The Hunger Games: Who is Sejanus?

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes opens with a display of the Snow family’s poverty. An orphaned, school-aged Coriolanus Snow lives with his grandmother and cousin Tigris, foregoing their only food of boiled potatoes to ensure that Grandmam has some sustenance. Impatient to get to the academy for what is clearly an important day, a shirtless Coriolanus waits impatiently for Tigris’s arrival with his dress shirt, which she has inventively and frugally spruced up to make him look his best. With his destitution sufficiently masked, Coriolanus heads to the Academy, confident he is about to be presented with the school’s generous Plinth Prize.

Despite having the top grades in his class, his excellence left Coriolanus disliked by many of his classmates. More importantly, his true class and cruel nature is not lost on the Dean, Casca Highbottom, who has explicitly told Coriolanus that he will do everything in his power to prevent him from receiving the Plinth Prize. To increase his chances of winning the money, Coriolanus made sure to befriend Sejanus Plinth, a classmate and son of Strabo Plinth, who awards the prize. The friendship proves to be complicated and dangerous for both boys.

Who is Sejanus?

Sejanus is troubled and guilt-ridden, struggling openly with the Academy’s curriculum, which appears to consist entirely of inventing new ways to oppress the districts. His ethical quandaries with the Capitol keep him from excelling at the Academy, making him more of an unspoken liability than anything else. Coriolanus silently scoffs at his behavior, privately feeling that Sejanus is emotional and ungrateful, a waste of his family’s wealth, which Coriolanus himself is aching to put to good use. Nonetheless, Coriolanus succeeds at keeping these feelings to himself, and thus Sejanus considers him his best friend- his brother.

However, what Sejanus has in emotional volatility, he makes up for in bravery. The formidable Head Gamemaker, Dr. Gaul, visits the academy and opens the floor to the students to answer the simple question of what the Hunger Games are for. Despite no doubt looking for answers more like those of Coriolanus, Sejanus doesn’t hesitate to jump in and pivot the discussion.

Shouldn’t we be asking ourselves whether or not they’re right in the first place? Some of those kids were two years old when the war ended. The oldest of them were only eight. The Capitol is supposed to be everyone’s government now. It’s supposed to protect all of us. I don’t see how making children fight each other to the death is protecting anyone.

Where is Sejanus From?

Despite the unpopularity- and sheer riskiness- of this identity, Sejanus makes no secret that his origins and loyalties lie in District 2. In a unique circumstance, Sejanus’s father, Strabo Plinth, earned extreme wealth as a weapons manufacturer in 2 during the First Rebellion. With his riches, Strabo was able to buy his family’s passage and acceptance in the Capitol. The Plinth Prize was created to keep the Plinth family in the Capitol’s good graces by sharing their wealth and proving their loyalty to the Capitol.

With the First Rebellion still only a decade in the past, Sejanus has strong memories and ties to his time in District 2. When Dr. Gaul amends the criteria for the Plinth Prize, Sejanus is placed in an impossible position. Impacted by Coriolanus’s ideas, Dr. Gaul declares that each student in the Academy will be assigned a tribute in the 10th annual Hunger Games and function as their mentor. Sejanus is assigned to mentor Marcus, the male tribute from District 2 and Sejanus’s former classmate. Sejanus is torn apart, desperately and unsuccessfully trying to connect with his old friend, while simultaneously plagued (unlike Coriolanus) with the understanding that helping one tribute win the Games is aiding in the death of 23 others.

While Coriolanus and Lucy Gray instantly connect, forming a strategy and earning Capitol sympathy, Sejanus can’t even get Marcus to speak to him. In part of their preparation for the Games, mentors and their tributes were given the chance to tour the arena. During this excursion, rebel bombs explode, leaving the arena in disarray and the group in chaos. A handful of tributes, including Marcus, seize the opportunity to make an escape attempt, though only Marcus is successful.

When the Games are about to begin, Sejanus is comforted only by the thought that Marcus may have made his way to safety. But instead, the coverage opens with Marcus, badly beaten, strung up on the rubble in the center of the arena. When the tributes are released, Marcus is quickly put out of his misery, the only mercy left to be afforded him. Sejanus explodes, calling everyone involved in the Games monsters before storming out of the classroom.

What Happens to Sejanus?

That night, Coriolanus is roused by Dr. Gaul and sent into the arena to rescue Sejanus, who has gone in of his own volition. Racked with guilt and grief, Sejanus is intent on laying Marcus to rest. Part of him also hopes that tributes will kill him in the arena, thinking it would be a powerful image of rebellion for the act to be televised across the districts. However, Coriolanus quickly explains that Dr. Gaul has looped the footage of the Games; no one will see what happens to them in there. Coriolanus continues to rouse Sejanus into action, urging him to stay alive so he can do some “real good” for the districts.

However, it later becomes clear that Coriolanus was simply saying what he had to do to get Sejanus moving in order to save his own life. After Coriolanus himself is caught cheating to help Lucy Gray survive the Games, he and Sejanus are both sent to District 12, relegated to the role of Peacekeepers. Their work is bleak, overseeing hangings and overturning any plans of civilian uprising. But while Coriolanus is able to compartmentalize his emotions, Sejanus is unable to cope.

Sejanus begins conspiring with District 12 rebels. He helps a group, led by Lucy Gray’s ex-boyfriend, Billy Taupe, coordinate an escape from Panem. However, he’s not at all discrete, and Coriolanus fears his friendship with Sejanus getting him into trouble by association. While the pair are working with jabberjays (a mutation of mockingjays, invented by the Capitol to eavesdrop on the districts by using the birds to record conversation), Coriolanus tries to talk Sejanus out of whatever he’s planning. But his motives are different than that of a close friend, because he also discretely has one of the jabberjays- bound for Dr. Gaul- record their conversation, effectively turning Sejanus in.

Not long after, Sejanus is presented to the hanging tree, not as a peacekeeper, but as a rebel to be executed. He dies screaming for his mother. Coriolanus, stoic during the hanging, cries briefly when presented with Sejanus’s personal items in the barracks. But he quickly pulls himself together as he is welcomed back into the Capitol. Strabo Plinth even insists on paying all of Coriolanus’s university fees, as he was Sejanus’s best friend, brother even, until the very end.