Is humanity innately good or evil? Revisiting The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Written by Avigayil Ashton

Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, 2020

Is humanity, at its core, good or evil? Once you’ve removed social convention and erased the government – is humanity, at its core inherently violent? or free and cooperative? In a world more polarised than ever with the advent of social media, these questions feel pressingly more relevant. As we navigate online spaces our highly conflicting opinions tend to run rampant in echo chambers online. With social media’s algorithms feeding our beliefs we skilfully dodge wider frames, and our beliefs mutilate into their most egregious, distilled forms. How are we to understand our society and see a more rounded picture as we occupy these online spaces? Whilst Susan Collins’ world of Panem has no ‘social media’, it delves into these questions about the state of nature and what we as humans in society are up against.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the prequel to the YA series – The Hunger Games by Susan Collins. Set 64 years before the events of the first novel, we are introduced to the young Coriolanus Snow (The Hunger Games ‘antagonist’). His family have fallen on hard times and, desperate to restore their wealth and status, Snow prepares to be one of the first mentors in the 10th Hunger Games. We join him as he desperately tries to outwit and outmanoeuvre his fellow students, to mentor the winning tribute in a totalitarian society monitoring his every move. Make no mistake, this is no sympathetic villain origin story. Privy to Snow’s inner monologue we are exposed to his raw selfish, ambitious, cowardly and most importantly morally grey motives.

However, Snow is also vulnerable. Much like every member of a society he is motivated by survival, particularly within Panem. There is much to learn from Collins’ books, particularly this prequel. Through Snow, desperate and exposed, Collin’s investigates the philosophical debate of nature, recalling the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke – all quoted in the epigraph. As Snow navigates his task he is surrounded by manifestations of their philosophies. Sejanus – his fellow academy student – with unbending moral fibre has an unwavering commitment to what he believes is right and good. Yet whilst his intentions are pure, his actions are impulsive and naïve with ill-fated martyrology and poorly planned protest. In contrast to the Capitol’s suffering, Sejanus’ innate goodness explores Locke’s ‘state of perfect freedom’ and ‘state also of equality’ in nature, and he highlights the importance of remaining true to values of liberty and equality. (Locke, 2003, p.101)

Lucy-Gray Baird is Snow’s assigned tribute from District 12. Determined and clever, Lucy-Gray is a master at manipulating performance for her survival. Growing close to Snow, she forms a romantic relationship with him and believes in a future beyond the Capitol (Panem). Lucy Gray represents Rousseau’s theory of ‘the inequality society produces’ transforms and alters ‘our natural inclinations’ (Rousseau, 1993, p116). Professor Gaul, Snow’s tutor, is cruel and a hardline eugenicist. Gaul represents Hobbes argument that all men are ‘equal in strength, and with no authority existence would be a constant violent struggle’ (Wolf, 1996, p.10).

Whilst we do not live in the world of Panem where there is the threat of kill or be killed, in the UK we are not exempt from growing up with highly contrasted levels of access to resources such as food and education. Whilst we currently have the privilege of freedom of speech and exposure to criticism, we do live in a classist society. Not only orbiting our own social and family circles with similar living situations and beliefs, but exposed to a larger chasm of opinions online, specifically designed to either antagonise or feed our individual opinions. Either way, it is a perpetual echo chamber. Collins’ book interrogates our influences and philosophies. She acknowledges predispositions and whilst Snow has the option to make different choices, it must not be forgotten the position he is in when we begin the story. The world is full of alternative opinions, however what pushes us towards our beliefs? Often, we have strong opinions about right and wrong, moral and immoral, yet if the world is so clear cut, how can we all have such contrasting opinions about what constitutes these ideas? Snow doesn’t need our sympathy; he makes his choices – we have been witnesses to his influences and will have possibly willed him to act differently. But as we navigate our own realities, stories such as Snow’s are reminders that everyone has individual motivations, experiences and crucial vulnerabilities. In a world that feels increasingly more threatening, especially following recent US elections, it is easy to respond to alternative opinions with defensiveness, condescension and anger motivated by fear. Yet, where does this get us? More division? Validating our own opinions, ultimately just preaching to the converted? Perhaps today’s fragmented society requires a more thorough dissection and empathy. Patience to evaluate the other and dissect their motivations leaving space for empathy for their position. On the brink of the rise of global fascism, we have the tools to chisel a further chasm between each other or perhaps knitan understanding, because only when we understand each other’s nature do we have the tools to build a society that serves us all. To quote the novel’s Lucy Gray, ‘I think there’s a natural goodness built into human beings. You know when you’ve stepped across that line into evil, and your life’s challenge to try and stay on the right side of that line.’ To expand, as we navigate that line, it is our duty to resist trespassing into territory that threatens our peer’s vulnerability. Instead, reach out a hand to them so that we can navigate that line together rather than try to balance along it alone, incidentally trampling others in our pursuit of morality. Through her criticism of narratives that we have come to believe as absolute truths, Collins stresses our goal as humans put on Earth ‘to reduce the misery, not add to it.’ (Collins 2020, p.434) Need we all be remindedof the value of democracy and the power to navigate it through empathy, rather than stray into traps of dehumanisation through fear as we feel threatened?

Collins, S. (2020) The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. 

Hobbes, T. (2014). Leviathan or The Matter, Form, & Power Of A Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil.

Locke, J. (2003) ’The Second Treatise: An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government’, in Locke, J. and Shapiro, I. Two Treatises of Government: and A Letter Concerning Toleration. New Haven, Conn; London: Yale University Press, pp 100-210. (Original work published 1690).

Rousseau, J. (1993) The Social Contract and Discourses. London: Orion, (Original Work published 1755).