Katniss tries to convince her friend Gale to run away with her and take their families into the woods before the Capitol can punish her or anyone she cares about. While returning home, Katniss discovers that there has been an uprising in District 8. Although Katniss and Peeta get engaged during a televised interview to support the official narrative of their joint victory, President Snow still is not pleased. Disturbed, Katniss tells Peeta about Snow’s threat. In District 11, a man is executed after leading the crowd in a salute to Katniss. Katniss and Peeta visit the 12 districts of Panem during their Victory Tour and notice that some districts seem to be on the brink of outright rebellion.

Snow tells Katniss that she must convince him and the whole country that she is madly in love with Peeta during their upcoming Victory Tour, so that her actions can be interpreted as romantic rather than politically motivated. Rather than fight each other as the last two surviving tributes, Peeta and Katniss threatened to eat poisonous berries and die together to avoid scandal and public ire, the Capitol declared Peeta and Katniss joint victors. Snow blames Katniss and says that this dissent is a result of her decision to defy the Capitol in the Games.

President Snow, the ruler of Panem, visits Katniss and tells her about rumors of potential uprisings around the country. She is haunted by nightmares and knows that things can never truly go back to normal. In the months following her victory in the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen has returned to her home in the impoverished District 12 with her co-victor, Peeta Mellark and is trying to forget about the events in the arena. Every year, each of the 12 districts must send two children, called tributes, to fight in a televised battle to the death as punishment for a past rebellion.

In the post-apocalyptic future, the North American nation of Panem is divided into 12 districts ruled by the Capitol, a wealthy and technologically advanced city in the Rocky Mountains. Please be advised that Catching Fire depicts instances of self-harm. This guide references the Scholastic Press hardcover edition of Catching Fire. Suzanne Collins is also the author of The Underland Chronicles (2003), another young adult series, and several books for younger readers.

The catching fire book