The Girl Who Was on Fire

by Leah Wilson, Jennifer Barnes, Mary Borsellino, Sarah Brennan

  One day we could even be eating nothing but mutts.

  The New Scientist in July reported that scientists have already engineered pigs with omega-3 fatty acids. So forget bacon and eggs—you might be able to get all your nutrients straight from the bacon. They’re also working on cows immune to BSE, or mad-cow disease, and a host of other engineered animals, including faster-growing salmon that could be on our dinner tables faster than you can swim upstream. And unless you live in Europe, where there are stricter laws governing genetically engineered foods, nearly every kind of vegetable or grain you eat is already genetically engineered.16 From tomatoes that stay ripe longer to green peppers and zucchini that are resistant to viruses and pests to rice that contains more Vitamin A, most of our crops are genetically engineered in some way.

  So, we’re working on some seriously crazy stuff. Some possible super dystopian sci-fi Panem stuff. (I might have to stop saying “seriously?” at the movies and start taking the possibility of a shark/squid hybrid or a time-traveling hot tub, actually, well—seriously.)

  It’s a Mad, Mad ... Scientist

  At first glance, it certainly seems like there’s a big difference between our genetic engineering and Panem’s. Mutts are dreamt up in Capitol labs and designed to wreck havoc on the tributes at the Games, plus pretty much anybody daring to stand up to President Snow or his regime.

  They’re terrifying. They’re unnatural. They’re bloodthirsty and murderous. They attack without warning, and they don’t stop until their victim is dead. They devour, slash, and rip apart the living. In the sewers in the Capitol, Katniss Everdeen flees a lizard mutant:

  For the first time, I get a good look at them. A mix of human and lizard and who knows what else ... Hissing, shrieking my name now, as their bodies contort in rage. Lashing out with tails and claws, taking huge chunks of one another or their own bodies with wide, lathered mouths, driven mad by their need to destroy me. (Mockingjay)

  These aren’t just predators, they’re actually driven mad by the need to kill. They work themselves into a frenzy, like sharks when there’s blood in the water, except that even sharks eventually stop killing. Mutts never do—no matter how much they eat.

  “No mutt is good,” Katniss says in Mockingjay. And let’s face it. Science can be scary. It’s no accident that the mad scientist is an enduring villain who creeps up at every Halloween party. Mad, ego-driven, over-confident scientists have been the bad guys in everything from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the crazy gene-splicing madman in The Island of Dr. Moreau and the wellmeaning but over-reaching scientist couple in Splice. The idea that science can lead to the unnatural creation of monsters isn’t new to the Hunger Games, and it’s easy to take that to mean science is, well, evil.

  Let’s look at what else Katniss says in Mockingjay about mutts:

  No mutt is good. All are meant to damage you ... However, the true atrocities, the most frightening, incorporate a perverse psychological twist designed to terrify the victim. The sight of the wolf mutts with the dead tributes’ eyes. The sound of the jabberjays replicating Prim’s tortured screams. The smell of Snow’s roses mixed in with the victims’ blood.

  The killer mutts are terrifying, but it’s not because of science. The Gamemakers and the scientists designed them to scare the stuffing out of you. That’s why they are such effective weapons. It’s not just that they’re unnatural; it’s that they’re created specifically to get inside your head and stay there. If mutts are bad, it’s not because science is bad. It’s because the people who created them are.

  After all, not all science in Panem is bad. There’s an upside to science—even in Panem.

  Take Peeta. The Capitol’s scientists torture him to near insanity using tracker jacker venom, but then Beetee—the most scientific of the tributes (Katniss calls him a smart inventor who “could tell by sight that a force field had been put up” in Catching Fire)—Prim, and the other doctors and scientists in District 13 help Peeta recover using similarly scientific antibrainwashing techniques. And the very technology that brings tracker jackers and killer monkeys to life in the arena ultimately saves Katniss’ life when she finds herself desperately wounded by an explosion during the last rebellion battle in the Capitol. She’s engulfed in flame, but genetically modified skin grafts help her walk and move again. Science saves her life.

  After, Katniss refers to herself as a mutt, but it’s clear that just by receiving the treatment she hasn’t turned into some killing machine, like the lizard monsters that chased her through the sewers. She’s the same Katniss she always was.

  So—we have the very same technology in Panem being used for very different things. It can be used to create monsters or to save lives.

  Science is only a tool; it’s how you use it that matters. Which means that if we just use our science for good, then we’re in the clear, right? I mean, as long as we create things with good intentions, then we’ll never create an evil, bloodthirsty monster. Then—presto!—science is good and everybody wins. Right?

  Maybe you already see where I’m going with this.

  The Path to Muttdom is Paved with Good Intentions

  Scientists in our world and in Panem often develop new inventions with the desire to help us, but what either intends isn’t always what ends up happening.

  Once you create a new technology, even with the best of intentions, you can’t always control how it’s used or what the consequences are. The rebel forces of District 13 fall prey to this. When Gale helps the rebels develop new weapons in Mockingjay with the idea of saving lives in the districts and righting past wrongs, they end up killing a member of Katniss’ family, a tragedy he’d hadn’t foreseen and would never have wanted. He is the one who helps Beetee come up with the plans for the bomb that is later used to kill Prim: a bomb with one explosion that kills the soldiers and then a second, delayed explosion targeting the rescue workers who come to help them. Gale’s hand in developing this weapon, whether it was the rebellion’s bomb that killed Prim or not, costs him Katniss’ love.

  That’s the problem with developing weapons in particular. Even weapons you hope will advocate the “good” cause might be turned against you—or maybe even the very people you’re trying the hardest to protect.

  And think about real world science. We’re developing genetic mutts right now with the very best of intentions—to cure disease, help people live longer, grow more food so less people go hungry. It’s all noble, good stuff.

  But every new scientific development is like opening Pandora’s Box: it’s not just the good stuff that comes out. In July 2010, another scientist took a quantum leap forward. He didn’t just splice together the DNA of animals that already exist—he actually created a completely artificial cell. Doctor and researcher Craig Venter created an entirely new life form by making a man-made DNA code and named the cell “Synthia.” Venter believes this new artificial cell could be the key to solving all sorts of problems—cancer, disease itself, you name it. But other scientists don’t think Synthia is a good thing at all. They think that a completely synthetic cell, not bound by the rules of nature and millions of years of evolution, might actually pose a threat to every life form on the planet, including ours. Such a synthetic creation, they say, wouldn’t play by the same rules as normal life. Bacteria and viruses have actually lived with us for thousands, if not millions, of years. They’ve evolved to live with us, and we’ve evolved to live with them—even though they sometimes kill some of us. A life form not bound by all those years of a symbiotic relationship might just kill everything by accident. In fact, it could bring on a plague like the one seen in the movie I Am Legend that nearly wiped out the human race.17

  Seriously.

  So, with the path our own scientists are on, maybe we end up curing cancer. Or maybe we accidentally make a synthetic virus that ends up killing most of the world’s population. Maybe both. It sure seems like a roll of the dice. No matter what our intentions are.

  Unforeseen Consequen
ces

  The fact is, while human beings are pretty smart when it comes to figuring things out like genomes and genetic cloning, sometimes we’re pretty dumb about more basic things, like the consequences of our inventions. Our overconfidence in our own abilities can often lead us to bad places, because we fail to predict what our inventions will actually do.

  It’s the Frankenstein problem. If you get all fixated on the creation of something without thinking it through, you’re probably going to miss some fairly important and obvious consequences (like 1. if you make a monster he will need some guidance/love/parentage from you, even if you’re too scared or grossed out to give it; 2. a neglected monster is a ticked off monster; and 3. ticked off/rejected monsters have trouble assimilating into society and more than likely will end up killing people). Ergo, instead of being hailed as the world’s greatest scientist, you wind up creating a monster that doesn’t do what you want it to do and ends up rampaging through the countryside getting chased by a bunch of ticked off torch-andpitchfork-wielding villagers.

  The Frankenstein problem happens often to the scientists of the Capitol. When they made jabberjays—exclusive male homing birds designed to mimic entire human conversations as a means of spying on rebels—their living spy equipment was soon turned against them, as rebels learned to use the birds to their advantage. And while they were never intended to survive on their own (that’s why they were all male, so the Capitol would be able to control the jabberjay population), the jabberjays ended up mating with mockingbirds in the wild, creating mockingjays.

  The mockingjay winds up becoming a symbol of all that the Capitol can’t do. That’s why it becomes the symbol of the rebellion. Mockingjays are a living symbol of the Capitol’s shortsightedness and proves that it isn’t invincible. That despite all its technological and scientific advances, it makes mistakes just like anyone else. That makes it vulnerable. The Capitol learns the hard way that the more it tries to control both the districts and nature itself, the less control it actually has.

  The Games themselves are a perfect example of this, as well. The technological advances that make the Hunger Games possible—the vast technology that creates the arenas, the mutts that make up the obstacles, and the scientific knowhow from people like head Gamemaker Plutarch—all of these things were designed to keep the districts in line through fear and intimidation. And yet, rather than keeping everyone in line, the Games make some people in the Capitol eager to rebel. Plutarch and Cinna and others secretly work for a rebel cause, undermining President Snow’s power. Snow can’t see that the Games—designed to control the people in the districts—actually undermine his own control over the people in his own Capitol, leading to a complete unraveling of the entire government.

  Snow was equally short-sighted when it came to his own health. In his desperate grab for power, he used science (chemistry, specifically) to kill people—with poison. But, there are consequences he hadn’t foreseen. Snow drank poison “from the ... cup himself to deflect suspicion. But antidotes don’t always work. They say that’s why he wears the roses that reek of perfume. They say it’s to cover the scent of blood from the mouth sores that will never heal” (Mockingjay).

  Because Snow’s problem wasn’t just that he hadn’t thought things through—he had been overconfident in what science could do for him and how well the antidotes would work. That overconfidence, more than anything, can be our downfall. We sometimes look to science to fix all of our problems. We assume it can. After all, science has a great track record—we’ve developed vaccines, clean drinking water, indoor plumbing. Biology and physics have made our lives longer, healthier, and easier. We’ve grown to think that science can fix nearly anything, but it can’t. Sometimes, science just creates new problems.

  In the Hunger Games, as in many sci-fi cautionary tales, there’s a lesson to be learned from tragic overconfidence in science. We may think we’ve got it all figured out, but we just can’t foresee every eventual consequence of our new inventions.

  So, What Now?

  To use science responsibly, we need to 1. apply it with good intentions; 2. go slowly so we can try to think out every possible consequence for our new inventions; 3. don’t get too cocky; and 4. understand that science can cure problems and create them—usually at the same time.

  Sounds like a tall order. But the alternative is even more bleak. If we stopped scientific research altogether, we might as well just head on back to the pre-Newton dark ages. Dying of an infected paper cut doesn’t really sound like a great way to go, if you ask me.

  We have to go forward; there’s just no way of knowing whether we’re doing the right thing as we go.

  That’s why they call it “playing” God—because we aren’t, actually, God. Even with the best of intentions, science can lead us down a path of self-destruction. That’s why it’s such a good bad guy in movies. That’s why—even in our world—it makes such a nice scapegoat.

  The answers aren’t easy. Scientists argue with each other constantly about what makes ethical research and what doesn’t. The best we can hope for is that we at least try to be good and that we don’t look blindly to science to solve all our problems.

  But perhaps the most valuable lesson of all is that the harder we work to control nature, the less control we actually have. As much as we’d like to control everything, we just can’t do it.

  It’s just like quantum mechanics. Everything looks neat and orderly in our world until you get to the atomic level, and then you realize it’s just a bunch of subatomic particles bouncing around. In a word: chaos.

  So we can go forward with our inventions in genetic engineering cautiously and with thoughtfulness, or we can make the same overconfident mistakes that so many of the Capitol scientists made in Panem.

  In short, science isn’t evil, but it isn’t a cure-all, either. As long as we understand our own limitations—that we aren’t, in fact, God—maybe we can avoid Panem’s fate.

  Let’s hope that—like Katniss—we make the right decisions, even when they’re not easy to make.

  And here’s hoping that wasp’s nest I just found near my back door is not the genetically engineered tracker jacker kind.

  Seriously.

  CARA LOCKWOOD writes for teens and adults and has written nine novels in several genres. She created the Bard Academy series, about a reform boarding school haunted by famous authors and their fictional characters. The series includes Wuthering High, The Scarlet Letterman, and Moby Clique. She lives in Chicago with her two daughters and is working on her next book. Visit her at www.caralockwood.com or www.bardacademy.com.

  CRIME OF FASHION

  TERRI CLARK

  For readers with a passion for fashion (or a good makeover), the passages where the outfits Cinna designs for Katniss are described in meticulous detail are some of the most enjoyable parts of the Hunger Games. For readers without such interests—and Katniss herself—they may feel more like torture. If you’ve been skipping over these pages, though, you’re missing out on one of the most important themes in the series. Great fashion, Terri Clark points out, does more than look good in the Hunger Games trilogy: it saves Katniss’ life, and sparks a rebellion. As Peeta says to Tigris in Mockingjay, “Never underestimate the power of a brilliant stylist.”

  Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.

  —Coco Chanel

  By its very definition, “fashion statement” means our clothes speak for us. When a person thinks of that phrase, they are most likely to picture someone whose conscientious choice of attire stands out and evokes a strong response. Right now, Lady Gaga is the poster child for making provocative fashion statements. Who else would don a raw meat dress designed by Franc Fernandez and say it was in protest of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy? Yet, if she yanked on a pair of tattered sweats and a Hanes t-shirt among friends in the privacy of her own home, that too would articulate something about her. Because even when we’re not tryin
g to draw focus to ourselves, what we choose to wear still makes a statement.

  Our clothing tells other people who we are, whether we value comfort over frivolity, brand names over money-saving knockoffs, timeless styles over trendy couture, loud patterns over the invisibility muted colors offer. Look at Katniss when we first meet her. She normally dresses in trousers and a shirt, her hair braided beneath a cap, with supple leather hunting boots molded to her feet. Kat’s unintentional fashion statement is one of practicality and function. She doesn’t care about what she wears past its usefulness, because she is too concerned with survival. Her clothes reflect these values, and what has made them necessary, including her low social status and her frequent hunting expeditions. That she wears her father’s old hunting jacket communicates her love for him and his influence on her life. Like it or not, what we dress in is a direct reflection of who we are personally, socially, and historically.

  Sometimes, though, we make a conscientious decision to use our attire to convey a certain image or message to others. Muslim women demonstrate their religion by wearing hijabs, scarves that cover the head, ears, and throat. A recent high school graduate might proudly exhibit his college acceptance by wearing a Dartmouth sweatshirt. A teen girl can shout her allegiance by wearing a Team Jacob t-shirt and a man can tell everyone who he’s rooting for in the Super Bowl with his Denver Broncos ball cap.