Book Review: Sunrise on the Reaping: Tragedy and Rebellion

By: Leshan L., Grade 8

Having been written after the original Hunger Games trilogy and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, this book makes many references to its prequel and sequels. This review does too. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you read those books before reading this one.

When I read The Hunger Games, one sentence very early on would not stop puzzling me: when readers are first introduced to Haymitch, Katniss says that “[h]e’s drunk. Very.” Why could that possibly be? In Catching Fire, when Katniss and Peeta re-watch the 50th Hunger Games, they note that he looked athletic back then. Sunrise On the Reaping provides a 382-page answer, which I think can be summarized into less than one:

Haymitch Abernathy is a boy from the Seam in District 12. His mother makes ends meet with her laundry business, and he does odd jobs for the operator of a liquor still to earn a few extra bucks. He also has a younger brother, Sid, and is in love with pianist/tune box player Lenore Dove. His birthday just so happens to be July 4, the day of the reaping. On his 16th birthday, the second Quarter Quell is announced: four tributes - two boys and two girls - will go to the Games, instead of just one each. During this reaping, a gory incident occurs: the second boy tribute makes a run for it but then is shot. Lenore goes to help the boy’s mother hold on to his body, and Haymitch rushes to her aid after a few moments of hesitation – unfortunately, his head lands straight in the path of a rifle butt. For interfering with the Peacekeepers, he is chosen to replace the dead boy as tribute.

At the Capitol, Haymitch puts up the display of a rascal but goes a bit too far when he places the body of a girl tribute killed in an accident right under President Snow’s nose and claps for all to see. He and the other District 12 tributes – who are joined by a drugged, controlled body double of the dead girl – form an alliance with all the districts except 1, 2, 4, and 5. They are led by Ampert, a boy from District 3, whose father tells Haymitch of a plan to blow up the reservoir feeding the arena, flooding the control floor below it and thus destroying it.

The 50th Annual Hunger Games take place in an arena beautiful beyond reality – and all the food and water except that in the Cornucopia is deadly poisonous. Haymitch is able to stay on task and sets off on his own. Later, he finds Ampert and attempts to execute the plan, to no avail: the minute they climb out of the underground floor, Ampert is shredded to bits by mutant squirrels, leaving only his skeleton behind. Then, the arena does seem to shut down, but seconds later it comes back to life and a volcanic eruption is triggered.

Following a close call with 3 Career Tributes, Haymitch decides to stick with Maysilee Donner, the mentally intact District 12 tribute. He and Maysilee navigate through a maze filled with mutant ladybugs and find the edge of the arena, where Haymitch discovers the arena’s generator and a force field around it. The two part ways here, but very shortly afterward, Maysilee is maimed and murdered by mutant waterbirds. This leaves only Haymitch and the girl from District 1 the last able tributes. When they finally face off, Haymitch takes a bad cut to the guts and then rushes to the edge that he visited, where his adversary throws an ax that goes over, bounces back up, and lodges in her own head, killing her.

Unfortunately, things aren’t over for Haymitch. Though he is crowned victor, his blatant disrespect toward the Capitol has earned him a bloody homecoming. Right in his face, his family are burned alive, along with their house. Then, he finds that the gumdrops he intended for Lenore had been poisoned, and she’d swallowed one from which she died in agony. These events make Haymitch feel that life is pointless, and he resorts to drinking to forget the traumatic events in his youth.

Even without reading the previous installments of this storyline, I think I would have loved this one, despite the emotions. Since I’ve read them, my understanding and thus enjoyment of Sunrise has deepened further. This book provides a few answers to mysteries in the original trilogy beyond Haymitch’s drunkenness. Who was Katniss’ father? His name was Burdock, and he was one of Haymitch’s childhood friends. He indeed had a beautiful voice. Perhaps Asterid, the owner of the apothecary, was Katniss’ mother. Why is Beetee so jumpy in Catching Fire? Most likely because he had to mentor his own son, Ampert, and watch him die a ghastly death.

Speaking of Ampert, lots of names used in Sunrise are very interesting and reference other Hunger Games books. I know that the ampere or amp is a unit of electric current, which makes sense for it to be included in a name from the tech district; additionally, District 3’s uniforms are electric blue. There was a brawny, clumsy guy named Otho Mellark who worked at the bakery – maybe he was Peeta’s dad. Lenore Dove is a Baird — that was Lucy Gray’s last name, from Songbirds and Snakes. It seems that Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber from the Covey have also survived. Haymitch’s 2 prep team members have weird names too. In ancient Roman mythology, Proserpina is the queen of the underworld, equivalent to the Greek goddess Persephone. Aha – in the myths, she kept jars of beauty. Her name is now that of a person “who’s here to make [Haymitch] gorgeous[.]” Vitus could either be from Latin vita, meaning “life”, or the vitis, a cane that centurions, commanding officers in the Roman army, could punish misbehaving soldiers with. The latter seems to make more sense, as shown by this one quote from him: “‘Yes![...] Gorgeous but fierce!’ He bares his teeth and growls. ‘To scare the others off!’”

There is one mystery that many readers might think remains a cliffhanger: how does Sunrise’s content relate to its title at all? There are a few references throughout the book. Lenore mentions the sun and the reaping at the very beginning, when Haymitch sneaks out to her. He believes that every day, on his birthday, the sun will rise, and there will be a reaping. This pessimism foreshadows the depression that will befall him when we see him in The Hunger Games. Another significant one is Lenore’s last wish: that the sun never rise again on reaping day. It takes some time, but her wish comes true: 25 years later, Katniss incites a rebellion that overturns the Capitol.