District 12

District 12, the coal-mining district of Panem, is the poorest and most despised of the twelve surviving districts, a place where starvation is a common fate and the annual Hunger Games are regarded as a death sentence. Located in a region once called Appalachia, it is a land of squat gray houses, black cinder streets, and a population of about eight thousand who live under the constant threat of hunger, mine explosions, and the Capitol's brutal rule. The district's principal industry—coal mining—defines its identity, its economy, and its people, who are marked by hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, and the coal dust that never washes out of their broken nails. Yet from this grim setting emerge Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, the tributes whose defiance of the Capitol in the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games—culminating in their threat to eat nightlock berries together—makes District 12 the center of Panem's attention and the site of a dangerous new hope.

Geography and Social Divisions

District 12 is divided into two distinct worlds: the Seam, where the coal miners and their families live in cramped gray houses, and the merchant class, which runs the shops in the nicer part of town. The Seam is a place of poverty and hunger, where children as young as twelve sign up for tesserae—a meager year's supply of grain and oil—in exchange for having their names entered multiple times in the reaping. Katniss Everdeen lives in the Seam, and her family's survival depends on her illegal hunting in the woods beyond the district's electrified fence. The fence, topped with barbed-wire loops, is supposed to be electrified twenty-four hours a day to keep out predators, but the district is lucky to get two or three hours of electricity in the evenings, so it is usually safe to touch. Katniss knows several weak spots in the fence, including one close to her home, and she uses them to slip into the woods to hunt with a bow and arrows crafted by her father before he was killed in a mine explosion. The woods are forbidden territory, and poaching carries the severest of penalties, but the Peacekeepers—the Capitol's armed enforcers—turn a blind eye because they are as hungry for fresh meat as anyone else. The black market known as the Hob, operating in an abandoned coal warehouse, is where Katniss trades her game for bread, salt, paraffin, and other necessities. The Hob is also where she meets Greasy Sae, a bony old woman who sells bowls of hot soup and is the only one who can consistently be counted on to buy wild dog meat.

The Reaping and the Hunger Games

The reaping, held annually in the town square, is the day when the Capitol reminds District 12 of its power. The square, surrounded by shops, is one of the few pleasant places in the district, but on reaping day it is filled with grimness as the twelve- through eighteen-year-olds are herded into roped areas marked off by ages. The mayor reads the history of Panem, the Treaty of Treason, and the rules of the Hunger Games: in punishment for the uprising of the districts against the Capitol, each district must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to fight to the death in a vast outdoor arena. The Capitol requires the districts to treat the Games as a festivity, and the winning district is showered with prizes of food, while the rest battle starvation. District 12 has had only two victors in seventy-four years, and only one is still alive: Haymitch Abernathy, a paunchy, middle-aged drunk who staggers onto the stage at the reaping and falls into his chair. The crowd's response to the reaping is silence—the boldest form of dissent they can manage—and the old gesture of touching the three middle fingers of the left hand to the lips and holding it out, meaning thanks, admiration, and good-bye to someone you love.

Survival and Resistance

Life in District 12 is a constant struggle for food. Katniss's father taught her to hunt before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion, and after his death, when her mother sank into a depression and stopped caring for her children, Katniss took over as head of the family at age eleven. She kept their predicament a secret, fearing that if it became known that her mother could no longer care for them, the district would take her and her sister Prim to the community home, where children were marked by sadness and angry hands. She learned to hold her tongue and turn her features into an indifferent mask so that no one could read her thoughts. She made only polite small talk in the public market and discussed little more than trades in the Hob. The woods became her savior, and she learned to steal eggs from nests, catch fish in nets, shoot squirrels and rabbits, and gather edible plants. She checked and double-checked every plant against her father's drawings in an old book her mother had brought from the apothecary shop. On May 8th, the day she turned twelve, she signed up for her tesserae and pulled home her first batch of grain and oil in Prim's toy wagon. She continued to hunt and gather, trading what she didn't need at the Hob and at the back doors of wealthier clients in town. The butcher would buy her rabbits but not squirrels; the baker enjoyed squirrel but would only trade if his wife wasn't around; the Head Peacekeeper loved wild turkey; and the mayor had a passion for strawberries.

The Mockingjay and the Spirit of Rebellion

The mockingjay, a bird that is a hybrid of the Capitol's genetically altered jabberjay and the female mockingbird, becomes a symbol of District 12's quiet defiance. The jabberjays were created by the Capitol during the rebellion to memorize and repeat human conversations, but the rebels fed them lies, and the joke was on the Capitol. After the war, the jabberjays were abandoned to die off, but they mated with mockingbirds, creating a new species that could replicate both bird whistles and human melodies. Katniss's father was particularly fond of mockingjays; when he went hunting, he would whistle or sing complicated songs to them, and they would always sing back. His voice was so beautiful that all the birds in the area would fall silent and listen. Katniss's gold mockingjay pin, given to her by Madge Undersee, the mayor's daughter, becomes her token in the arena and a reminder of her father and the woods. The pin barely clears the review board; some thought it could be used as a weapon, but it is allowed through. In the arena, the mockingjays take up Rue's song after Katniss sings to her as she dies, and the music swells into a lovely, unearthly harmony. The mockingjays also carry Rue's four-note signal, the one she used to tell the orchard workers in District 11 that quitting time had come.

The Aftermath of the Games

When Katniss and Peeta return to District 12 as victors, they are greeted by cameras and a crowd that has not had a victor in nearly thirty years. The district is in chaos as it tries to organize homecoming celebrations. Katniss's mother and Prim are waiting for her, and Gale Hawthorne, her hunting partner and closest friend, is there as well. But the victory is shadowed by the Capitol's fury over the berry incident, and Haymitch warns Katniss that she is in trouble: the Capitol cannot stand being laughed at, and she has made them the joke of Panem. Her only defense is to pretend she was so madly in love with Peeta that she was not responsible for her actions. The train ride home is tense; Peeta, who has lost a leg to the tourniquet Katniss applied in the arena, asks her how much of their relationship was real and how much was strategy. She cannot answer, and the boy with the bread begins to slip away from her. As the train pulls into the grimy station, Peeta extends his hand and says, "One more time? For the audience?" Katniss takes his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the cameras and dreading the moment when she will finally have to let go.