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| “ | Do you hear that, Coriolanus? It's the sound of Snow falling. | „ |
| ~ Casca Highbottom taunting Coriolanus Snow. |
Dean Casca Highbottom is the secondary antagonist of the 2020 dystopian action-adventure novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a prequel novel in The Hunger Games franchise, and its 2023 film adaptation of the same name.
He is the unintentional creator of the Hunger Games, the bloodthirsty competition The Capitol authorized as a way to get back at the thirteenth districts of Panem for rebelling against them. By the time of the 10th Hunger Games, Highbottom teaches at the capitol's prestigious Academy and antagonizes the young Coriolanus Snow, one of his most hated students and future President of Panem.
In the film adaptation, he was portrayed by Peter Dinklage, who also played Simon Bar Sinister in the 2007 Underdog film adaptation, Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, Captain Gutt in Ice Age: Continental Drift, Bolivar Trask in X-Men: Days of Future Past, Eddie Plant in Pixels and Scourge in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
Personality[]
To be written
History[]
Past[]
In his youth, Casca Highbottom was friends of Crassus Xanthos Snow, with whom he hang out at Pluribus Bell's club. However, it all changed when the two attended the class of Dr. Gaul, whom Highbottom despised for her cruel nature, preventing him from properly participating. At some point, Gaul assigned a final project in pairs, which consisted in creating an extreme punishment for their enemies that would never be forgotten. To do so, Crassus got Casca drunken to reveal his darkest impulses, which inspired the Hunger Games. Snow told Highbottom all this was a private joke, but as Highbottom found out next day after sleeping off the alcohol he had consumed, Snow presented the idea as their final project. Angered, Casca confronted Crassus at Bell's club, but Crassus refused to apologize and told him to instead thank him. Feeling that he had been misused, Highbottom ended his friendship with Snow.
After graduating, Crassus fell in love with a woman, whom Casca saw using her silver compact many times when they went to college together. Crassus went on to marry his love interest, with Casca feeling that he tricked his love interest with giving her freedom, though he didn't give that to her. They stopped talking after graduating due to starting their jobs. When Crassus perished in the war of Panem's districts, Casca felt satisfied with his death. After the war, however, Gaul "rescued" their proposal for the Hunger Games, and because Snow was no more, Highbottom was credited with the creation of the Hunger Games to all of Panem, despite him wishing for the idea to stay purely theoretical. The night the Hunger Games were announced, Highbottom tasted morphine for the first time to cope with his guilt for creating such horrific event. Highbottom hoped the Hunger Games would eventually die out, but as the years passed and the Games continued, he kept taking more morphine, growing addicted to it.
After accidentally helping with designing what would become one of The Capitol's most important entertainment events, Highbottom went on to become the supervisor of the mentorship program at the Academy, holding the position of Dean. Among his best students were Sejanus Plinth and Crassus' son Coriolanus. In spite of his esteemed career, Highbottom kept getting addicted to morphine ten years into the Hunger Games, but the Academy reluctantly let him keep his post because of his importance and fame, despite rumours of their intentions to replace him as soon as possible. It didn't preclude Snow and his friends from calling him names, which Highbottom somehow found about later on, leading him to despise Snow, more than he already did due to the young Snow reminding him of his former friend.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes[]
Dean Casca Highbottom first appears the day in which the Academy announces the District tributes for their students, among them Coriolanus Snow, to mentorship. Despite Snow's hopes that he would be given a potential winner due to his grades, Highbottom assigns Snow to mentorship Lucy Gray Baird, the seemingly mentally unstable female tribute of District 12, which by that point, had lacked any victors. Later on, while dining with the rest of students and staff, Highbottom talks with Coriolanus and taunts him with being left in poverty in case he doesn't get Baird to win, discretly revealing to him that he is aware of the miserable conditions of his family nowadays.
After Baird's and Snow's spectacle in the Capitol's Zoo, Dean Highbottom requests the Peacekeepers to bring him back to the Academy, where Dr. Gaul shows an interest in Snow's potential, but once she leaves, Highbottom decides to give Snow a sanction and taunts him that if he receives two more, he will be expelled from the Academy. Though Snow tries to negotiate, Highbottom threatens him with another sanction for insubordination. Despite this, Snow later returns to the Zoo with Sejanus Plinth and they feed the tributes, feeling that Highbottom wouldn't be able to sanction them if they work together.
Highbottom later attends a class visit to Gaul's laboratory, where he rudely dismisses Snow and his classmates as he collects their questionnaires, ignoring Gaul when she asks him if empathy is pivotal for the Hunger Games and refusing to accept that the audience should be empathetic like Sejanus. Highbottom doesn't even attend the assembly for Arachne Crane's funeral the next day, letting Satyria Click organizing the assembly instead. He does show up during Arachne's funeral and offers his condolences to Snow before warning him that there will be cake that afternoon at the Academy.
Later on, Highbottom attends yet another of Gaul's classes, where he barely does anything besides asking Sejanus to obey Gaul when he tries to leave. Following the interviews night for the Hunger Games tributes, Highbottom and Gaul inform the students of how succesful the interviews were, with Snow and Gray being at the top, but Highbottom finds himself forced to call for a lunch break once Sejanus expresses his hatred for war when Gaul asks him about his writing assignment on what was the best part of war, likely to prevent the students from asking Gaul about what she means with her love for war proving her right.
Once the tributes are send to the arena, Highbottom and Gaul go to the studio where interviews are held for the mentors by Lucky Flickerman, taking the chance together to mock Coriolanus for his emotive goodbye to Lucy Gray, but Snow ignores them. When Highbottom takes the stage to speak about the Hunger Games, he mentions that the kids from the districts are just as equal to those of the Capitol, with resources being their only difference. Highbottom and President Felix Ravinstill then sit alongside Coriolanus when they return to the Academy and Highbottom asks Coriolanus to look for a seat for Sejanus Plinth before drugging himself.
As the Hunger Games begin, Highbottom lets the rest of the Academy's students to leave at five o'clock in the afternoon, but has the mentors stay with him to be the spotlight of the games. He then allows them to leave once night falls, though he advises them to bring a toothbrush and clothes to change. Later that night, however, when Sejanus decides to enter into the arena to die besides Marcus' corpse, Highbottom tells Gaul about Coriolanus' supposed friendship with thim, prompting Gaul to order Snow and Mrs. Plinth to come to the stadium, where Highbottom and the others wait for them. Highbottom declines Snow's idea to tell Sejanus through the speakers to come, as that would altert all the tributes, instead agreeing with Gaul's idea of sending Snow to retrieve Sejanus while they edit the cameras from the arena despite Mrs. Plinth's protests, implying that he may have given her the idea given how he smiles at Snow as he claims that the Snows don't die easily.
After Snow retrieves Plinth and nearly dies at the hands of the District 8 tribute Bobbin, leading Gaul to take him to her laboratory, she reveals to Snow that she and Highbottom had read his essay about war, asking him to expand on that next essay. Once the Hunger Games reduce to the Final Ten, Lucretius Flickerman asks Highbottom on his show, while trying to make his parrot Jubilee to compliment the Dean much to his uncomfortability, about how he thinks the 10th Hunger Games are going, to which the Dean responds that he feels that these Games have new interactivity since prior to the official begginning, due to some tributes dying before that and that the battlefield changed, plus how the audience can know be an active part of the Games. Jubilee then compliments the Dean, who shows no surprise at Flickerman boasting that the parrot did it. Sometime afterwards, Coriolanus remembers that he must win the Plinth Prize because he suspects that Highbottom could use the sanction he gave him as an excuse to not give him any award in case Lucy Gray doesn't win the Hunger Games.
In spite of this, Lucy Gray goes onto win the 10th Hunger Games, earning Snow the Capitol's praise, but Highbottom summons him to the advanced biology class and reveals to Snow that he and Gaul suspect him for having cheated and committed several infractions to win the Games, as they found out Coriolanus stole some of the Academy's food with a napkin that has his DNA after the terrorist act that claimed some tributes before the competition started, gave Lucy Gray his mother's silver compact so she could hide venom that she would use to kill Wovey and Reaper in the arena (which he obtained by having the Peacekeepers force Gray to give it to them) and incited Gaul's snakes to not kill Lucy Gray by throwing his father's handkerchief (which had DNA traces of himself and Gray) into the snake tank at Gaul's laboratory, which he deduced to have belonged to Crassus due to his initials being there before an innocent worker almost quit under the belief he was responsible for his allergy. He also mentions how Lucy Gray could have been punished for cheating, but that he felt it was not necessary given how returning Gray to District 12 felt as punishment enough.
Though he originally wanted to just sanction Coriolanus once more and disqualify him from the Hunger Games only to relent thanks to Gaul thinking he could serve as an injured martyr, because he can expel him now, Highbottom offers Snow to join the Peacekeepers for at the very least twenty years in exchange of not gaining public hatred, mockingly suggesting him to invent some excuse to desist from going to college with the Plinth Prize when asked by his student how he could announce that. This leads Snow to finally ask him why he hates him so much, as Bell had told him about his friendship with his father, leading Highbottom to reveal his hatred to Crassus and how happy he is he died, but that he hates him for being his father's image, dismissing Snow by telling him to go to the recruitment office before it closes in twenty minutes. During the physical exam, Snow hopes that he can fail it, but wonders if he will be publicly scorned or send to jail if that happens even though Highbottom didn't say it, also musing if Lucy Gray has indeed been returned to District 12 or if she has been sujected to a worse fate in Gaul's hands.
Sometime after Snow becomes a Peacekeeper at District 12, he considers committing suicide due to the horrible life that possibly awaits him at the Capitol once his service years are done, but Sejanus Plinth suddenly arrives and announces him that he will get the possibility to graduate from the Academy thanks to his father Strabo's assistance, who negotiated with the Academy to let Sejanus and Coriolanus graduate in exchange of a new gym, leading Sejanus to reveal that Highbottom wished to have both him and Coriolanus expelled but the rest of the staff opposed his decision, adding that the staff seems to not tolerate Highbottom any longer and want him gone. After Coriolanus and Lucy Gray reunite at District 12, Lucy Gray reveals that Highbottom has paid her since her participation in the Games, a niceness that shocks Coriolanus and makes him wonder what could have been Highbottom's reasons. He later thinks about Highbottom again after murdering Mayfair Lipp and indirectly causing Billy Taupe's death, remembering Highbottom's mockeries after the handkerchief exposed his unintentional cheating. Later on, after Sejanus Plinth's execution, Snow wonders that if Lucy Gray tries to expose him for Mayfair's murder, assuming that if she does so and tarnishes his reputation, Highbottom could be clearly happy to testify against him.
Following Lucy Gray's disappearance, Gaul's decision to delete all traces from the 10th Hunger Games due to its failure and his return from District 12 to The Capitol due to his "summer vacations" concluding, Snow decides to pay a visit to a worsened Highbottom, requesting him to return his mother's silver compact and Sejanus' belongings, as he is going to have dinner with the Plinths, his family, Festus Creed and Lysistrata Vickers to remember him in what would have been Sejanus' nineteenth birthday. Highbottom reluctantly gives the compact and Sejanus' belongings back, finding astounding that Coriolanus doesn't wish to see Sejanus' diploma for his treason. Snow thanks him for teaching him "compassion" through his creation, so Highbottom reveals the truth of how the Hunger Games were created. Snow concludes that the Games prove that Gaul's ideas that humanity is violent are true. Highbottom then asks Snow how was Lucy Gray's reaction upon his departure, but Snow simply says that it was sad for the two and that he must leave, leading Highbottom to dismiss him from his office. Unknown to Highbottom, Snow poisoned his morphine, hoping that in his last breath, Highbottom would realize that he would land on top for defying him.
Quotes[]
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Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- In the book, Dr. Gaul's first scene implies that Dean Highbottom is taller than her, as it merely describes her as a short woman without specifying how tall the Dean is in comparison. Plus, when Highbottom later asks Coriolanus Snow about Sejanus Plinth during the interview day, he grans Coriolanus from his shoulder. However, in the movie, Highbottom was portrayed by Peter Dinklage, who is a lot shorter than Viola Davis, who played Dr. Gaul.
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 Villains
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The Capitol Tributes Others | ||