Panem

Panem is the dystopian nation that forms the setting of the Hunger Games. It was built on the ruins of a place once called North America, after a series of disasters—droughts, storms, fires, and encroaching seas—swallowed much of the land and sparked a brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave the new laws to guarantee peace and, as a yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave the Hunger Games.

Government and Social Structure

The Capitol is the ruling city of Panem, a place of artificial grandeur with glistening buildings in a rainbow of hues, shiny cars, and oddly dressed people with bizarre hair and painted faces who have never missed a meal. The twelve outlying districts are conquered and subjugated, kept in line by threatened devastation, starvation, and brutality. The Capitol is harsh and cruel, a parasitical fascist regime that dominates the districts. The totalitarian government keeps the subjected populations in line by threatened devastation, starvation, and brutality. The Capitol's advantage is reinforced by geography: the mountains form a natural barrier between the Capitol and the eastern districts, making it almost impossible to enter from the east except through tunnels, a factor that was a major reason the districts lost the war.

The Hunger Games as a Tool of Control

The Hunger Games are the Capitol's primary instrument of oppression. 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 are imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena and must fight to the death; the last tribute standing wins. Taking the children from the districts, forcing them to kill one another while the nation watches, is the Capitol's way of reminding the people how totally they are at the Capitol's mercy and how little chance they would stand of surviving another rebellion. The real message is clear: "Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there's nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you." To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires the districts to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event. The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district is showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while the rest battle starvation.

The Reaping and the Tesserae System

The reaping is the annual selection process for the Games. It is also a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on the population. The system is deliberately unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it. Citizens become eligible for the reaping the day they turn twelve, with their name entered once. At thirteen, twice, and so on until the final year of eligibility at eighteen, when the name goes into the pool seven times. However, the poor can opt to add their names more times in exchange for tesserae, each worth a meager year's supply of grain and oil for one person. This means that a starving sixteen-year-old like Katniss Everdeen has her name entered twenty times, while a wealthy merchant's daughter like Madge Undersee has only her single mandatory entry. Gale Hawthorne, who has been feeding a family of five for seven years, has his name in forty-two times. The tesserae are just another tool to cause misery, a way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper, thereby ensuring the districts will never trust one another. It is to the Capitol's advantage to have the people divided among themselves.

History and the Rebellion

The history of Panem is one of rebellion and brutal suppression. The country rose up out of the ashes of North America. The Capitol bred a series of genetically altered animals as weapons during the rebellion, including the jabberjay, a bird that could memorize and repeat human conversations. The rebels eventually fed the Capitol endless lies, so the centers were shut down and the birds were abandoned to die off. The jabberjays mated with female mockingbirds, creating a new species called the mockingjay, which could replicate both bird whistles and human melodies. The Capitol destroyed all the tracker jacker nests surrounding their city after the war, but left the ones near the districts untouched as another reminder of the districts' weakness. The ruins of District 13 still smolder from the toxic bombs, shown on television occasionally just to remind the people. The Capitol's control is absolute, and the Hunger Games are the ultimate symbol of that power, a yearly spectacle designed to crush any hope of rebellion.