Read The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion Online
Authors: Lois H. Gresh
The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion (26 page)
Controversy surrounds the use of the electric chair as an instrument of death. There are those who oppose it, saying it takes too long to put a man down, that it causes too much suffering. For example, in 1985 in Indiana, William Vandiver was exposed to five electric shocks over the course of seventeen minutes before he finally died.
We can only conclude that electrocution is inhumane. And this includes the use of electric shocks, as with the torturers of Panem.
BURNING
One of the most horrible methods of torture and execution in The Hunger Games series occurs in
Mockingjay
. Keep in mind, once again, that we’re bypassing the atrocities of the arenas and the starvation itself because those topics were covered in earlier chapters. There’s very little in terms of torture that could possibly eclipse what happens in the Games. Except perhaps this one example.
All of the children, including Prim, are trapped inside a concrete barricade, when a hovercraft drops silver parachutes down to them. Because parachutes usually contain food, medicine, and other good things, the children scramble to open them, but after the hovercrafts steer clear, the packages explode. Not only have the perpetrators burned children to death, they’ve used the sadistic method of having the children open their own packages of death. It’s the depth of cruelty to tempt children with much-needed food and medicine, not to mention with other gifts, only to murder them.
Many of the children die as they’re tortured by flames on the ground. Because the explosives wrench off body parts and burn whatever’s left, this is not a painless death.
HANGINGS
The threat of losing one’s head is always close for the citizens of District 12. If children escape the Games, they might be whipped and beaten, or worse, they might be hung in the gallows or strapped to the stockades and stoned to death. To get even with Katniss, new Peacekeepers show up in
Catching Fire
and erect new whipping posts, stockades, and a gallows for public torture and execution (
Catching Fire,
128).
The gallows, as we all know, hang a man by a rope around his neck. Execution by hanging is still common around the world, with death caused either by breaking the victim’s neck or strangulation. In the United States, hanging was a common method of execution until approximately 1890, with the Delaware government performing the last official hanging in 1996.
As sanctioned by the government, the correctional officers weigh the condemned prisoner, then practice hanging a sandbag that weighs the same amount. Based on the practice drops, the rope length is adjusted; if too long, the victim will be decapitated, and if too short, he will strangle to death over the course of possibly forty-five minutes or more. The rope itself is boiled and stretched before the actual hanging takes place. In addition, the knot is waxed so the rope will slide easily through it, hence providing quicker tightening around the neck. After blindfolding the victim, the correctional officer places the noose around his neck, then someone opens the trap door beneath the victim’s feet, and . . . that’s it for the guy. In theory, his neck should break because the gallows has been calibrated with the sandbag for his weight. However, this is
infrequently
the case. More typical is strangulation by the rope.
There are two types of stockades, and given that Katniss mentions that several have been erected in District 12’s public square, it’s a fair guess that people will be punished using both types.
The first, also known as a “pillory,” has parallel wooden boards that are hinged on one side, and includes a central hole for the victim’s neck and two holes to restrain his wrists. After forcing the victim to put his neck and wrists in place, the torturer fastens the boards, and then the poor guy rots in place.
The stocks are similar to the pillory, but in this case, the parallel boards have two holes in which to place the victim’s ankles. The poor guy lies on his back with his legs up and his knees bent so his ankles will fit securely in the stocks. Then he rots in place.
In history, crowds mercilessly pummeled, battered, beat, and even tickled victims. Crimes leading to the stockades included cheating on taxes, perjury, insubordination, writing poems deriding the church, and similar acts.
It seems unlikely that the citizens of District 12 would pummel, batter, beat, and tickle their family, friends, and neighbors who are subjected to the stockades.
Or does it?
When you consider that the people allow the government to take their children off to gladiatorial to-the-death combats, then it’s not really farfetched at all to think that they might brutalize their own neighbors if “forced” by the government.
HIJACKING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE BY FEAR
Torture dehumanizes its victims. Think about Peeta, who is so dehumanized that he thinks Katniss is the enemy and tries to strangle her in
Mockingjay
. Psychological fear takes hold and dominates until a person cracks under the weight. Suzanne Collins uses psychological torture and fear very skillfully to bring her characters alive for us; we feel their pain, their torment, their terror. Her antagonists, the government leaders and their minions, not only use physical torture, but the most extreme forms of psychological torture upon the people; and in seeing how the protagonists, such as Katniss and Peeta, deal with that torture is what makes them so alive to readers.
In a stroke of genius, Suzanne Collins comes up with a new method of psychological/fear torture. She calls it
hijacking
. Her character, Beetee, explains that “it’s a type of fear conditioning” and uses tracker jacker venom, which Katniss knows “targets the part of the brain that houses fear” (
Mockingjay,
180).
Fear is typically thought of as a feeling of anxiety caused by the possible or real presence of danger. As with any emotion, such as obsession, jealousy, and love, fear comes in many shades of gray. Mild fear might refer to a general feeling of uneasiness or apprehension. An example is the fear we feel if someone makes an unkind comment that makes us worry about his loyalty and friendship. But severe fear, as triggered by tracker jacker venom, is a whole other thing. Here, the victim—such as Peeta—cannot remember what is real and what is not real. When he remembers something, the venom changes the memory as he’s thinking about it, and the brain gets confused and stores the revised false memory instead of the real one (
Mockingjay,
181).
Could this really work? Is it possible to create a venom or other potion that actually changes our memories?
According to scientists, this is a real possibility.
When we experience fear, our body reacts in certain ways. Our heart rate increases, sending blood pumping through our veins, as our body makes sure that our muscles have enough oxygen to face danger. Our blood pressure rises as we grow fearful. In a stress situation, our body shuts down any unnecessary systems, including our digestive system. We therefore produce less saliva—a digestive fluid—and our mouth turns dry.
When we are scared, certain primitive traits prepare us for action. Blood vessels near the skin tighten so as to reduce bleeding if injured. The pupils of our eyes dilate to focus on any movement. The hairs on our skin stand up, making us more sensitive to movement. The more scared we are, the more noticeable the symptoms.
Neuroscientists believe that the seeds of fear lie in a part of the brain called the amygdalae, which is derived from the Greek “amygdala,” meaning almond. Each amygdala is an almond-shaped group of neurons located in the medial temporal lobes in humans and other complex vertebrates. The temporal lobes are in the cerebrum at the sides of the brain. The amygdalae encompass nuclei such as the cortical nucleus; the centromedial nucleus; and the basolateral complex, which can be divided further into basal, lateral, and accessory basal nuclei.
In neuroanatomy, a nucleus refers to a structure composed primarily of gray matter that acts as a transit point for electrical signals in one neural subsystem. Gray matter consists of unmyelinated neurons, where myelin is a phospholipid layer of electrical insulation surrounding the axons of neurons. The myelin layer, or sheath, enables impulses to propagate more quickly, almost “hopping” down the fibers, whereas in unmyelinated fibers, impulses move as waves. So the gray matter is made of nerve cell bodies and short axons and dendrites that do not have myelin sheaths. It basically processes information from sensory organs and motor stimuli.
The amygdalae perform vital roles in our memories of emotional reactions and in our processing of fear and aggression. They are part of the limbic system, which is the portion of the brain that integrates our emotional states with our memories of physical sensations, influences our motivation to do things, and instills fear in us.
When we are frightened, the amygdalae transmit impulses to the hypothalamus, which links the nervous system to the endocrine system through the pituitary gland. The hypothalamus regulates various metabolic and autonomic processes, such as body temperature, thirst, and hunger. When the hypothalamus receives impulses from the amygdalae, it activates the sympathetic nervous system, which in turn, triggers the sympatho-adrenal response, commonly known as “fight or flight” response. Acetylcholine is secreted, along with adrenaline. As mentioned earlier, our heart beat may increase, blood vessels may become constricted. Our pupils may dilate, we may sweat, our blood pressure may rise.
Along with transmissions to the hypothalamus, the amygdalae also send impulses to the reticular nucleus for increased reflexes. It transmits signals to the nuclei of the facial and trigeminal nerves so our faces display fear. And along with all of these sensations, our emotions rise and flutter. In short, we are in a state of terror.
When we are frightened, sensory input enters the amygdalae and forms associations with memories of being frightened of these specific types of sensory input. The association between frightening events and the sensory stimuli may be directly affected by the potential of the involved synapses to react quickly due to what’s known as “long-term potentiation.”
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Long-term potentiation refers to the prolonged enhancement of the efficiency of the synapse between neurons. Scientists believe that long-term potentiation contributes to synaptic plasticity, or the ability of the synapse between neurons to change in strength over time. It is a foundation of learning and memory.
Columbia University scientist and 2000 Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel has discovered two genes that can be used to inhibit the amygdalae from learning how to fear things. In May 2006, a summary of his work at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute stated:
Fear in mice, monkeys, and people is mediated by the amygdala, a structure that lies deep within the cerebral cortex. To develop a molecular approach to learned fear in the mouse, we identified two genes as being highly expressed both in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala—the nucleus where associations for Pavlovian learned fear are formed—and in the regions that convey fearful auditory information to the lateral nucleus.”
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One gene is GRP, and the other is stathmin, an inhibitor of microtubule formation that is highly expressed in the amygdalae. Deficits in either the GRP receptor or stathmin cause mice to be more aggressive, bold, lacking in fear.
Studies involving humans and the GRP gene are still in the future. However, scientists are already discussing the possibility of fear serum that would be given to children to banish all fears and phobias from their minds. Whether such youngsters would grow to be superior or inferior to normal humans is a matter for much debate. Fear is an important defense mechanism in all animals. A man or woman without fear might be the possible next step forward in human evolution. Or the next step back.
Even more chilling, scientists report that it may soon be possible to delete “single, specific memories while leaving other memories intact.”
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In the lab, they discovered that they could inject an “amnesia drug” into someone
while the person was remembering a specific thing
. The drug revised the memory, and in some cases, totally erased it.
Professor Karim Nader, an amnesia drug researcher from McGill University, is quoted as saying, “When you remember old memories they can become ‘unstored’ and then have to be ‘restored.’ ” Nader goes on to explain that this is the point when scientists give the person the amnesia drug—while the memory was being saved back into the brain’s long-term storage.
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