The novel is narrated by gladiator Katniss Everdeen , a sixteen-year-old [13] native of District Twelfth , who volunteers to participate in the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games in place of her twelve-year-old sister Primrose [v] , [14] while the choice fell on Peeta Mellark [s] a gladiator, one of Katniss's childhood classmates. Haymitch Abernathy , [sh] as their godfather, [15] guides the two tributes.A lonely drunk man, he had won a gladiator twenty-four years before and is the only surviving of the two gladiators who have won in the last seventy-four years for the twelfth district.

While preparing for the Hunger Games , Peeta reveals his love for Katniss - who has some feelings for Gail Hawthorne - her friend and hunting companion in the county. [16] This confession stuns Katniss and ignites a wave of excitement among the fans, because if Katniss and Peeta survive alone in the match, then one of them must kill the other in order for the match to end. After that, their godfather, Haymitch, began to promote them as two lovers bound by an impossible love doomed to fail, [17] asking them to feign feelings for each other, so that he could get rich sponsors to support them during the Hunger Games, so that the sponsors could send gifts to the gladiators that could It has to save the life of the gladiator and change the balance of power during the match. [15]

On the field of matches Katniss allies herself with Ru , [x] the girl from District Eleven [y] who reminds her of her little sister. When the girl is killed, Katniss surrounds Roe's body with flowers, in a symbolic gesture of defiance that expresses Katniss' disapproval of Roe's death and her rejection of these matches run by the Capitol. [18] Accompanying these events, the committee supervising the matches [Z] announced a change in the rule of the matches, as it allows for the first time in the history of the matches, for any gladiator, male and female, to win together as one team if they survive alone without the others, provided that they are from One interruption, a change that prompts Katniss to search for Peeta, finds him wounded, and nurses him back to health. [18]

In the end, all the gladiators except Katniss and Peeta are killed, and while they are waiting to be announced as the winners of the seventy-fourth edition of the Hunger Games, the matchmakers announce that the change in the rule of the matches will be canceled to push for a dramatic conclusion, where they will force Katniss and Peeta to kill each other, only to Katniss, in defiance of the Capitol, persuades Peeta to commit suicide together, by eating their poisonous berries called the Night Trap , [Z] which will lead to the matches ending without any victor, which forces the matchmakers to concede in time a decision Revoking the new rule to keep the gladiators alive, announcing that Katniss and Peeta will win the matches. [19]

Although they were given a hero's welcome after the match, Haymitch alerted Katniss that the Capitol is not happy with this ending, and that they may be taking punitive action against her, so the only way to deflect the Capitol's danger and ease their anger is for her to pretend that she made the decision to commit suicide out of love for Peeta. and without intent or prior defiance of the Capitol. While they are on the train back to District 12, Peeta realizes that Katniss's actions during the matches, her wooing him, and her displays of affection in front of the audience, were all a ruse of hers, which makes him angry, even though during the matches Katniss had begun to show genuine interest. towards Peeta, although she is unaware of her feelings for him, and when they arrive in their precinct after the match, she struggles to reconcile her feelings for Gale with her feelings for Peeta