The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion

by Lois H. Gresh

  Katniss’s first gift from a sponsor is a medicinal burn ointment (The Hunger Games, 188). The cooling balm instantly eradicates her pain, and she knows it’s not an herbal remedy, but rather, a medicine made in the Capitol’s laboratories. Apparently, the ointment heals burns. Of course, we all know that cold water helps reduce the pain of burns, as does aloe vera. Sometimes, antibiotic creams are used, as well. This is all fine if you have a first-degree burn, such as a minor sunburn; or possibly even if you have second-degree burns with blisters. But for third-degree burns, where the skin looks charred, cold water and ointments aren’t going to help much: For extreme burns, you need medical assistance.

  Before he died in a mining explosion, Katniss’s father told her that, as long as she could find herself, she would never starve. Katniss served both as her name and also as the nickname given to the water plantain called Sagittaria latifolia. Other names for this type of plant are arrowhead, duckpotato, tulepotato, and wappato. All forms of the katniss plant produce starchy tubers, which can be consumed by humans. Roasted or boiled, they’re as good as potatoes, maybe better. Katniss claims that they’re “as good as any potato” (The Hunger Games, 52). They’re found worldwide in ponds and other wet areas. For example, they are often cultivated on the edges of rice paddies.

  Also of interest, the leaves of the katniss are shaped like arrowheads. Her special skill, of course, is with the bow and arrow.

  In the first Hunger Games book, Katniss is hoping for a sponsor gift of medicine to save Peeta’s life. Instead, she receives sleep syrup that she tells us is cheap and also common in District 12 (The Hunger Games, 276). We’re all familiar with cough syrups that can help knock people out, but a mere cough syrup isn’t going to be as addictive and potent as the sleep syrup in The Hunger Games. Of course, there are many sleeping pills prescribed by doctors, and any of these crushed into a syrup would do the trick.

  Barbiturates, for example, are extremely addictive and include amobarbital sodium, phenobarbital, Numbutal Sodium, and secobarbital. Depending on the dose, they can sedate someone, make him tired and drowsy, or knock him out. Benzodiazepines such as Halcion, Librium, Valium, Xanax, and Ativan can be addictive and will sedate or put someone to sleep. Drugs such as codeine, opium, oxycodone, Percodan, Percocet, Demerol HCL, and others—typically used to relieve pain—can also become habit forming and possibly sedate users.

  As for the morphling, which clearly refers to morphine, doctors prescribe this drug to people after serious surgery and it’s not the sort of drug you want to take casually. It acts directly on the nervous system to reduce pain. It’s no wonder that Katniss becomes a morphling addict in Mockingjay. She’s in the hospital for a long time under the influence of both sleeping syrup and morphling, which makes her feel empty inside (Mockingjay, 218).

  Morphine sulfate is typically a white crystalline powder, though it also comes in larger crystal form. It is soluble in water, and hence, it’s possible that the sleep syrup could contain some morphling. However, given that sleep syrup is common in District 12 and morphling must be obtained from the Capitol, it’s doubtful that the syrup does indeed contain morphling.

  In 1804, German pharmacist Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner, isolated morphine for the first time. He named the drug after Morpheus, Greek god of dreams. In 1853, with the rise of the hypodermic needle, doctors started using morphine to relieve pain and also to attempt to cure opium addiction.

  But opium-based elixirs have been around for much longer. Laudanum, an opium in an alcohol base, was cited in 1522 by Paracelsus as killing pain. In the late 1800s, it was supplied to adults and children in little kits that actually came with hypodermic needles.

  As for the nightlock berries, these are probably a toxic berry named after a combination of the nightshade and hemlock plants. Nightlock berries instantly kill someone, and in Mockingjay, Cinna makes sure that Katniss has these suicide pills in a pouch on her shoulder. As in many wars, soldiers carry suicide pills, so in case they’re captured, they can die rather than undergo torture and spill secrets. Earlier, when Katniss and Peeta both threaten to commit suicide using the berries rather than sacrifice one over the other, the Capitol has no choice but to declare two winners.

  Nightshades are also known as Belladonna plants and Devil’s Cherries, among other names. Its flowers are purple tinged with green and have five large lobes in which the berries grow. Although the shining black berries contain sweet juice, they are deadly.

  Every part of the nightshade is poisonous due to an alkaloid called atropine. Stories tell us that during the Parthian wars, nightshade was given to Marcus Antonius’s troops to poison them, and Plutarch graphically recounts the effects of the deadly plants.

  Poison hemlock looks like a giant parsley plant, and its seeds are light brown and shaped like barrels. All parts of the poison hemlock are deadly, especially the stems and roots. The ancient Greeks used hemlock to poison prisoners, and indeed Socrates was killed in 339 bc using hemlock. It’s more likely that the nightlock berries are from a type of nightshade plant.

  Another point about the nightlock berries: because Katniss and Peeta used them to circumvent the evil plans of the government during the first Games, the word, nightlock, becomes symbolic, just as the mockingjay becomes symbolic. When using the Holo, if someone in Katniss’s squad says “nightlock, nightlock, nightlock,” the Holo blows up everything nearby. Again, as with the nightlock berries she used with Peeta in the Games, the rebels can explode everything, including themselves, in case they are captured (Mockingjay, 261). Indeed, Katniss uses this technique to destroy muttation human-lizard things that kill Finnick (Mockingjay, 312–13).

  Finally, let’s talk about the venom injected by the tracker jackers. These mutated wasps were created in government laboratories (see chapter 13, “Muttations and Other Hybrids”) and are huge, solid gold killers. We’re told that tracker jacker venom can kill, and at minimum, they induce hallucinations and insanity (The Hunger Games, 185).

  Of course, in the real world, we do have killer wasps, killer bees, and a large variety of venom. Real-life killer wasps don’t hijack our memories, nor do they track us wherever we go.

  Cicada killer wasps are huge, up to two inches long. They’re black with yellow markings on their abdomens and thoraxes; and there’s also a solid gold killer wasp, the great golden digger wasp, but it’s not as big as the black-and-yellow version. Yellow jackets, which are sometimes called wasps, are black and yellow for the most part, and some people can die from the venom of a yellow jacket.

  Asian giant hornets are the world’s largest hornet, with a body length of about two inches, same as the cicada killer wasps. Their wingspans can be up to three inches wide, and the venom in the stingers is so powerful that people describe it as having hot nails thrust into them. The enzyme in the venom can dissolve human flesh.

  Tracker jacker wasps probably inject venom directly into the victim’s bloodstream. The venom, which contains enzymes and peptides, tears down cell membranes so the internal parts of the cells dump into the bloodstream. With neurons, the damaged cells send “pain” signals to the brain. The venom typically contains norepinephrine, which stops blood from flowing near the sting, so the damaged cells are awash in the venom and keep sending “pain” signals to the brain. Something called mast cell degranulating peptides and hyaluronidase enable the venom to melt the connective tissues between cells; and hence, the venom moves into adjacent cells, as well.

  As for hijacking Peeta with fear conditioning, if the venom affects the amygdalae (see chapter 7, “The Nature of Evil”), then it has successfully hijacked his mind into being terrified about things he ordinarily wouldn’t think about twice. Remember, the amygdalae is vital to our memories of emotions and also key to how we process fear; and it’s part of the limbic system, which handles memories of physical sensations and makes us scared. The amygdalae transmits impulses to the hypothalamus, to the reticular nucleus, and to the nuclei of our facial nerves; and it als
o makes our emotions whip up and down wildly, putting us into a state of terror.

  It’s also quite possible that a venom can alter someone’s basic attributes using genetic manipulation. Our genes determine how our bodies handle poisons, battle infections and other illnesses, digest foods, and respond to environmental conditions. Our genes determine what we look like and, in many cases, how we react to emotional stimuli and how we behave. How big a deal is it that scientists have cracked the human genome? According to Dr. Steve Kay, a geneticist at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, “It’s comparable to Darwin’s theory of evolution.”1 We already know how to manipulate genes to eliminate many diseases, but think about the reverse. For example, if we know how to get rid of an illness by making sure our bodies activate particular genes, then we can just as easily manipulate genes to cause diseases, such as Peeta’s delusions and extreme paranoia.

  How can tracker jackers follow people around? Well, in the real world, University of Georgia researchers have already trained wasps to smell chemicals and get treats if they do the right thing. Engineer Glen Rains explains that his portable Wasp Hound, a ten-inch-long PVC pipe holding a handful of wasps, “can monitor the behavior of wasps trained to a particular scent or volatile compounds.”2

  Typically, an animal’s venom is produced by one or more glands. These glands are connected to a body part that administers the venom to victims. So, for example, snakes and spiders administer venom with their fangs, bees and scorpions administer venom with stingers, fish use spikes, centipedes use pincers, millipedes use squirters, and cone shells use poisoned harpoons. The amount of venom injected into a victim varies, and most often, it is injected into the subcutaneous layers of skin; that is, the animal does not inject its venom into the victim’s internal layer of skin or body organs.

  AD 1989–2000

  This era, and the two decades preceding it, saw the publication of a lot of apocalypse and post-apocalyptic books. Some were written by respectable scientists, some by nutjobs. Novels about the subject proliferated—see “Appendix B, Apocalyptic and Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic Fiction: Further Reading” for a partial reading list.

  Prophecies continued, just as before. A few highlights:

  AD 1992, on October 28 of this year, we were all supposed to die according to the leader, Lee Jang Rim, of the Korean Mission for the Coming Days aka the Tami Church.

  AD 1993, David Koresh fixed the apocalypse for AD 1995, and wanting to get a head start, he forced his followers to resist when authorities attacked his Waco, Texas, compound. In the ensuing gun battle, four agents died along with six cult members; an additional twenty cult members were injured. After fifty-one days, Koresh was still hanging tough, and finally, tanks blasted through the compound’s walls, where Koresh had conveniently placed tear gas canisters. The place went up in blazes and killed seventy-five followers, including twenty-one children.

  AD 1998, thirty-one cult members of the Solar Temple group were arrested because authorities feared another mass suicide. The cult believed the world was going to end at 8 p.m. on January 8, 1998, and their dead bodies would be lifted by a spaceship.

  AD 1998, this time on March 8, another cult—one in southern India—felt certain that the entire world would be destroyed by earthquakes and that India would sink beneath the seas. This is when Lord Vishnu would come, claimed the cult.

  AD 1998, even stranger than the above, Hon-Ming Chen, leader of the Taiwanese God’s Salvation Church, told his followers that God would arrive at 10 a.m. on March 31 in a flying saucer. Not only that, but God would look identical to Hon-Ming Chen!

  AD 1998, let’s face it, 1998 was another bonanza year for the doomsayers. A cult called Church of the SubGenius claimed that on July 5, 1998 Xists from Planet X would arrive in flying saucers and destroy everyone on Earth. Any ordained Church clergy paying enough money would be transported to safety.

  Yes, indeed. But wait! There’s more!

  We can’t forget AD 1999. The year to end all years, or so many people believed. Perhaps the biggest kicker was that Nostradamus in the sixteenth century claimed that July 1999 was the very month that everything would die. The year, 1999, gave us death by comets, nuclear holocaust, Nostradamus’s King of Terror, Armageddon, Judgment Day, and even the destruction of modern civilization due to the infamous Y2K computer bug.

  Should we all survive 1999, we had to face AD 2000, with enough doomsday predictions to rival any period in history. Perhaps we have more prophets now than before, or more likely, perhaps we just document our paranoia a lot better.

  At any rate, as of January 2, 2000, the world was still here. Ditto, December 31, 2000.

  Really, what are muttations? At first, we think they’re dead tributes that the Capitol has somehow engineered into hybrid killing beasts. They have the eyes of dead tributes, along with their faces and their hair. One even has a collar marked with Glimmer’s district number on it. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder while reading in The Hunger Games about the wolflike muttations how they could be resurrected dead tributes.

  The muttations are some of the most horrifying aspects of the series, especially when we’re still wondering how Rue could turn into a wolfish mutt with hatred glowing in her eyes. How can this be?

  To be honest, I also wondered why Katniss had never seen these human-tribute types of muttations in the broadcasts of earlier Games.

  All that aside, we eventually learn that, just like the genetically engineered mockingjays, these human-wolf muttations are made in the lab. They’re not human; they’re not resurrected dead people. They’re artificially created animals. Just like the monkey muttations in Catching Fire, the human-wolf muttations are programmed to kill people.

  There are the human-wolves, strange human-lizard monsters, the monkeys, the jabberjays, the mockingjays, and the tracker jackers.

  The idea of artificially created animals, engineered in laboratories out of the flesh of multiple creatures, is one that’s been around for over a century in science fiction literature. Way back in 1896, H. G. Wells wrote his classic novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau, in which upper class Edward Prendick is saved at sea by a man named Montgomery. Onboard Montgomery’s ship are a wide variety of animals, including a bizarre beast-human servant named M’ling.

  When the ship finally reaches its destination, a remote island, Montgomery and the crew refuses to let Prendick onto the beach. Unfortunately for Prendick, the ship sails back out to sea, and he’s allowed onto the island, where he meets Doctor Moreau, who is performing mysterious scientific research involving the animals.

  When Prendick hears the shrieks of pain coming from Moreau’s lab, he runs into the jungle and discovers a group of beast-humans. When one of the hybrid creatures attacks him, he escapes back to Moreau’s enclave, and the next morning, sneaks into Moreau’s secret laboratory. There he finds a weird beast-human in bandages, and he races back into the jungle, where he comes across a colony of hybrids. The leader is known as the Sayer of the Law, and the law itself requires that the beast-humans not act like wild animals. Prendick, horrified that Moreau will carve him up and also turn him into a beast-human, tries to flee to the ocean, where there would be no escape from the island anyway. Moreau eventually explains that he’s not carving humans into beasts; rather, he’s turning animals, the Beast Folk as he calls them, into human form. He has been performing his experiments for eleven years, he says.

  There’s a lot more to the story of The Island of Doctor Moreau, and if for some reason, you’ve never read the book or seen the original film (Island of Lost Souls featuring Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi), you should. There are ape-humans, leopard-humans, hyena-swine-humans, and just about every other hybrid imaginable. Eventually, after killing the pure humans on the island, the hybrids revert to completely wild form.

  The beast-humans in H. G. Wells’s novel (and in the film mentioned above) have human eyes that reflect intelligence and sensitivity. It’s not hard to imagine, as Prendick doe
s for so long, that Doctor Moreau has been grafting humans into animal hybrids rather than vice-versa.

  In The Hunger Games series, the muttations also have human eyes and other features that make them appear to be mutated versions of the tributes that Katniss has encountered in the Games. If Doctor Moreau did it in 1896, then why can’t the Capitol turn animal and human flesh into strange hybrid monsters that have human characteristics, but are wild beasts at the core?

  Splicing and dicing isn’t necessarily the way to make these bizarre hybrids. The term transgenics refers to the creation of embryos containing genes from other species. Specifically, “Not only can a foreign gene be put into the cells of an organism: the gene can actually be incorporated into the DNA derived from germ cells or embryonic cells of another organism. From this combination, an embryo can be produced that contains this gene that came originally from another species (called a transgene). Transgenic embryos can be put into an adult female . . . which will then give birth to [offspring] permanently carrying the transgene.”1

  Once you accept the concept of transgenics, you can easily imagine its applications. For example, someday we might teach toddlers about new kinds of farm animals. In addition to the traditional cows, lambs, chickens, and pigs—kept onsite for that old-time feeling—Old MacDonald’s Farm will now showcase fields of docile pig-lambs, horse-chickens, petunia-cows, and lion-peacocks. It’s not as silly as it sounds. Pigs will be bred to have wool coats. Sheep may have bacon-flavored meat. Chickens may shed their feathers for light horse-down, and horses may taste like Thanksgiving turkeys. Tuna-textured cows may smell like flowers rather than manure; cows may indeed serve as a source of fish, complete with all the vitamins and nutrients and none of the fat found in traditional beef. Lion manes may look like peacock sprays. And it’s also conceivable that female horses may give birth to horse-chickens and petunia-lambs.2