The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion (25 page)

We’ll examine each method as used by the leaders of Panem and then touch on fear as it relates to torture.

MUTILATING AND CUTTING OFF BODY PARTS

The most obvious example of this form of torture is in the form of Avoxes, supposed traitors whose tongues have been cut out so they can’t talk. Given that this torture is introduced early in The Hunger Games series, it makes a huge impact on the reader, who isn’t expecting anything quite this horrific in a young adult novel. Of course, the tortures and violence only get worse as the story continues, but we’re not yet used to reading these gruesome aspects this early in the series. Katniss and Peeta first encounter an Avox when they run into Lavinia in the Capitol (
The Hunger Games,
78). Later, two Avoxes wait on Katniss, and she realizes that one, Darius, is from District 12 and once saved Gale (
Catching Fire,
218). This makes Darius’s mutilation hurt Katniss even more than the impact of Lavinia. When they clasp hands briefly beneath a banquet table, the reader knows that she feels his pain and wishes she could save him; but we also know that the author is probably foreshadowing his ultimate death at the hands of the Capitol.

Sadly for poor Darius, the foreshadowing is right on the mark. Peeta eventually watches government officers torture both Darius and his companion Avox, Lavinia, to death using a variety of techniques: electric shocks and beatings, which we’ll talk about later in this chapter; and cutting off body parts (
Mockingjay,
274). We’re not told which body parts the torturers slice off, nor are we told the types of instruments they use. In sparse fashion, we’re told that it took days to torture Darius to death, so we can only assume the worst.

As you might imagine, having your tongue ripped out of your mouth would be excruciating. In ancient times, torturers used tools called mouth openers and tongue tearers to punish those accused of heresy and blasphemy. The mouth opener had three horizontal pieces held in place by two vertical poles. A large screw was inserted into a hole in the topmost horizontal piece, and it descended into the middle pieces. On the bottommost and middle pieces were two plates that jutted out and sloped down.

First, the torturer tied up the victim so he couldn’t struggle, then he pushed the mouth opener’s plates between the victim’s lips. The sloping of the plates kept the mouth very wide open, with the tongue clearly exposed. By twisting the screw, the torturer could widen the distance between the two plates, thus forcing the mouth open as widely as he wanted.

With the victim’s tongue sticking through the device, the torturer picked up his tongue tearer, which looked like very sharp shears with pointed ends. The two handles of the shears were held together by another large screw. The torturer clipped off the tongue at its root, and if needing more force to slice through the solid back muscle, he cranked the screw tighter.

King Louis IX of France put a twist on the tongue-ripping torture. He ordered that his officers slice and shred the tongues and then pierce the still-attached tongues with hot irons.

As for the severing of other body parts, as mentioned, we don’t know what form this torture took in
Mockingjay,
and it’s beyond the scope of this book to delve into the vast array of possible methods.

BEATINGS AND WHIPPINGS

Poor Darius and Lavinia are also beaten during their ultimate torture by the Capitol. But beatings and whippings are common in Panem and are doled out liberally by the Peacekeepers and other officials. For example, according to Rue, if anyone is caught eating crops in the agriculture district, they’re whipped in public (
The Hunger Games,
202). And Gale is whipped so badly that “his back is a raw, bloody slab of meat” (
Catching Fire,
105). As was done in medieval times, the method in Panem is to tie the victim’s wrists to posts—typically in the public squares—and then whip the naked flesh until the victim passes out from pain.

Beatings are a common form of punishment. Not only do we still read about deadly beatings taking place around the world today, by everyone from mobs to police to the military, we’ve all read accounts of floggings throughout history.

In England teachers used to routinely cane students for all sorts of activities, anything ranging from violence and theft down to lascivious thoughts and behaviors. It’s anyone’s guess how authorities figure out what anyone is thinking, but in authoritarian environments, it really doesn’t matter.

In the Middle Ages, people whipped children after forcing them to watch public executions. The reason? Same as with the rulers of Panem: Look what will happen to you if you get out of line! But it didn’t stop there; men whipped their wives, people publicly whipped prostitutes, and beggars were routinely whipped, as well.

Whippings have even been used as self-punishment by religious zealots. The Dionysian cult in Greece and the cult of Isis in Egypt both used whippings as part of their religious fervor. Dionysus, Greek god of wine, music, and ecstasy, was worshipped not only in the Greek Dionysian cult, but also by the ancient Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. The cult was an unconventional form of religion and included dancing, music, intoxication, and trances.

Isis was the Egyptian goddess of motherhood and fertility, as well as a protector of the dead. She was worshipped not only in Egypt, but later in Rome, Greece, and elsewhere around the world.

In the Middle Ages, the European Flagellants whipped themselves and each other in hopes of achieving God’s good favor. Although the Catholic Church viewed them as heretics—though not because they whipped themselves—it also considered self-flagellation as a form of penance.

In Perugia, Italy in the 1300s, thousands of people were Flagellants and marched in huge processions while whipping themselves. This group was so extreme that they believed that anyone who did
not
whip himself worshipped Satan.

The Flagellant movement spread all over Italy until major cities each had some ten thousand people in their processions.

DROWNING

Anyone of reading age has probably heard about waterboarding. Torture using water has been around for as long as humans and water have coexisted. Who
hasn’t
seen a movie in which some poor fool has his head dunked in a toilet until he finally confesses a sin or provides critical information?

In The Hunger Games trilogy, Haymitch tells Katniss that Johanna was drenched in water and then tortured with electricity (
Mockingjay,
253). And while Katniss worries that officials might drown Peeta (
Mockingjay,
9), luckily, it doesn’t happen. Perhaps the closest thing to water torture in the three novels is the tidal wave that slams down the man-made foothills in
Catching Fire
. In an interesting parallel to Johanna’s torture by water and electricity, Beetee sets things up so any dampness from the tidal wave will interact with his high-voltage wire and electrocute any tributes who are standing too close (
Catching Fire,
359–60).

ELECTRIC SHOCKS

We’ve mentioned a few cases of electric shocks already: Darius, Lavinia, Johanna, and Beetee’s method. Given that criminals are still executed in electric chairs, it might be worthwhile to delve into this topic briefly. Just what happens when a victim is hit by electric current? How is someone tortured by electric shocks?

Electric current damages the heart and nervous system, and it causes muscle contractions. The higher the current, the more harmful the effects.

One method of electric shock torture is to put electrodes on the victim’s body and wrap wires around his fingers, toes, and possibly even his tongue. Then the torturer uses something like a cattle prod on the victim to apply the voltage.

Just sending ordinary household current through a person’s chest for less than a second can cause ventricular fibrillation, a condition that is considered—under normal circumstances as opposed to during torture—a medical emergency. The reason is that the heart muscle cells are contracting abnormally and are no longer pumping blood throughout the body. If the heart continues to contract abnormally, this arrhythmia may quickly result in cardiac arrest. Using an electrode, for example, to shoot significantly lower current through the chest also can induce ventricular fibrillation.

Shooting electric current over the chest also can damage the victim’s nervous system. The person may lose control of his body, and his organs may start to malfunction. And then, cardiac arrest may take hold.

The resistance of our skin to electricity drops dramatically when wet. This means that Johanna, for example, who is soaked when they torture her with electric shocks, is going to suffer damage a lot more quickly than she would with dry skin.

Ohm’s Law states that current is equal to voltage divided by resistance. This means that the amount of electric current in a body is equal to the voltage shot through him at two separate points divided by the electrical resistance of his body at those same points. With increased voltage, electrons will flow more quickly through the body. If your body has decreased resistance to the flow of electric current—for example, if your skin is wet—the electron flow will slow down.

Given that a milliamp is equal to
¹
/1000th of an amp, these are general approximations for the effects of electric shocks on the human body:
²

As for using electricity to kill criminals “quickly and painlessly,” we turn to the electric chair. It all began when dentist Albert Southwick saw a drunk man touch the terminal of a generator, and he got the idea that death by electrocution was a humane way to go. Remember, he was a
dentist
; hence, the use of
the chair
.

New York Governor David Hill adopted Southwick’s idea of an electric chair, and eventually made electrocution the state’s method of capital punishment. Engineers Harold P. Brown and Arthur Kennelly created the first actual electric chair. Thomas Edison, the famous inventor of the light bulb, is often credited with the development of the electric chair, but this is because both Brown and Kennelly worked for him. The first experiments electrocuted animals for six months, and in 1889, the Electric Execution Law was passed, making it legal to kill people with electricity.

In 1890, the first electric chair in New York executed William Kemmler. The first electric shock was 1,300 volts for seventeen seconds. Kemmler didn’t die. After the generator recharged, a second shock of 2,000 volts lasting more than a minute polished him off. The inventor of alternating current, George Westinghouse, who was against the use of the chair, was horrified that it took so long to kill the man.