through her perspective.
Chapters 1 – 3 Pgs. 3 – 20
Pgs. 21 – 33
Pgs. 34 – 47
44 pages
Chapters 4 – 6 Pg. 48 – 60
Pg. 61 – 72
Pg. 73 – 85
37 pages
Chapters 7 – 9 Pg. 86 – 102
Pg. 103 – 113
Pg. 114 – 130
44 pages
Part 2: “The Games” (111)
Part 2 is the narration of the
Hunger Games and Katniss’
experience in the arena.
Chapters 10 – 12 Pgs. 133 – 147
Pgs. 148 – 160
Pgs. 161 – 171
38 pages
Chapters 13 – 15 Pgs. 172 – 184
Pgs. 185 – 194
Pgs. 195 – 207
35 pages
Chapters 16 – 18 Pgs. 208 – 221
Pgs. 222 – 232
Pgs. 232 – 244
36 pages
Part 3: “The Victor” (127)
Part 3 is about the victor of the
games, the activities that take
place after winning the Hunger
Games, and the consequences of
winning: both positive and
negative.
Chapters 19 – 21 Pgs. 247 – 261
Pgs. 262 – 277
Pgs. 278 – 289
42 pages
Chapters 22 – 24 Pgs. 290 – 302
Pgs. 303 – 319
Pgs. 320 – 330
40 pages
Chapters 25 – 27 Pgs. 331 – 345
Pgs. 346 – 359
Pgs. 360 – 374
43 pages

4. Anticipation Guide: AGREE or DISAGREE
Do you AGREE or DISAGREE?
Please circle your answer.
Explain why you agree or
disagree. Use personal
examples and reflections.
Older siblings should be responsible for the temporal
needs of their younger siblings.
AGREE DISAGREE
Hunting is wrong. AGREE DISAGREE
Reality television is a fun and exciting form of
entertainment.
AGREE DISAGREE
Plastic surgery should be used as a form of
expression (like clothing).
AGREE DISAGREE
Having children is always a good thing. AGREE DISAGREE
If a government does something wrong, it is the
responsibility of the citizens to speak up.
AGREE DISAGREE
It is never okay to kill. AGREE DISAGREE

5. Anticipation Guide: AGREE or DISAGREE
You drive a truck for a large and wealthy grocery store
chain. You drive through an area where people are
starving to death. If you stop and distribute the food,
many lives would be saved, and the grocery store
wouldn’t notice it was gone. However, it’s still not your
food to give. The right thing to do is to continue
driving and not stop.

6. Anticipation Guide: AGREE or DISAGREE
You’re walking down a street and pass a man with a
gun holding ten people hostage. He tells you if you
pick one person to die, he will spare the lives of the
other nine. However, if you don’t pick one he will kill all
ten of them. The right thing to do is not to pick one
person to die.

7. Suzanne Collins
◦ In the award-winning The Hunger Games trilogy, Collins continues to
explore the effects of war and violence on those coming of age.
◦ Influence:
◦ “Probably the first seeds were planted when, as an eight-year-old with
a mythology obsession, I read the story of Theseus. The myth told how
in punishment for past deeds, Athens periodically had to send seven
youths and seven maidens to Crete where they were thrown in the
Labyrinth and devoured by the monstrous Minotaur. Even as a third
grader, I could appreciate the ruthlessness of this message. ‘Mess with
us and we’ll do something worse than kill you. We’ll kill your children.”
◦ “Other early influences would have to include watching too many
gladiator movies, which dramatized the Romans’ flair for turning
executions into popular entertainment; my military specialist dad who
took us to battlefields for family vacations; and touring with a sword
fighting company in high school. But it wasn’t until the much more
recent experience of channel surfing between reality TV programming
and actual war coverage that the story for this series came to me.”

8. Summary
◦ The United States government has been dissolved, and in its place is a
dystopian society known as Panem.
◦ Panem is made up of the Capitol and thirteen surrounding districts
that take up the mass of the entire modern U.S.
◦ After District 13 is completely destroyed for revolting against the
Capitol, the government implements the Hunger Games, a gladiator-
like televised event in which one boy and one girl, aged between
twelve and eighteen, from each district must fight each other to the
death.
◦ After her younger sister gets randomly chosen to participate in the
Hunger Games, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers in her
place.

9. Setting
◦ The novel takes place in what was North America.
◦ Due to various disasters, America has been dissolved, and a dystopian government
called Panem has been established in its place.
◦ The two main places that the novel takes place in are District 12 and the Capitol.
◦ District 12 is situated in the Appalachian Mountains and there is a large mining
community.
◦ Because of this, it is a safe guess to say District 12 is somewhere around where modern
day West Virginia is.
◦ Woods surround the district as well as an electric fence that exist as much for keeping
people in as keeping animals out.
◦ The Capitol is situated in the Rocky Mountain or modern day Colorado.
◦ The Capitol is a very technological, modern city. The citizens are extremely happy, overly
friendly, and dress in extreme styles (such as orange hair).
◦ Once the Hunger Games begins, Katniss spends most of her time in “the arena,” which is
an indoor arena created to look like a forest.

11. Point of View & Katniss Everdeen
◦ First person
◦ Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old girl living in District
12 of Panem
◦ Katniss is an extremely intelligent and resourceful girl
who has had an incredibly difficult life
◦ She chooses not to become attached to people, with
one exception—her sister, Prim.
◦ Katniss is extremely practical
◦ Because the entire story is told from Katniss’
perspective the reader is heavily influenced by her
biases. Even still, she is a descriptive narrator and
offers plenty of insights, not only into her own life,
but also into the people around her

14. Themes
Focus on
These
Topics
Poverty / Class
Distinction
Living in a
Dystopian
Society
Sacrifice
Violence on
Television /
Reality
Television
Cruelty vs.
Altruism
Appearance
vs. Reality
Hope
Humanity
Loyalty

15. Symbol /
Imagery / Motif
Districts
Mockingjay
Tracker
Jackers
Privacy /
Lack
thereof
Reality
TV
Food
Dandelions
Rue's
Flowers
Double
Suicide
Katniss's
Dresses
Fire
Defiance
Hunting

16. Utopia vs. Dystopia
Utopia
An imagined place in
which everything is
perfect.
Dystopia
An imagined place in
which everything is
unpleasant and bad.

17. CHAPTER 1
Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKzkjf4_yEA
We will be watching clips from the movie throughout the course. The movie can be
found on Netflix.

18. Page 3
◦ The novel begins with Katniss Everdeen, who tells her story in
first person, wakes up.
◦ She sees her little sister, Prim (short for Primrose), asleep in bed
with their mother across the room
◦ “This is the day of the reaping.”
◦ “The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed.”

19. Reaping
◦ To cut or gather (a crop or harvest)
◦ Receive a reward or benefit as a consequence of one’s own actions or
others
◦ You reap what you sow: Face the consequences of your actions
◦ The reaping is the method of choosing the tributes from each of the
twelve districts to participate in the Hunger Games. The names of
every male and female ages twelve to eighteen are put into the
reaping bowls. How many times a child’s name is entered into the
reaping bowl is determined by age and number of tesserae.

20. Pgs. 4 – 5
◦ The area where Katniss and her family lives is called Seam, and it is part of District 12
◦ “But today the black cinder streets are empty. Shutters on the squat gray houses are
closed. The reaping isn’t until two. May as well sleep in. If you can.”
◦ They are at the edge of the district, which is enclosed by a high chain-link fence, and Katniss
often crawls under the fence and enters the woods, outside, where she hunts
◦ The fence is supposed to be electrified but because they only get “two to three hours of
electricity in the evenings, it’s usually safe to touch”
◦ Her father taught her how to hunt before his death in a mine explosion when she was eleven
years old, and she uses a bow he made
◦ She is now 16-years-old
◦ Though trespassing in the woods and poaching are illegal, nobody pays attention, and Katniss
even sells meat to the Peacekeepers who are supposed to enforce the laws

21. Pg. 6
◦ “District Twelve. Where you can starve to death in safety,” I mutter. Then I glance quickly
over my shoulder. Even here, even in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might
overhear you.
◦ “When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about
District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the
Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to
hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever
read my thoughts. … In the woods waits the only person with whom I can be myself. Gale. I
can feel the muscles in my face relaxing …”
◦ Katniss is remembering a time of fear from her past. She explains that the Capitol continues to
instill fear in the Districts about speaking out about the Capitol. The Capitol can hear everything,
and betrayal leads to severe punishments. She feels safe to speak her mine in the woods with
Gale.

22. Ration
◦ A fixed amount of a commodity officially allowed to each
person during a shortage or war.
◦ “It’s real bakery bread, not the flat, dense loaves we make
from our grain rations.”

23. Effie Trinket
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loa8_UKz
vjU
◦ the escort of the tributes from District 12. She
is very concerned with appearances and her
own career.
◦ “Suddenly he falls into a Capitol accent as he
mimics Effie Trinket, the manically upbeat
woman who arrives once a year to read out
the names at the reaping. ’I almost forgot!
Happy Hunger Games!” He plucks a few
blackberries from the bushes around us. ‘And
may the odds –”

24. Tesserae
◦ Children in each of the twelve districts can opt to add their names
to the reaping pool multiple times in exchange for tesserae.
◦ Each tessera is worth a year’s supply of grain and oil for one
person.
◦ Many poor families sign up for tesserae to avoid starvation.
◦ “Each tessera is worth a meager year’s supply of grain and oil for
one person. You may do this for each of your family members as
well. So, at the same of twelve, I had my name entered four times.
Once because I had to, and three times for tesserae for grain and
oil for myself, Prim, and my mother.”
◦ “So now, at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping
twenty times. Gale, who is eighteen and has been either helping
or single-handedly feeling a family of five for seven years, will
have his name in forty-two times.”
So lets
calculate…

25. Pg. 14
◦ “On other days, deep in the woods, I’ve listened to him rant about how the tesserae are just
another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving
workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we
will never trust one another. ‘It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among
ourselves,’ he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine.”
◦ The poorer you are, the more likely you will be chosen to be in the games
◦ This is referring to a conversation between Katniss and Gale about the games and the
tesserae
◦ Katniss and Gale can talk openly in the woods because no one can hear them and no one
is listening to what they are saying – they are free to speak their minds.
◦ “No ears to hear but mine” – the Capitol is almost always listening. The citizens are
always on edge due to their fear of the Capitol. They need to be careful about everything
they say because the Capitol can hear them.
◦ The Capitol uses jabberjays / mockingjays, fixed birds, to hear what the citizens in each
district are saying.

26. Pgs. 16 - 17
◦ “At one o’clock, we head for the square. Attendance is mandatory
unless you are on death’s door. This evening, officials will come
around and check to see if this is the case. If not, you’ll be
imprisoned.”
◦ It is all being televised
◦ “The reaping is a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on
the population as well.”

27. Pgs. 18 - 19
◦ “Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another
while we watch – this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we
are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another
rebellion. Whatever words they use the real message is clear. “Look how
we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do.”
◦ These are Katniss’s thoughts
◦ The games symbolize the Capitol’s control over the districts. It is the Capitols
way of reminding the citizens that they are “at their mercy.”
◦ The Capitol is trying to prevent another uprising in Panem – essentially trying
to make it impossible. They do this by denying the citizens the proper means
of survival and instilling fear into them through the games.

28. Treaty of Treason
◦ Crime of betraying one’s country (i.e. by trying to kill or overthrow the
government)
◦ “The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as
our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave
us the Hunger Games.”

29. Tribute
◦ Two teens are chosen in each district to participate in the Hunger
Games, as an act of repentance for rebelling against the Capitol
◦ Historically a tribute is a payment made periodically to another country
or leader to show dependence
◦ “In punishment for the uprising each of the twelve districts must
provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-
four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold
anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of
several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute
standing wins.”

30. Chapter 1 Questions
1. Describe District 12.
2. What illegal activity does Katniss participate in doing? Why
does she need to do this?
3. Describe the relationship between Gale and Katniss. Do you
have a relationship like this in your own life? Explain.
4. What is the reaping? Do you think this practice is fair? Explain.
5. Who is selected at the reaping?