The Hunger Games

I gobbled Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games when I was supposed to be reading Life of Pi. This was interesting pairing, given both novels depict characters pushed to extremes and using other potentially deadly characters for survival. Collins’s work is written for a younger audience and is easy to digest quickly while Martel’s Life of Pi is denser, postmodern, and more aesthetically interesting.

The thematic difference between the two, I would argue, surfaces when examining the presentation of violence. The ending of Life of Pi, which retells the castaway story using humans instead of animals, suggests that it’s easier for humans to digest stories of violence when attached to animals than when attached to humans, which assumes humans find violence among humans distasteful. Hunger Games, on the other hand, suggests humans delight in watching other humans torture and kill one another, which assumes humans are comfortable objectifying one another, particularly in the service of entertainment and of maintaining power in the hands of a few. Sadly, I think the latter assumption is more true than the former, as public displays of violence for entertainment have demonstrated from games in the Roman Coliseum to CNN’s capitalization on embedded reporting during the Gulf War.

So, while the Hunger Games series is lighter literary fare than Life of Pi, it does address serious social justice issues. In the first book of the series, the main issue is fascist power structures encouraging the disenfranchised to battle one another instead of overthrowing the oppressive power structure itself. In the novel, Panem represents civilization arising in post-apocalypse America. Due to the thirteen districts rebelling against the Capitol, the Panem government keeps the districts economically dependent on the center and implemented the Hunger Games as a reminder of the price paid for treason. Each year, each of the twelve remaining districts sends two tributes, a boy and a girl, to the Capitol for the Hunger Games, which are televised live. The tributes battle each other until only one is left, and that one is declared the winner. The Hunger Games themselves illustrate the use of media to establish competition among the districts so that they cannot again collaborate to attempt a coup, maintaining power in the hands of a few in the Capitol.

In response to the “divide and conquer” political strategy that maintains the oppressive power structures, the novel also posits small ways in which individuals can collaborate to resist those structures. When the protagonist, Katniss, volunteers to replace her younger sister as District 12 tribute, her selflessness becomes an act of resistance. Same goes for the mutual support that grows between Katniss and Peeta, the boy tribute from District 12, and between Katniss and the youngest tribute, Rue. Where the games encourage tributes to kill one another, mutuality indicates a refusal to play.

The ultimate moment of resistance that saves both Katniss and Peeta occurs when Katniss and Peeta plan to eat poison berries together and thus rob the Capitol of a victor. In staging this moment, Peeta uses the media coverage that has been used against them. Peeta says, “Hold them out. I want everyone to see” (344). He wants to make sure the Gamemakers and those in the home audiences know they are intentionally eating poison berries so that either the Gamemakers intervene to stop them or so that citizens can hold the Gamemakers accountable for their deaths. Through this act of mutuality, Katniss and Peeta defeat the game, embarrassing the Gamemakers, and situating themselves in rebellious opposition to the Capitol.

It’s important to remember that individuals have power in fascist systems, even if it is only the power to refuse to cooperate. As Michel Foucault writes, “Where there is power, there is resistance” (95). The existence of resistance to domination should give us all hope that we can take action against injustice. The keys to this action are mutuality (we don’t have to work alone) and publicity (one of the few ways small resistances can put pressure on fascism).

When the movie came out, I was worried that Hollywood’s need to reap profit from entertainment would co-opt the social-justice message of the novel, but I was pleased that the film remained closely aligned with the novel. In particular, the Hunger Games were not depicted as brave or fun but as an obscene form of torture perpetrated by a spoiled, comfortable public on oppressed groups. The costuming was particularly effective in making the film consistent with the novel. Never did viewers feel comfortable in the seductive wealth of the Capitol; instead, we remained consistently on edge with the protagonist, horrified at the excess and waste, the foolish obsession with fashion and media, and the willingness of the Capitol audience to enjoy the bystander role in witnessing human-on-human destruction.

Works Cited

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2008. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol. 1 New York: Vintage, 1978. Print.

Image Source:

The Hunger Games. Book Cover. N.d. Amazon.com. 8 April 2012. <http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Hunger+Games>