Sunrise on the Reaping Chapter 27 & Epilogue Summary & Analysis

Summary: Chapters 27 & Epilogue

Chapter 27

Haymitch suffers from recurring nightmares of Lenore Dove’s death and is plagued by refrains of her name poem. Haymitch knows Snow will take away every last person that he loves, so he pushes everyone away including Hattie, Burdock, Blair, and Asterid. Haymitch wishes he could die, but he cannot bring himself to do it because of his final promise to Lenore Dove. Instead, he starts to numb himself, first with sleep syrup and then with alcohol. He becomes obsessed with finding Lenore Dove's grave and guesses she must be buried somewhere in the woods like she would have wanted. Burdock finds him wandering in the woods and takes him to the Covey graveyard. There, he finds Lenore Dove (along with stones commemorating Maude Ivory and Lucy Gray) and buries the striker in front of her headstone. He begs Lenore Dove to free him from his promise so he can die with her and asks for a sign.

Haymitch starts to drink even more. One day he wakes up in a back alley in town, and he finds the words “NO CAPITOL, NO HANGING TREE!” and “NO CAPITOL, NO REAPING!” graffitied in orange paint. He realizes this “rallying cry beyond the Peacekeepers’ radar” was done by Lenore Dove, and that this was the secret of hers to which Maysilee alluded. Haymitch interprets this as a sign from Lenore Dove and knows she is reminding him that he promised to fight back. With this message, Haymitch feels, “she condemns [him] to life.”

Eventually, Effie and his prep team arrive in Twelve to get him ready for his Victory Tour. Plutarch arrives as well and says Effie has replaced Drusilla and will be the new escort for District 12’s tributes. At an afterparty in District 11, Plutarch whisks Haymitch away to an attic in the Justice Building; it is the only space that is not bugged. He invites Haymitch to join the rebellion, and they talk about a future in which they find someone, who is “just like” Haymitch only “luckier,” to finally take down the Capitol. Haymitch is disillusioned and returns home, where he succumbs to a life of alcoholism and isolation. He keeps the news on at all times so that when Lenore Dove’s ghost comes to him, he can tell her that he is working on a strategy to keep the sun from rising on another reaping. And, every year, he must train tributes for the Hunger Games.

Read an analysis of Plutarch and Haymitch’s conversation.

Epilogue

The epilogue takes place after the events of the original trilogy. Haymitch still has dreams and visions about Lenore Dove, but she is not angry or dying anymore, so Haymitch guesses she forgives him. He knows that he fulfilled his promise to help defeat the Capitol, but he knows that she will not let him join her yet because he has to take care of his family, Katniss and Peeta.

He recalls how he first saw Katniss, Burdock and Asterid’s daughter, as a young child, and that her two braids reminded him of Louella. As a result, the nickname “sweetheart” slipped out after he became her mentor. He explains he initially didn’t want to let Katniss and Peeta in, but that “the walls of a person’s heart are not impregnable” if they have ever “known love.”

Haymitch did not want anything to do with the memorial book Katniss and Peeta made after the war; he didn’t see the point in reliving so much pain and suffering. However, little by little, Haymitch starts to open up about all the people he loved and lost. He tells them about Katniss’s parents, and his family, and Maysilee, and Lenore Dove, finally able to share his story. The next day, Katniss shows up at his door with goose eggs, and Peeta builds him an incubator so he can keep geese in Lenore Dove’s memory. Haymitch is more at peace now and knows that the Capitol could never really take Lenore Dove away from him because, like the geese, they mated for life.

Read an analysis of Haymitch’s character development throughout the series.