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Roses
Coriolanus’s relationship to his mother’s compact represents his journey of trying—and ultimately failing—to be a good, kind person. Though Coriolanus is selfish and only interested in bettering his position from the novel’s beginning, his habit of sniffing his mother’s rose-scented powder in her rose-engraved compact humanizes him. It suggests he appreciates sweet, nice things and could be more like his mother, who was kind and a music lover. The rose scent and engraving also emotionally connect Coriolanus to his family.
Coriolanus starts to give up on this when he separates the powder disk from the compact. He gives the compact to Lucy Gray so she can fill it with rat poison, take it into the Hunger Games arena, and poison her opponents. Though Coriolanus frames this as a kind thing he’s doing for Lucy Gray (as it will help her achieve victory in the ring), the fact remains that he’s corrupting the compact, something that’s beautiful, for terrible means. But the fact that he still holds onto the powder disk and sniffs it to feel close to his mother suggests that he hasn’t totally given up on being a good person yet.
In the novel’s final chapters, when Coriolanus makes an ill-fated attempt to run away with Lucy Gray, Coriolanus takes the final step in his journey of becoming a villain. When he realizes he can destroy the gun he used to murder Mayfair and then go about his life with the Peacekeepers without facing consequences, Coriolanus turns on Lucy Gray. He shoots at her in the woods, which represents a major shift from only hours before, when he was in love with her and wanted to run away with her. And after sinking the gun in a lake and heading back to base in the pouring rain, the powder disk from the compact (which was in Coriolanus’s pocket) has turned to paste and is totally unsalvageable. Later, when Coriolanus retrieves the empty compact from Dean Highbottom, Coriolanus is like the empty compact himself: from a moral perspective, he’s empty and beyond salvaging.
The Compact and Powder Quotes in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
The The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Compact and Powder. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 30
Quotes
He went to the bathroom and emptied his pockets. The lake water had reduced his mother’s rose-scented powder to a nasty paste, and he threw the whole thing in the trash. The photos stuck together and shredded when he tried to separate them, so they went the way of the powder. Only the compass had survived the outing.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Compact and Powder Symbol Timeline in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Compact and Powder appears in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
...He keeps a picture of his mother on his nightstand and still sniffs his mother’s compact, which contains rose-scented powder. She died in childbirth a few months into the war; Coriolanus’s...
(full context)
Chapter 6
...Lucy Gray is manipulative. Coriolanus doesn’t argue and heads for bed. He fingers his mother’s powder compact and sniffs the rose smell, thinking maybe it’s best he has his father’s eyes.
(full context)
Chapter 10
...If there is, it hasn’t made it onto TV yet. He fishes out his mother’s compact, but the scent isn’t enough to calm him. Coriolanus paces all night. Early in the...
(full context)
Chapter 12
...but he knows he has to make a grand gesture. Coriolanus pulls out his mother’s compact and says it’s a loan. Lucy Gray takes the compact and asks if there used...
(full context)
Chapter 13
Lucy Gray understands immediately, but she sniffs the compact and says it still smells wonderful, like roses. She agrees to take the compact. She...
(full context)
Chapter 20
...but Dean Highbottom. On a table is an Academy napkin, a handkerchief, and Coriolanus’s mother’s compact. Five minutes later, Coriolanus signs up to be a Peacekeeper.
(full context)
Chapter 21
...with Dean Highbottom. Highbottom accused Coriolanus of stealing the napkin from the Academy. Tapping the compact, he called Coriolanus’s mother “vapid” and naïve, and Lucy Gray the exact opposite (but she’ll...
(full context)
Chapter 29
...aide requests Coriolanus to follow him. Coriolanus is relieved, but wishes he’d brought his mother’s powder. Coriolanus sinks into the commander’s chair and is surprised when Commander Hoff offers his condolences...
(full context)
...and Coriolanus joins his bunkmates in bed. At dawn, Coriolanus gets up, puts his mother’s powder and his father’s compass in his pockets with some family photos, and slips out. He...
(full context)
Chapter 30
...fine. In the bathroom at his bunk, Coriolanus discovers that the rain turned his mother’s powder into paste and caused his family photos to stick together. He throws them all away...
(full context)
Epilogue
...Academy and knocks on Dean Highbottom’s office door. He asks the dean for his mother’s compact, which Highbottom hands over. Then, Coriolanus pulls out Sejanus’s box, replaces the diploma in the...
(full context)
