The woods are dangerous due to wild animals, and illegal to explore or hunt in. Not only is the coal-mining District 12 on the lowest rung of social standing, but Katniss lives alongside her mother and sister in the poorest area of District 12, nicknamed 'The Seam.' On the edge of the Seam lies a large field called the Meadow, past which stands a fence that separates the population from the unsettled woods. Since the rebellion, society has significantly stratified, particularly in terms of economic and social caste. The Games illustrate how thoroughly Panem citizens are at the mercy of the Capitol, since it keeps them subdued by making them complicit in the atrocities as audience. The expectation is that the Hunger Games be treated as a spectacle, a great source of entertainment that all citizens are obliged to follow as audience. Every year, each district must supply, through a lottery process, two 'tributes' (both aged 12 to 18, one male, one female), who are forced to fight to the death in a large outdoor arena until one victor remains. The Capitol has an even more devious structure to keep its citizens in line, though: the Hunger Games.

In what is now termed the 'Dark Days,' the twelve districts were defeated and a thirteenth district was obliterated as warning against further rebellion. Seventy-five years earlier, the Capitol's control was contested by the districts, which rebelled. After North America was destroyed through myriad disasters, Panem was founded by the Capitol. Though the full details of the society are not revealed until later in the chapter, it's useful to understand them. The Capitol heads a totalitarian government that controls its population primarily through the yearly ritual of the Hunger Games. Panem is currently separated into 12 districts, each of which serves a specific purpose for the society, and is ruled from the distant sparkling Capitol. Katniss lives in a dystopic society built on the ruins of what was once North America, now named Panem. Instead of waking her family, Katniss heads out to hunt, introducing her reader to her surroundings as she does. Katniss understands – it is the 'day of the reaping,' the first stage of the horrific Hunger Games that she will explain to the reader over the first few chapters. The narrator and protagonist of The Hunger Games, a 16 year old girl named Katniss Everdeen, wakes up to find her little sister Prim has left the bed they share and curled up next to their mother. Buy Study Guide CHAPTER ONE (START OF PART ONE)

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