“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins :: The Hunger Games

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Title: The Hunger Games // Author: Suzanne Collins // Publisher: Scholastic Press

“And it is true, Peeta has always had enough to eat. But there’s something kind of depressing about living your life on stale bread, the hard, dry loaves that no one else wanted.” –Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

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Katniss Everdeen, District 12: Orphan, archer, stand-in mother. The only one who puts food on the table, protects her sister from authorities that want to take her away, make her run, let her die. Hunting-partner of Gale Hawthorne. And perhaps more, some day… if some day ever comes. Guardian, huntress, volunteer.
Tribute.

Peeta Mellark, District 12: Baker, student, observer. Despised by his mother, and unknown by the one he loves most in the world. Kind, giving without taking. Gentle, often-burned hands, strong of heart as well as mind. Eater of stale bread. Stolid, in love, powerful.
Tribute.

A boy and a girl, as punishment for a war they can’t remember, are torn out of their lives of hardship to face greater hardship still. Members of the Twelfth of twelve Districts dictated by the tyrannous Capitol, Katniss and Peeta  are forced into a televised fight to the death against two tributes from each of the other Districts, in an arena engineered to kill.

Taken to the Capitol to be cleansed of everything that makes them themselves, plumped up, trained to survive- and ensure that others do not. Equally horrified and amazed at the extravagance of what those in the Capitol have at their disposal every day. The murderers are beyond ease, and far beyond rich.

Thick stews and sparkling drinks are offered them, these two, destined to die. Smiling, uncaring fools pretend that they matter. Far from home, Katniss longs for a forest to hunt in, a sister to curl up with at night when it’s cold, but to no avail. Death will be the end, she knows, of mind, body, or both. Mentored by a drunken past-winner of the games named Haymitch, she fights each day against hopelessness, fear, and hatred. No. The hatred she does not fight. And knowing that she must kill the boy that came with her, the boy with the bread, is just another one of the Capitol’s little games that she can’t help playing. Can she trust him? Does he trust her? Does it even matter?

But too quickly comes the end, chasing her always and making her, in a convoluted way, its prey. Unwilling to except it, Katniss fights to escape, fights to get home to her sister, fights the Capitol with her omnipotent will to live. That’s what she is now. Fighter. The Games, her confusing feelings for Peeta, her memories of Gale, the Capitol- all of these become targets. Shoot straight, girl of arrow, love, and flame.

On the curtails of the confusion, suffering, training, preparations- the moment comes. It is time. Let the 74th Annual Hunger Games begin.

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It’s hard at first to nail down a book like The Hunger Games.  Was it a romance? A prophecy? A suspenseful thriller formulated in some “Make-bazillions-of-dollars book lab”? (p.s. It did. [p.p.s. Entirely deserved every dollar.]) This was, in fact, a re-read for me, something I don’t do often. I wanted, though, to give the Hunger Games the honor it deserves.

Suzanne Collins wrote it as a warning, a lens through which one might see the world in a different light, or no light at all. The Hunger Games allows you to see what you normally can not, experience the primal fear of an awful death at an unjust hand, the oppression of the masses for the luxury of the few. It gives new depth to love, murder, and pain, words which some novels use lightly. They are not meant to be written or read lightly.

I think, ultimately, that the category I would put The Hunger Games in would be “Real.” It allows the reader to see reality as it could be, and should never be. It urges the reader, “Pay attention to death, and those around you who live in fear. See the brutality of this world for what it is. But most importantly, love, and do so abundantly.” A curious message to find, these days, in a YA novel. (And it is that, by the way. I wouldn’t suggest this for younger kiddos. Or really anyone you’d call a kiddo.)

Out of place though it may be, this caution is a valuable message to we who live in a world where terrorism, communism, and murder are everyday occurrences. My advice to you is this: Read the book. Hear its message. See its truth. And work to make things different.