A Career Tribute, more commonly known as a Career, is a tribute who trains throughout their lives to compete in the Hunger Games and then volunteers to participate. The Careers attend a special combat academy until they are 12-18 for the Games, then they volunteer. Typically, most Careers come from the wealthier districts, 1, 2 and 4, where being a tribute is seen as a great honor. The Careers in the 74th Hunger Games were led by Cato. In the 75th Hunger Games, there was no known leader of the Careeralliance.
Career Tributes
Career Tributes are always the strongest, most agile, and most flexible players in the Hunger Games, having been prepared and trained since they were born. Even though training tributes before the Games begin is technically illegal, the Career districts generally get away with this because of their wealth and closer ties to the Capitol. The willingness and in some cases even enjoyment to kill their opponents before the Games even start, cultivated from years of preparation and the support of their families and fellow district citizens, gives Careers a tremendous mental and physical advantage over the other tributes.
These tributes volunteer to participate in the Games, causing much more commotion during the reaping than necessary. In the other districts and especially in the poorer ones such as districts 10, 11 and 12, becoming a volunteer tribute is viewed as sheer suicide. But in Career districts, volunteering is very common. Everyone wants to win the Games, even if it means volunteering. In wealthy districts, victors are regarded as heroes and amass great fame after winning the Games. In the movie, the Careers are very "chatty." Glimmer and Cato run around mocking tributes they are going to kill or have killed. This is in contrast to the novels, where the Career Tributes are generally more stealthy and menacing.
Prior to the start of each Hunger Games, Careers generally begin to form an alliance among themselves, which will cooperate when the Games get underway to secure weapons and supplies and take out common opponents. This gives the Careers an enormous edge during the bloodbath as they already have a strategy in place to carry out and do not need to worry about being killed by each other. However, once most of the other tributes are out of the way, they usually begin to turn on each other.
The Careers (Glimmer, Clove, Marvel and Cato) attempting to kill Katniss.
In the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss killed almost all of the Career tributes; she killed both District 1 tributes and was partly responsible for the death of both of the District 2 Tributes, such as Glimmer and the District 4 female (although not in the film) when Katniss dropped the nest of Tracker Jackers on the Career alliance, and Marvel, who was shot in the neck (heart in the movie) by her arrow. Cato was technically killed by Katniss with an arrow to the head to put him out of his misery when being mauled by wolf-like muttations, (although Peeta was equally responsible, since he shoved Cato off the Cornucopia to the mutts) and Clove was killed by Thresh when she was about to kill Katniss. Thresh did so to avenge Rue's death. In the Cornucopia bloodbath, the District 4 male (not a Career in the movie, unknown in the book) was unusually killed in the bloodbath. It is unknown how he was killed, although Careers dying in the bloodbath is not typical.
Despite their edge in preparation for the Games, Careers have some severe disadvantages. Being well fed their entire lives, they are not as used to going hungry as tributes who have spent their lives in poverty and are very reliant on securing the supplies from the Cornucopia. Another disadvantage to them from being well fed their entire lives is their presumed heavy weight, making it difficult for them to climb trees or chase a particularly light and speedy person. They usually are very arrogant and tend to underestimate their opponents, therefore they may not think before acting. Though Careers are very effective in combat confrontations, their basic survival skills are generally quite poor; thus, if they do not remove their most dangerous opponents in the initial bloodbath (when their advantage is usually strongest) they gradually lose the initiative unless they can keep control of the Cornucopia supplies.
Careers often attempt to recruit normal tributes who have potential or superior traits to their own to join them, such as Katniss, Peeta, and Thresh.
Career Districts
District 1, District 2, and District 4 tend to be the Career districts, although other tributes are allowed to join if they show exceptional skill. These districts are richer and have more supplies than other districts, giving a huge advantage to their tributes and allowing them to prepare and train. Katniss once pointed out a common weakness of the Careers: the Careers couldn't handle lack of food. Another weakness, which sometimes leads to their downfall, is their arrogance which is explained by Haymitch in the film.
These districts normally have an elaborate way of choosing volunteers, as they have no lack of them.
In The Hunger Games film, District 4 is not a Career district, so the only Careers are Glimmer, Marvel, Clove and Cato, along with the District 3 male and Peeta.
74th Hunger Games Career Pack
The Careers taunt Katniss as they chase her.
In the 74th Hunger Games, the Career Pack consisted of seven members total: the female tribute from District 4, the boy from District 3, Cato, Clove, Marvel, Glimmer, and Peeta. All four tributes from Districts 1 and 2 were specially trained with a specific weapon and were able to retrieve it at the Cornucopia: Cato with a short broadsword, Marvel with javelins (throwing spears), Glimmer with a bow and arrows (though Katniss stated that she was actually a poor shot) and Clove with a wide variety of knives. The group teamed up with Peeta to find Katniss, though several members were contemplating on whether or not they should kill Peeta early before going after Katniss. The pack didn't fare too well, however, as the boy from District 4 died in the bloodbath on the first day; but this is because he wasn't very skilled, or because of his very small size. Not long after,
The careers and Peeta
Glimmer and the District 4 girl were killed by tracker jacker stings, which was the result of a nest of the muttations dropped on them by Katniss. As Katniss went to retrieve Glimmer's bow, Cato saw Peeta aid her in her escape. This led Cato to severely wound Peeta's leg and abandon him, lowering the pack's number to three. The group later included the boy from District 3 because he could reactivate the land mines located around the round metal plates that brought the tributes into the arena, after digging them up and retrieving them. The Career Tributes used these mines as a defense against the other opposing tributes by positioning them around their stocks of food, weapons, and equipment that they were able to amass from the Cornucopia bloodbath, ready to detonate if anyone were to stealthily approach and steal their supplies. For this reason, the Careers exhibited confidence at leaving their supply stocks at the open, with only one of them standing out as guard. The Careers presumably familiarized themselves as to where the mines were hid, so as to not put themselves at risk when they need to retrieved something from the cache pyramid. Unfortunately, Foxface was able to discover and even replicate their pattern of navigating across the mines, allowing her to safely approach the supplies and take small amounts of food. The land mines were placed in such a way that they can destroy the supply stocks entirely if several of them were to explode. This is what happened when Katniss used her bow to cause several apples to fall from a burlap sack, leveling the pyramid.
Briefly after Katniss blew up the Careers' supplies, Cato killed the boy from District 3 out of anger. Minutes later, Marvel speared and killed Rue, and Katniss killed him in vengeance by shooting an arrow into his neck(heart in the movie). At the feast, Thresh bashed Clove's head with a large rock (hits her head on the wall of the Cornucopia twice in the movie). Cato was the last Career left in a flurry of bloodlust. He made it to the final three and almost killed Peeta, but Katniss shot his hand and knocked him off the edge of the Cornucopia. Wolf muttations tore at him until Katniss shot him out of pity.
75th Hunger Games Career Pack
In the 75th Hunger Games, or the third Quarter Quell, the Career Pack originated with Enobaria
Brutus, Enobaria, Cashmere and Gloss.
& Brutus from District 2, and Gloss & Cashmere from District 1. There were no careers from District 4 (whose tributes are usually a part of the career pack), as Finnick and Mags teamed up with Katniss and Peeta. Once Gloss and Cashmere were killed by Katniss and Johanna respectively, Brutus and Enobaria hid until the end. Then, Peeta killed Brutus after watching him kill Chaff, and Enobaria was taken by the Capitol.
Known Careers
- Peeta: In the 74th Hunger Games he joined the Careers to protect his alliance with Katniss, then turned on them.
- Cato: Male tribute from District 2 and leader of the 74th Hunger Games' Career pack. He was killed by Katniss using her final arrow out of pity.
- Clove: The female tribute from District 2. Killed by Thresh with a rock slammed into her skull at the Feast in the 74th Hunger Games. (In the movie he bashed her head against the Cornucopia twice.)
- Marvel: The male tribute from District 1. Killed by Katniss with an arrow after he threw a spear into Rue's stomach, who died several minutes later, in the 74th Hunger Games.
- Glimmer: The female tribute from District 1. Killed by Tracker Jackers, whose nest was dropped by Katniss in the 74th Hunger Games.
- Cashmere: A female victor from District 1; killed byJohanna Mason who threw an axe into her chest after her brother, Gloss, killed Wiress in the 75th Hunger Games.
- Gloss: A male victor from District 1; killed by Katniss by an arrow in the temple(chest in the movie) after he slit Wiress' throat in the 75th Hunger Games.
- Brutus: Male victor from District 2; killed by Peeta after Brutus killed Chaff in the 75th Hunger Games.
- Enobaria: Female victor from District 2; captured by the Capitol after the 75th Hunger Games, still alive after the rebellion.
- District 3 male (74th HG): Killed by Cato by him snapping his neck. He was not from a Career district but he earned his place in the Career pack by reactivating the mines around the Cornucopia.
- District 4 female (74th HG): Killed by tracker jackers, whose nest was dropped by Katniss in the 74th Hunger Games. In the film, she wasn't a part of the Careers and was killed by Cato in the bloodbath.
- District 1 female (50th HG): Killed by her own axe when Haymitch ducked and the axe rebounded off the force field and buried itself in her head.
- Finnick Odair: Male victor from District 4; friend of Katniss and Peeta but killed by lizard mutts in the Battle of the Capitol in Mockingjay.
- Annie Cresta: Female victor from District 4; captured by the Capitol to hurt Finnick, alive at the end of the rebellion.
- Mags: Female victor from District 4; died in the 75th Hunger Games when she sacrificed herself by walking into poisonous fog.
- District 4 male (74th HG): Killed in the initial bloodbath; in the film he wasn't a part of the Careers and was killed by Cato, in the book he was killed by an unknown tribute in the bloodbath. However, he could be considered a Career in the novel.
- Lyme: Female victor from District 2; killed in battle after Katniss was shot during the rebellion.