Skip to main content

What were other arenas set up like in previous Hunger Games?



The arena in the 75th Hunger Games was set up like a clock.



Is this the first time game makers used this idea or were past arenas set up in a certain shape or way or was this special for the Quarter Quell?




Answer



Each arena is different from the last. The one in the first book was a mix of forest and grasslands, not unlike Katniss's home turf; Katniss sticks mostly to the forested areas, as do most of the tributes, but Thresh (one of the District 11 tributes) takes to the fields, which are his home turf.


Previous arenas, described from the first book, have been everything from deserts to jungle to snow-covered tundra. In all the Games, a critical part is surviving the arena itself, in addition to beating the other tributes. The majority of arenas had some nasty joke played on the tributes; in one case (Haymitch's Quarter Quell Games), the arena was a beautiful garden, a paradise, until it was learned that pretty much everything in the arena was designed to kill the tributes, from poisonous plants to muttations. Halfway through the Games the only drinkable water source became the site for a volcano eruption. The snow landscape actually wasn't a very entertaining Games, as the tributes spent most of the time huddled in shelters until they all froze to death. Since then, arenas with climates on the extremes of human survival (hot, cold, wet, dry) have generally had some trick to staying alive (like the spile Katniss's group gets in her second Games to get water out of the trunks of the trees). Katniss's first Games arena, by comparison, was a relatively normal stretch of land, very close to what she was used to dealing with every day while hunting. The major survival problems were cold nights (no problem for Kat) and relatively sparse water (slightly more of a problem; she nearly died of dehydration sickness before finding a pond).


Haymitch's Quarter Quell, in the paradise arena, had as a "soft" border a ring of brush. Beyond that was a short distance of relatively bare ground, and then a cliff all around.



Haymitch won his Games first by travelling in one direction, straight as he could, until he reached the edge of the arena, and then learning that there was a force field off the end of the canyon that would throw you back in should you try to commit suicide by just leaping off the edge. In the final battle, he dodged an axe thrown by his opponent, which then came hurtling back into the arena off the force field, killing its thrower.



The one for the Third Quarter Quell was very different; this Quarter Quell was a "tournament of champions" (although officially nobody was supposed to know that until President Snow opened the envelope), and so the arena was specially designed to be both small (to force the tributes together), and extra tricky to test their stamina. In addition...



Plutarch Heavensbee, the Head Gamemaker, was in on the outer Districts' uprising, and thus on Katniss's group's escape from the arena. He designed the arena not only to have the predictable events that occur every hour, but to have the fatal weakness of providing enough power to the lightning tree to feed back into the force fields, overloading the entire arena's artificial systems. Finally, he put the spool of wire into the Cornucopia so that Beetee could spring the trap.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Did Dolores Umbridge Have Any Association with Voldemort (or Death Eaters) before His Return?

I noticed that Dolores Umbridge was born during the first Wizarding War, so it's very likely she wasn't a Death Eater then (but she is pretty evil -- who knows?). After that Voldemort was not around in a way that could affect many people, and most wouldn't know he was planning to rise again. During that time, and up through Voldemort's return (in Goblet of Fire ), did Umbridge have any connection with the Death Eaters or with Voldemort? Was she doing what she did on her own, or was it because of an association with Voldemort or his allies? Answer Dolores Umbridge was definitely not a good person. However, as Sirius points out, "the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters". Remember that he also says that he doesn't believe Umbridge to be a Death Eater, but that she's evil enough (or something like that). I think there are two strong reasons to believe that: Umbridge was proud to do everything according to the law, except when she trie...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

aliens - Interstellar Zoo story

I vaguely remember this story from my childhood: it was about an interstellar zoo that came to Earth with lots of bizarre and unusual species, and humans would file through and gape at all the crazy looking creatures from other planets. The twist came at the end when the perspective shifted to the other side of the bars and we discovered that the "creatures" were traveling through space on a kind of safari. They thought they were the visitors and we were the animals. Neither side knew that the other side thought they were the zoo creatures. Answer Got it. Zoo, by Edward D. Hoch. Published in 1958. Link to Publication History Link to PDF

tolkiens legendarium - Did Gandalf wear his Ring of Power throughout the trilogy?

After Gandalf discovered that Sauron was back and sent Frodo on his quest to Rivendell, did he continue to wear Narya (one of the Three Rings)? It seems like a huge risk to continue to wear it after the Nazgûl (Ringwraiths) started to try and reclaim the One Ring; if they managed to get the ring to Sauron, couldn't he be corrupted by his power? Whatever powers Narya bestows upon him couldn't possibly be worth the huge risk, could it? Answer When Sauron forged the one ring and put it on his finger, the other ring bearers were immediately aware of him and his intentions and removed their own rings. There is no reason why they couldn't merely do so again. As soon as Sauron set the One Ring upon his finger they were aware of him; and they knew him, and preceived that he would be master of them, and of all they wrought. Then in anger and fear they took off their rings. "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age," Silmarillion