The Hunger Games Chapter 8 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Katniss rushes back to her room and starts sobbing. She's really done it now. Will the Gamemakers punish her? Her family? She keeps beating herself up.
  • Katniss decides the Gamemakers will probably give her a low score so that she'll get no sponsors.
  • Defeated, she goes down to dinner. Everyone is there. Eventually Haymitch asks Katniss and Peeta just how bad they were today. Peeta says he got ignored. Katniss tells the company she shot an arrow at the Gamemakers. D'oh!
  • Katniss wants to know what will happen to her. Haymitch says that it wouldn't make sense to arrest her or punish her family. They'll probably just make her life hell in the arena. This cheers Katniss up a bit, and they all laugh and joke a bit at Katniss's description of the shocked Gamemakers.
  • Time to watch the announcement of the scores: the Career Tributes are in the eight-to-ten range, little Rue pulls a seven (whoa!), and Peeta gets an eight. Not bad!
  • And Katniss? Well. Katniss gets an ELEVEN. That's right. She's through the roof. Everyone is super-excited and kind of shocked. They must have liked her temper, Haymitch says.
  • The next day Katniss wakes with Gale on her mind. She relates the story of their first meeting in the woods. (That's right, everyone. It's flashback time again!)
  • Katniss was collecting tubers in the forest when she saw rabbits strung up in two snares: traps to catch more animals. Never having been able to make snares work herself, she moved closer to examine them.
  • That's when a boy appeared: he was fourteen years old and over six feet tall. He warned her that touching his snares would be dangerous, and that stealing is punishable by law.
  • The two bantered a bit and then Katniss showed him her bow. They talked hunting. Eventually they started swapping knowledge and, over time, they became hunting partners – and friends. And even something more than that.
  • Back in the present, Katniss feels pangs of longing and compares what she had with Gale to the fake friendship she now has with Peeta.
  • Breaking her reverie, Effie calls her down to breakfast.
  • Katniss enters the dining room and heaps her plate with delicious lamb and asks when they'll start prepping for the interviews. That's when Haymitch drops a bombshell: Peeta has asked to be coached separately.