Why Suzanne Collins Starts Sunrise on the Reaping on Haymitch’s Birthday

Haymitch Abernathy turns sixteen on the morning of the Second Quarter Quell. He wants to finish his work early and spend the afternoon with Lenore Dove. First, he has to get through the reaping. By putting those plans on the same day, Suzanne Collins shows how much of Haymitch’s life the Capitol already controls before he ever sets foot in the arena. Even the modest hope of a free afternoon depends on what happens at a public drawing.

This article discusses the opening chapter and the premise of the novel.

Sid gets to speak first

The first person to speak in Sunrise on the Reaping is Haymitch’s ten-year-old brother, Sid, wishing him a happy birthday. He’s there to wake Haymitch because Haymitch asked him to. Their mother has made stewed plums to go with his cornbread, and she also wants him to fill the cistern. Collins gives the morning an ordinary family rhythm, right down to a teenager trying to put off a chore.

That ordinary rhythm changes how we meet Haymitch. Readers of the original trilogy know the mentor who has learned to expect terrible things from the Capitol. Here, he’s funny about the lousy timing of his birthday, and he still thinks he might get a few hours alone with the girl he loves. Collins told her editor, David Levithan, that she tried an older Haymitch looking back before settling on the younger Haymitch experiencing the story as it happens. The birthday is where that choice pays off. We get to share his plans while they still feel possible to him.

Even a lucky reaping ruins the birthday

Haymitch points out that surviving the drawing would hardly put him in the mood for cake. In a normal year, two children still get taken from District 12. This year the Second Quarter Quell doubles the number to four. A family might come home relieved that its own child is safe and still know exactly which neighbors are coming home without theirs.

That’s the detail that makes the opening sting. Haymitch has been able to come home from previous reapings and still finds the idea of celebrating afterward hard to stomach. The Capitol can take four children this year, but its reach extends to every family waiting in the square. Putting a birthday on the calendar beside the reaping gives that reach a scale we can feel.

July 4 gives the opening another layer

Reaping Day falls on July 4, so Haymitch shares his birthday with a date American readers associate with independence. In Panem, the day is an annual demonstration of how little freedom the districts have. The irony works at the smallest scale. Haymitch imagines freedom that morning as a few hours of his own time, and even that is contingent on the Capitol’s ceremony.

Collins has described propaganda and the power to control the story as central to the novel. The birthday gives readers a way to see that struggle before there’s an arena broadcast to scrutinize. Sid calls the day Haymitch’s birthday. The Capitol calls it the reaping and has the power to make everyone in District 12 organize their lives around that name.

Lenore Dove asks Haymitch to imagine a different day

In another passage from Chapter 1, Lenore Dove asks Haymitch whether he can imagine a world without the reaping. The question grows naturally out of the morning Collins has given him. A world without the reaping would mean that turning sixteen could be as simple as eating the birthday breakfast his mother made and seeing Lenore Dove when his work was done. The novel starts with that afternoon in reach. By the time Lenore Dove asks her question, we already know what an ordinary day would be worth to him.

If you’ve finished the novel, follow that question through the ending of Sunrise on the Reaping.

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Want to revisit the birthday scene? Look for the Scholastic Press hardcover of Sunrise on the Reaping.

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