Summary
- President Snow's bloody sores from poisoning are hidden by the smell of white roses, symbolizing the inability to cover up the violence and murder in Panem.
- President Snow dies laughing and choking on his own blood, a fitting irony for a man who spent his life plotting against others.
- Snow's story in "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" shows his first foray into using poison and sets him on the path to his eventual downfall in "The Hunger Games."
In The Hunger Games films, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) coughs up blood for a specific reason. The Hunger Games is a four-part film series that is based on the hit trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins. It’s a dystopian young adult series that is set in a version of the United States after a monumental war that saw the country divided into districts that are now forced to sacrifice two children yearly to a free-for-all battle to the death for the elite's viewing pleasure. It's tribute Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who eventually leads a revolution against their oppressors.
The new United States is known as Panem in The Hunger Games, and the Capitol is the city that rules over the other districts and forces the Hunger Games as a way of punishing the other districts under their rule. The ruler of the Capitol, and therefore Panem, is President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland) a white-haired, tyrannical, megalomaniacal ruler who becomes the main adversary to Katniss as she tries to bring him down. He is remorseless, shrewd, and paranoid and has managed a tight grip on Panem for 25 years thanks to his willingness not only to kill enemies but allies too.
President Snow Coughs Blood Due To The Sores In His Mouth
President Snow's sores are from poison
When Katniss first meets President Snow, she immediately notices the smell of blood mixed with the smell of the white rose on his lapel. What Katniss doesn’t know is that President Snow’s mouth is full of bloody sores that are the source of the smell. Finnick Odair, one of The Hunger Games' most dangerous tributes in the third quarter quell, tells Katniss in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire that President Snow once poisoned all his allies, concerned that they would become too powerful. In order to allay any suspicion, Snow drank the poison as well and gave himself the antidote afterward. However, the antidote was not a perfect solution.
President Snow developed bloody sores as a reaction to his brief poisoning. This is the primary reason Snow surrounds himself with white roses. They are ostensibly a show of his purity and symbol of beauty, a version of himself Snow finds it important to promote. But their real use is that the strong, genetically enhanced smell is supposed to cover up the smell of blood and of the young Coriolanus Snow's crime. Just as the smell of roses is unable to cover the blood, all the beauty and trappings the Capitol is known for in The Hunger Games are not able to cover the violence and murder lurking just below the surface.
The Ironic Symbolism Surrounding President Snow's Death
President Snow is killed by his own schemes
At the end of The Hunger Games, Katniss has defeated the Capitol and Snow. When she is set to execute Snow, Katniss instead shoots President Coin, and Snow dies laughing and, though it is never confirmed, choking on the blood from his sores. His whole life as president had seen him trying to hide his many crimes, including using roses to mask his bloody scent. His death can be read as him never being cured of the positioning; it simply took a while to take effect. Snow spent most of his life plotting against others and destroying their lives, and ironically, he died because of his own schemes.
Does Snow's Story In Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Play Into His Death?
The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes shows Snow's poison origins
Coriolanus Snow’s story in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes doesn’t explicitly play into his death. Instead, his story shows how “Corio” becomes the Coriolanus Snow that would take any and all power he could get to become the undisputed leader of Panem. In fact, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes shows the first instances of Snow using poison against others.
He first gets the idea to use poison because there is rat poison in the Snow home. Snow places some of the poison in his mother’s old compact and smuggles it to Lucy Gray Baird to give her a weapon to use when the time comes in the 10th Hunger Games. That’s the first time he has the idea to use poison instead of outright violence to help eliminate a threat, and it’s not the last in that particular story. Snow uses poison himself, mixing it into morphling, to leave for Dean Highbottom, knowing that he’s addicted and won’t be able to resist taking it.
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes chronicles the slow corruption of Coriolanus Snow while he’s mentoring Lucy Gray, but it also gives the audience an explicit look at his first foray into using poison to solve his problems. While giving the poison to Lucy Gray to use against other tributes is to save her life, it’s also to help him win the Plinth Prize, since he believes if the tribute he’s mentoring wins the favor of the audience, he’ll be awarded the coveted prize.
Though he’s discovered as cheating to help her win, it’s not the poison that is uncovered, though it is suspected since Lucy Gray has his mother’s compact. Snow sees the poison as a way for his misdeeds to go undetected, and it’s the poison that becomes his weapon of choice moving forward in his life. The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes sets Coriolanus Snow on the path to his death at the end of The Hunger Games' original story.
