The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

 First impressions The book The Hunger Games reminds me of ‘The Lottery’ written by Shirley Jackson, a short story we read last year for literature I. In both stories human lives are powerlessly depending on a random lottery. Both lotteries are described with great detail and a word choice that makes the reader believe he is witnessing just another innocent and entertaining game on a Saturday night, while at the same time one feels a very uncomfortable growing tension.  I admire the skills of both authors to accomplish these contradictory feelings by its readers.  

At first, I was drawn into the story of The Hunger Games by the reaping and its shocking outcome, especially the moment that Katniss´ sister´s paper was drawn at the lottery (page 24). The rules of the reaping, the poverty and the absurdity of the status of the Capital seemed only to provide a new and refreshing setting.
The chapters after the reaping made me aware of a different message of this book. The glamorous trip by train to the Capital, the luxurious dressing up of the tributes just for the entertainment on television; it is an ironic parallel to all the programs on TV called ´reality tv´. People who get makeovers, or betray their loved ones, or documentaries called ´shock docs´, all programs in which people are exposed in the most awkward circumstances to millions of people only for the sake of the best possible entertainment. A business in which the main goal is sensational images at the cost of vulnerable people. Suzanne Collins has done a great job in writing a story with constant suspense combined with a theme which is very relevant   for young people to think about.

In classThe myth of childhood innocence is not accurate. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Freud’s ideas have led to new understandings of what happens in the mind of a child. Freud found out that already at young age children think about sex and violence. In the book The Hunger Games the idea of a child’s innocent mind is also abandoned, the games involve children at young age to be violent and murderous.

TheoryWhy is Hunger Games such a great book for teenagers?
Firstly, because The Hunger Games includes all the ingredients for a great story.  According to Donald Maass (reader Youth Literature page 21) a great story has intriguing characters, a dramatic meaningful plot, a captivating setting, an appropriate theme, and an accessible, straight-forward style.  How do these cornerstones of a great novel apply to The Hunger Games:
- The Hunger Games has many intriguing characters, one of which is the main character Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen-year-old girl who achieves to survive and win the extremely difficult hunger games.
- Suzanne Collins pulls the reader as from the first page into a fascinating and well described world of 12 districts in North America in the year 2025 with a dramatic plot about games, glamour, killing, friendship and show business.
- The theme about the exploration of eleven extremely poor districts by one absurdly wealthy district alters the young adult’s way of seeing the world definitely.

Secondly, The Hunger Games offer realism, which is as Appleyard states (page 100, 101) an important feature of a story for teenagers. This part of Appleyard’s theory relates directly to the way David Denby explained the success of the Hunger Games in The New Yorker last April:  ‘Perhaps it’s that the books offer a hyper-charged version of high school, an everyday place with incessant anxieties: constant judgment by adults; hazing, bullying, and cliques; and, finally, college-entry traumas. If you stretch the metaphor a bit, the books could be seen as a menacing fable of capitalism, in which an ethos of competition increasingly yields winner-take-all victors’.

Age suitabilityHunger Games is a book which is suitable to read for thirteen years and older. Although some people argue that a book which narrates about children killing other children is not suitable for a thirteen-year-old. More information on this discussion can be read in the 156 posts on the website of ‘Helping Moms Connect’ about the question ‘Is Hunger Games Appropriate for Kids?’.

According to Appleyard (page 97) an adolescent of 13 years is able to think about the future, to construct theories and ideological systems, to develop ideals, and to understand others ‘points of view. They can think about thinking, and reflect critically about one’s own thoughts.  This is the source of adolescent self-consciousness and introspection.  Thus, the adolescent is very well capable of reflecting upon the circumstances and the gruesome choices, fights and killings that the characters of Hunger Games are facing.