Sunrise on the Reaping

Haymitch wakes up from a nightmare in which Hattie is brewing white liquor in his kitchen. He is shackled to a metal bed inside a glass room, naked except for his flint striker. His stomach wound has been stitched up, and there are IV needles in his arms. Avoxes press their faces into the wall, begging him for “something [he] can’t give” (141). Haymitch feels a brief sense of relief upon seeing a rabbit similar to the one that led him out of the hedge, but as he looks on the rabbit is swallowed up by a snake.

A nurse enters the room to clean Haymitch’s wounds. When he struggles and complains of the pain, she administers a sedative, knocking him back into unconsciousness. Over the next few days, Haymitch drifts in and out of consciousness, causing as much trouble as possible each time he wakes up in the hopes of being given more sedatives. One day, he wakes up not in the hospital, but in the now-empty tribute apartment, still rigged with cameras. A pump is implanted in his chest, similar to Lou Lou’s.

Haymitch wanders into the kitchen, where the fridge contains only bread and milk. Haymitch is no longer afraid of Snow’s poison. He knows that Snow will keep him alive indefinitely, punishing him for the Capitol’s entertainment. Haymitch spends days in the apartment alone, wondering who is paying for his acts of rebellion and how the Capitol will edit the Games. 

After about a week, the TV in the apartment begins to flicker on and off, showing brutal clips from old Hunger Games. One night, Haymitch is shown a clip of a girl in a rainbow dress singing “a familiar tune with unfamiliar words” (43). Haymitch recognizes her as a Covey ancestor and District 12’s sole past victor. Finishing her song, the girl reaches out to a young man silhouetted in the audience. Recalling Snow’s strangely intimate knowledge of the Covey, Haymitch wonders if the man is a young Snow.

Peacekeepers arrive, flanked by Haymitch’s prep team. Effie cleans and styles Haymitch for the upcoming Victor’s Ceremony. She insists on staying by his side as he is transported to the auditorium, still cuffed to the chair. Wiress and Mags arrive, both showing signs of torture. Mags is in a wheelchair, and Wiress is speaking incoherently.

Haymitch is led to the stage, where Caesar plays a recap of the Games. For the first time, Haymitch sees how the Capitol has edited the footage. Their own mistakes have been cut clean out, and the timeline manipulated to obscure moments of solidarity between tributes. Haymitch has been portrayed as selfish before receiving a final-act redemption arc. His final act of rebellion has been erased from the footage. As the camera zooms out at the end of the broadcast, the arena is revealed to be shaped like a giant eye.

The crowd applauds Haymitch as Snow descends from a platform above. He places the victor’s crown on Haymitch’s head and says: “Enjoy your homecoming” (148).

At the afterparty for the Victor’s Ceremony, Haymitch is suspended in a giant, locked golden birdcage. Capitol guests hand-feed him scraps of food. Haymitch endures every indignity, hoping to save his loved ones. Plutarch records footage, and Haymitch is unsure whether he can trust him after all.

As the party dies down, Plutarch approaches Haymitch. He has no news about the Abernathy family but says that Lenore has remained imprisoned on the Peacekeeper base since her arrest. Haymitch thinks of the awful things that would be happening to her: “Confined. Starved. Tortured. Raped. Murdered” (149).

After 10 days of Capitol parties, Haymitch is placed on a train bound for District 12, along with coffins containing the decomposed remains of his fellow tributes. On the journey home, he reflects on Snow and the unknown Covey girl. He recalls a forbidden song that Lenore sometimes plays for Burdock, called “The Hanging Tree.” The song tells the story of a rebel who is hanged by the Capitol. After death, he asks for his lover to join him at the gallows, and his call is taken up by the mockingjays.

When the train finally arrives at District 12, no one is waiting at the station. As Haymitch walks toward his home, he notices a glow in the distance. His family home is on fire. Burdock tells Haymitch it is too late to save his family.

Haymitch is overcome with grief, screaming and sobbing until Asterid March arrives to administer a sedative. He wakes up at the McCoy house, where Louella’s mother is caring for him. She informs him that Lenore has a hearing with the Peacekeeper base commander that day.

District 12 holds a funeral for its dead. Ma and Sid are buried together in a single coffin, alongside Louella, Maysilee, Wyatt, and Wyatt’s father, Jethro, who died by suicide after Wyatt’s coffin arrived in 12. Burdock sings a mourning song, and the crowd performs a three-finger salute, a goodbye to the fallen tributes.

Haymitch doesn’t want to stay with the McCoys, unable to face their questions about Louella. Temporarily forgetting the fire, he walks home, only to find himself standing in the ashes. Recalling how careful his mother was with fire, he is certain that this was an arson orchestrated by Snow.

Burdock appears to escort Haymitch to the Victor’s Village, where he takes more sleep syrup. He still wakes in the middle of the night, overcome by a desire to see Lenore. Haymitch hides near her home to wait for her return, hoping to see her one more time before leaving her alone forever to ensure her safety. 

When Lenore appears, she spins around happily, holding the bag of gumdrops that Haymitch gave her. Unable to contain himself, Haymitch runs to her, and they embrace. As he holds her, Haymitch realizes that he can’t leave her behind, and resolves to find a way for them to live together.

Lenore opens the bag of gumdrops, and Haymitch feeds her two. She happily says that she can now eat the “other candies” that Sid gave her, which are still at home under her pillow. Haymitch looks down at the bag and sees that all of the gumdrops are blood-red. Panic sets in as he realizes that the bag was planted by Snow. He makes Lenore spit out the gumdrop she is chewing, but it’s too late. She collapses into his arms, poisoned. As Lenore dies, she implores Haymitch not to let the sun rise on another reaping.

After Lenore’s death, Haymitch is plagued by nightmares about her last moments. Over and over, he sees himself feeding her the poisoned gumdrops, and relives the grief of her uncles as they try to revive her. Each nightmare ends with “The Raven” echoing in his mind. 

The poem reminds him that Snow will kill everyone he loves. This knowledge causes Haymitch to drive everyone away. Burdock and Asterid continue visiting the Victor’s Village until Haymitch throws rocks at them, striking Asterid in the head. After they stop coming around, he is completely alone.

Haymitch begins buying bottles of liquor in the Seam. He gets blackout drunk every night to cope with his insomnia. One morning, he realizes that Lenore’s uncles have likely buried her in the woods. He locates the small Covey cemetery hidden in a clearing, where each headstone bears a short inscription from the ballad that gave its inhabitant their name. Haymitch sees “Maude Clare,” “Lucy Gray,” and, finally, “Lenore Dove.” He lies on Lenore’s grave, begging her to come back. In the morning, he buries his flint striker by her headstone.

After another night of heavy drinking, Haymitch wakes up in an alley that is spray-painted with the messages: “NO CAPITOL, NO HANGING TREE” and “NO CAPITOL, NO REAPING” (159). Haymitch remembers Maysilee’s comment about the paint under Lenore’s fingernails and knows that the graffiti is Lenore’s. Thinking of her plea not to let the sun rise on another reaping, Haymitch feels “[condemned] to life” (160).

On the morning of the Victory Tour, Effie arrives at the Victor’s Village to help prep Haymitch. She expresses her condolences for his family’s “accident” and Lenore’s “appendicitis.” Haymitch boards the train and meets Plutarch, who has been contracted to record the tour.

Haymitch drinks his way through a celebration in District 11. After the party, Plutarch pulls him into the attic of the Justice Building and tells him that the rebellion still needs his help. Though Haymitch’s attempt to overthrow the Games did not succeed, he demonstrated courage and the ability to imagine a better future. Plutarch says that successful rebellions can take generations and that they are “all part of a continuum” (161). One day, someone like Haymitch will overthrow the Capitol. Plutarch assigns Haymitch to be a mentor for District 12’s future tributes. Each year, on his birthday, he will “get a new pair of tributes…to mentor to their deaths” (162).

Appalled, Haymitch shuts Plutarch out for the remainder of the tour. On the day the train heads back to 12, he tells Plutarch that he is not a good person and accuses him of helping the Capitol with his propos. Plutarch responds that he is not a hero, but he is at least “still in the game” (162).

The Epilogue is narrated by an adult Haymitch, after the events of the original trilogy. Under the leadership of Katniss Everdeen, Burdock’s daughter and Haymitch’s mentee, the rebels have overthrown the Capitol and installed a democratic government. Lenore Dove no longer haunts Haymitch’s nightmares. When he sees her now, it is as a wrinkled and graying woman, as if they have grown old together. Though he has fulfilled his promise not to let the sun rise on the reaping, Lenore refuses to let him join her yet because he has to take care of his family.

Haymitch recalls the first time he met Katniss, when Burdock brought her to the Hob. After Burdock’s death in a mine accident, Haymitch began to look out for her from afar. She reminds him of Louella, and when he became her mentor in the Games, he transferred Louella’s old nickname to her.

Haymitch slowly opened up to Katniss and her fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark. When they began working on a memorial book after the Second Rebellion, Haymitch reluctantly told them about his past. Shortly afterward, Katniss and Peeta gave him a basket of goose eggs and an incubator. Haymitch is raising the goslings in Lenore’s honor and often takes them to the meadow where the two of them would meet.

Haymitch still drinks heavily, though “less to forget, more out of habit” (163). He knows he doesn’t have much time left to live, but he is content in his knowledge that the Capitol can never truly separate him from Lenore. In fact, “nothing [they] can take from [him] was ever worth keeping” (163). The novel ends with Haymitch telling an imagined Lenore, “I love you like all-fire” (163), to which she responds in kind.