2. Where Exactly Is The "Hope" In Butchering 23 Children? Wouldn't It Be A Better To Hold A Lottery?
Continuing on the subject of hope, that's a skewed logic that old Snow has. Are his citizens supposed to feel grateful that he spared the life of one child, when he sent 23 others to their deaths? In the year that Haymitch won, there were double the tributes. Does that halve the hope? Surely, holding a Willy Wonka-style lottery would be far more incentive to giving the Districts hope? We're told though that the Hunger Games is a punishment for a past rebellion. It's brushed over, but it started in District 13 - the district furthest away from the Capitol - as the revolters in that town had two other districts standing strong alongside it. The Capitol obliterated District 13, and the other two gave in. The Hunger Games was curated to remind the surviving districts just how mercilessness the Capitol was, and just how futile it would be to stand against them. Make no mistake about it; President Snow's speech about giving hope to the districts is just a small consolation in his grand massacre. The novels go into more detail about just how devastating the first rebellion was; if anything, the only people who get hope from the competition are citizens already residing in the Capitol.
