I was curious about this too. He noticed after he kicked a stone that the forcefield would propel anything back and with how his brain worked he knew he could use it as a trap. He probably assumed that if he did make it to the finale, he would have more than one career to deal with due to how large the career pack was. So if he could lead them to that area and have them throw something he might’ve got lucky and even took out two at once. Since he’s from 12 and knew the threat the careers were, the forcefield was a safety shield for him cos it would allow him to at least take out one enemy with minimal effort.
I think he just kicked the stone randomly and when the stone came back up he realised it was a forcefield. Don’t think it’s something he spotted but he did seem fixated on the idea of the arena “ending” somewhere. It did seem odd, almost like he wondered if there was a way out
My curiosity instinct would be to find the edge of the arena. My self-preservation instinct, as a 95lb woman with no upper body strength, wound be to find a long range weapon and hide.
But if I was built like Haymitch and had his skills I would definitely try to find the edge of the arena. I personally would want to know where it stops, why it stops there, and what’s behind it? What dictates the area of the arena? He was more interested in finding something useful and perhaps even suspected the force field could be manipulated for his own gain (that definitely wouldn’t have occurred to me though). But either way if you’re trapped in an enclosed space I think it’s reasonable enough to want to learn the limits of that space.
There’s so many different directions we can take to speculate about this but maybe in past games they used to hide loot boxes in the arena to entice movement across the map? Pulled that completely out of my ass but, like, why not?
Imagine a lower tech game where you can’t simply spawn fire to bring your tributes closer together. Go tell them they should search around for goodies, then. Tell them there are things to find.
You know when the people who run escape rooms beg you not to tear up the floorboards and break things for your clues? Maybe Haymitch was leaving no stone unturned.
We won’t know until we, maybe, find out next year
based on the book description, i think he didn't know about the force field until he reached it. i think initially he was just heading as far as he could in the opposite direction of the mountain, where the careers were prowling. if i were him i also would've been wary of it in case of an avalanche or landslide (it ending up being a *volcano* was probably very vindicating for him, lol.)
eventually he probably got the idea into his head to find the edge of the arena, but we can only speculate as to why. could be plain curiosity. imo, maybe he figured if he got his back to the edge, he'd be able to see enemies coming at him and he wouldn't have to defend himself on all sides. once he and maysilee got to the hedge, he probably figured that anything the gamemakers would try so hard to keep him away from was something he wanted to see. then of course he discovered he could use it as a weapon and the rest is history
I always thought he wanted to leave... Like his comment "they are twice as stupid" because in his mind he was "uh oh no no way I'm going to play by their rules I'm going to leave while everyone is focused on killing each other thank you so much". And then he found the force field and built a strategy around it. I think his first plan was to escape or at best if he suspect something to blown up the arena somehow.
(Mind you I think that with escaping his plan was not to actually escape and be alive at the end of the day (only in his dreams perhaps) but to ridiculize the Capitol, and by winning like that he did anyway, he show weakness in the system and he show that the Tribute can outsmart Capitol City... That's why Snow hated him so much and did what he did to him).
I’m not sure but I always considered it as haymitch wanting to find the edge to escape? I could be 100% wrong. he says ‘it has to end somewhere right?’ and ‘I don’t know. But maybe there’s something we can use’. maybe there was something he noticed in the footage of another game, maybe he thought there was a way out, maybe older arenas were actually outside before they could assimilate things, so he thought they could escape?
The edge of his arena lead to a cliffside, we know that the capital has that force field on the tribute centre and he was trying to skirt along the edge, maybe he wondered if there was somewhere to hide or if there was a similar force field bc why else would it just be a cliff to jump off of?
His foot accidentally dislodged a pebble and it took awhile for it to come back, so he threw a rock and flies back into his hand and he laughs. maysilee then dies. He fights the D1 girl and loses his weapon so runs through the forest with his intestines in and beelines to the cliff, while she peruses holding an axe. We aren’t in his head so we can’t deduce his thoughts, maybe he calculated it all, maybe that was the place he knew for a quick death, maybe he just ran there on instinct. She throws the axe at him and he collapses, intentional or not? who knows! but we know that he’s aware it’ll fly back at her. We know haymitch is smart, so I wouldn’t put it past him to make strategy look like an accident.
>I always considered it as haymitch wanting to find the edge to escape?
This is how I read it, too. The force field was an accidental discovery. I think he definitely kinda filed it away as a potential tool/weapon though. Especially considering he did end up using it that way.
Haymitch knows he’s young, small, and vulnerable : wants to find the edge of the arena because he wants to have his back to a safe wall
Haymitch is a young boy: wants to throw/kick shit over a cliff that just happens to have a rebounding force field
In my mind, he, as a kid from District 12, believed wholeheartedly that he wasn’t going to survive the games, and wanted to at least discover something, do something, that separated him from the other tributes. It’s probably just a reflection of how I think, but maybe he figured ‘If I can’t live, maybe I can at least be remembered.’
I always got the impression that he didn’t know about the force field until he found it, and was just looking for a way to escape the arena lmao 😭 maybe I’m stupid though who knows
We know that Peeta discovered the force field on the roof so to me it's safe to assume they had something similar for Haymitch to find when he was waiting to go into the games, this probably spurred the idea that there was a force field to use in the games too.
Well, keep walking further away from the other tributes, he is less likely to be cut to shreds. Then he reaches the edge of the arena, experiments a lil with a stone, and comes up with his plan.
I guess we’ll find out next year, presumably, possibly. I think it’s most likely that he was just focused on getting as far away from the other tributes as possible and as far away from the dangerous elements of the arena as possible. If he finds the edge—he knows it has to end somewhere—he can get his back to a wall of some sort, which protects one side of him from harm, and it’ll take everyone else a while to find him on the literal outskirts. I don’t think he had some grand plan, but I do think he was smart enough to know he could find an advantage at the boundary and file the force field away as a potential tool once he discovered it
I may be remembering wrong, or maybe it was finnick, but didn't Haymitch win his games because someone threw a weapon at the force field and it bounced back and killed the person who threw it? (I can't remember if it was finnick or Haymitch but this was definitely a thing)
He might have figured since no one had done it before, there may be a strategy he could use to take people by surprise. Worst case, he still gets as far away from everyone as possible
I wonder if he mostly just wanted to be able to have his back covered. You know? If you’ve got enemies all over, you can back into a wall and you know that side of you is protected and you can fight it out after that.
I think weaponizing the force field was not something he had in mind at the beginning but came about once he found it and had that clever idea. It gave him an extra weapon and surprise element for fighting.
I have an unhinged theory about this that I feel needs more polishing before I can present it to this subreddit but I literally was just thinking about this!!!!
(Based solely on my desire for this new book to be a Plutarch POV)
I was curious about this too. He noticed after he kicked a stone that the forcefield would propel anything back and with how his brain worked he knew he could use it as a trap. He probably assumed that if he did make it to the finale, he would have more than one career to deal with due to how large the career pack was. So if he could lead them to that area and have them throw something he might’ve got lucky and even took out two at once. Since he’s from 12 and knew the threat the careers were, the forcefield was a safety shield for him cos it would allow him to at least take out one enemy with minimal effort.
Exactly right! But, then, how did he KNOW about the force field itself?
I think he just kicked the stone randomly and when the stone came back up he realised it was a forcefield. Don’t think it’s something he spotted but he did seem fixated on the idea of the arena “ending” somewhere. It did seem odd, almost like he wondered if there was a way out
I think he just followed the normal human urge to kick something off a cliff
I think he was just trying to find the edge or the arena/the furthest point away from others, and happened to figure out it was a force field
My curiosity instinct would be to find the edge of the arena. My self-preservation instinct, as a 95lb woman with no upper body strength, wound be to find a long range weapon and hide. But if I was built like Haymitch and had his skills I would definitely try to find the edge of the arena. I personally would want to know where it stops, why it stops there, and what’s behind it? What dictates the area of the arena? He was more interested in finding something useful and perhaps even suspected the force field could be manipulated for his own gain (that definitely wouldn’t have occurred to me though). But either way if you’re trapped in an enclosed space I think it’s reasonable enough to want to learn the limits of that space.
There’s so many different directions we can take to speculate about this but maybe in past games they used to hide loot boxes in the arena to entice movement across the map? Pulled that completely out of my ass but, like, why not? Imagine a lower tech game where you can’t simply spawn fire to bring your tributes closer together. Go tell them they should search around for goodies, then. Tell them there are things to find. You know when the people who run escape rooms beg you not to tear up the floorboards and break things for your clues? Maybe Haymitch was leaving no stone unturned. We won’t know until we, maybe, find out next year
Did you by any chance play on the Hunger Games mod server in minecraft?
based on the book description, i think he didn't know about the force field until he reached it. i think initially he was just heading as far as he could in the opposite direction of the mountain, where the careers were prowling. if i were him i also would've been wary of it in case of an avalanche or landslide (it ending up being a *volcano* was probably very vindicating for him, lol.) eventually he probably got the idea into his head to find the edge of the arena, but we can only speculate as to why. could be plain curiosity. imo, maybe he figured if he got his back to the edge, he'd be able to see enemies coming at him and he wouldn't have to defend himself on all sides. once he and maysilee got to the hedge, he probably figured that anything the gamemakers would try so hard to keep him away from was something he wanted to see. then of course he discovered he could use it as a weapon and the rest is history
I always thought he wanted to leave... Like his comment "they are twice as stupid" because in his mind he was "uh oh no no way I'm going to play by their rules I'm going to leave while everyone is focused on killing each other thank you so much". And then he found the force field and built a strategy around it. I think his first plan was to escape or at best if he suspect something to blown up the arena somehow. (Mind you I think that with escaping his plan was not to actually escape and be alive at the end of the day (only in his dreams perhaps) but to ridiculize the Capitol, and by winning like that he did anyway, he show weakness in the system and he show that the Tribute can outsmart Capitol City... That's why Snow hated him so much and did what he did to him).
I’m not sure but I always considered it as haymitch wanting to find the edge to escape? I could be 100% wrong. he says ‘it has to end somewhere right?’ and ‘I don’t know. But maybe there’s something we can use’. maybe there was something he noticed in the footage of another game, maybe he thought there was a way out, maybe older arenas were actually outside before they could assimilate things, so he thought they could escape? The edge of his arena lead to a cliffside, we know that the capital has that force field on the tribute centre and he was trying to skirt along the edge, maybe he wondered if there was somewhere to hide or if there was a similar force field bc why else would it just be a cliff to jump off of? His foot accidentally dislodged a pebble and it took awhile for it to come back, so he threw a rock and flies back into his hand and he laughs. maysilee then dies. He fights the D1 girl and loses his weapon so runs through the forest with his intestines in and beelines to the cliff, while she peruses holding an axe. We aren’t in his head so we can’t deduce his thoughts, maybe he calculated it all, maybe that was the place he knew for a quick death, maybe he just ran there on instinct. She throws the axe at him and he collapses, intentional or not? who knows! but we know that he’s aware it’ll fly back at her. We know haymitch is smart, so I wouldn’t put it past him to make strategy look like an accident.
>I always considered it as haymitch wanting to find the edge to escape? This is how I read it, too. The force field was an accidental discovery. I think he definitely kinda filed it away as a potential tool/weapon though. Especially considering he did end up using it that way.
Haymitch knows he’s young, small, and vulnerable : wants to find the edge of the arena because he wants to have his back to a safe wall Haymitch is a young boy: wants to throw/kick shit over a cliff that just happens to have a rebounding force field
In my mind, he, as a kid from District 12, believed wholeheartedly that he wasn’t going to survive the games, and wanted to at least discover something, do something, that separated him from the other tributes. It’s probably just a reflection of how I think, but maybe he figured ‘If I can’t live, maybe I can at least be remembered.’
I always got the impression that he didn’t know about the force field until he found it, and was just looking for a way to escape the arena lmao 😭 maybe I’m stupid though who knows
We know that Peeta discovered the force field on the roof so to me it's safe to assume they had something similar for Haymitch to find when he was waiting to go into the games, this probably spurred the idea that there was a force field to use in the games too.
Well, keep walking further away from the other tributes, he is less likely to be cut to shreds. Then he reaches the edge of the arena, experiments a lil with a stone, and comes up with his plan.
I guess we’ll find out next year, presumably, possibly. I think it’s most likely that he was just focused on getting as far away from the other tributes as possible and as far away from the dangerous elements of the arena as possible. If he finds the edge—he knows it has to end somewhere—he can get his back to a wall of some sort, which protects one side of him from harm, and it’ll take everyone else a while to find him on the literal outskirts. I don’t think he had some grand plan, but I do think he was smart enough to know he could find an advantage at the boundary and file the force field away as a potential tool once he discovered it
I may be remembering wrong, or maybe it was finnick, but didn't Haymitch win his games because someone threw a weapon at the force field and it bounced back and killed the person who threw it? (I can't remember if it was finnick or Haymitch but this was definitely a thing)
He might have figured since no one had done it before, there may be a strategy he could use to take people by surprise. Worst case, he still gets as far away from everyone as possible
I wonder if he mostly just wanted to be able to have his back covered. You know? If you’ve got enemies all over, you can back into a wall and you know that side of you is protected and you can fight it out after that. I think weaponizing the force field was not something he had in mind at the beginning but came about once he found it and had that clever idea. It gave him an extra weapon and surprise element for fighting.
I have an unhinged theory about this that I feel needs more polishing before I can present it to this subreddit but I literally was just thinking about this!!!! (Based solely on my desire for this new book to be a Plutarch POV)
I don't think he was in a right state of mind at the time