I have explored the structure of the first three Hunger Games novels, the Katniss Everdeen trilogy, and it’s worth a quick review of the approaches I found most helpful before we make the deep dive into Sunrise on the Reaping, the second prequel novel.
First the only thing Collins has said about structure in her few interviews was this:
This is standard three act drama language:
Inserting Mockingjay’s plot points into this structure, we find a neat fit:
Collins, though, also incorporates elements of ‘ring writing’ or chiastic structure, the most important of which I have condensed from Mary Douglas’ Thinking in Circles are:
Looking at Mockingjay through a Ring-a-scope reveals a structure like this:
Breaking down each of Mockingjay’s three 9 chapter Parts reveals the ‘rings within the larger ring:’
Mockingjay was the third novel in the trilogy and what remained to be done was to determine if the nine Parts of the books, its eighty-one chapters, were intentionally designed to work as a trilogy-as-a-whole ring composition:
For Sunrise, my plan is to look at each of is Parts, one by one, to see if they are rings, and then to try to chart the book as a whole. In the end I’ll return to the Three Act Play schema to see if that helps us grasp what meaning Collins was embedding in her story structure, especially with respect to the ‘the Meaning in the Middle’ of chiastic sequences.
[We only have two prequels so I’ll hold off on even making a few SWAGs about the second series structure. I may take a look at some parallel structure work, though, if there is any, between the second prequel and the first three Hunger Games books.]
Stand by for the first Part of Sunrise on the Reaping tomorrow!
