The Hunger Games: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Peeta and Katniss realize that Effie is right about Haymitch as their mentor. They decide to help him to his feet and get him cleaned up. Once they get Haymitch back to his compartment, Peeta offers to do the rest of the cleanup, and Katniss accepts his offer. Afterwards, however, Katniss wonders about Peeta’s motivations for being so nice, and she decides that it’s because he’s being kind—a thought that worries her because kind people have a way of working themselves inside her. She vows not to have any more to do with Peeta and tosses his father’s cookies out of the train compartment.

Unfortunately, the cookies land and explode in a patch of dandelions, which reminds Katniss again of the time that Peeta helped save her family from starvation. On that day, Katniss brought Prim with her into the Meadow where they picked a bucket full of dandelion greens, stems, and flowers. That night, they had a dinner of dandelion salad and the rest of the bakery bread. Prim and Katniss began poring through a book from their mother’s apothecary shop, looking for edible plants and flowers. Finally, Katniss worked up the courage to wander into the woods, where she had never been without her father. She retrieved her bow and arrows and stayed by the edge of the woods, where she had the good luck to kill a rabbit.

Eventually, Katniss wandered deeper and deeper into the woods, finding food to keep her family alive. Soon, on her twelfth birthday, Katniss was also eligible to sign up for tesserae, and she brought home batches of grain and oil with it. One day, late that summer, Katniss was washing up in a pond when she noticed the plants growing around her. She dug out their roots, recognizing them as the plants that she had been named for. That night, Katniss’s family feasted on fish and katniss roots until everyone was full for the first time in months. Katniss’s mother eventually recovered as well, but Katniss was never able to fully trust her again.

Katniss feels homesick as she thinks of her family, wondering what they might’ve had for dinner. As Katniss gets into bed, it occurs to her that now would be the best time to cry—no cameras surround her for the moment—but she feels too numb to cry and instead drifts off to sleep.

Effie’s voice wakes Katniss in the morning, and she dresses, deciding to keep her hair in the braids her mother did. When Katniss arrives in the dining car, Effie is leaving in an angry huff, and Haymitch gestures for Katniss to sit down. She eats her fill of breakfast food and hot chocolate before settling back to observe Haymitch, who is thinning his red juice with alcohol.

Katniss realizes she detests Haymitch, believing that he’s part of the reason District 12 tributes never stand a chance. Haymitch is unlikely to draw sponsors on their behalf, since the rich people who sponsor tributes expect to have someone classier than Haymitch to deal with.

Katniss asks Haymitch for advice, and his response is, “Stay alive.” Then he laughs. Peeta responds aggressively, knocking the glass out of Haymitch’s hand, and Haymitch responds by punching Peeta in the jaw. When Haymitch reaches again for his alcohol, Katniss drives her knife into the table between Haymitch’s hand and the bottle, barely missing his fingers.

The action seems to finally get Haymitch’s attention. He advises Peeta to let his bruised jaw show to make him seem tougher and asks Katniss whether she can hit anything else with her knife. As a demonstration, Katniss throws her knife into the wall across the room, where it lodges into a seam between two panels, making her look a lot better with a knife than she really is.

Haymitch makes a deal with Peeta and Katniss. He says that he’ll remain sober enough to help them as long as they don’t interfere with his drinking. His first piece of advice is not to resist the choices of the stylists. As Haymitch leaves the compartment, the train pulls into the Capitol, and Peeta and Katniss rush to the window to see what they’ve only seen on television before. The Capitol’s wealth is obvious from the splendor of the buildings. As their train passes by, people wave, and Peeta waves back. When Katniss looks at him, he shrugs and says that one of the people below might be rich, which makes Katniss believe that Peeta has been forming a strategy to stay alive all along and isn’t to be trusted.