Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games (2008)
Written by: Suzanne Collins
Genre: YA/Science Fiction
Pages: 374 (Hardcover)
Series: Book One of Three
I sort of avoided this book for a while. At first, I didn't even want to buy it, because the hype was so great that I was like, "I'm just gonna wait for the trade." But that never came out, and while I can't remember what made me pick up the book finally, but even after I did that, I held off. Again, the hype. It can be overwhelming, and I didn't want my expectations to be too skewed. But digitalclone wanted to read some YA SF for our May challenge, so I suggested this, and so read it I did. :)
The premise: ganked from BN.com: In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
Review style: This book is actually quite polarizing, and I want to look at some of the issues that make it so. We'll examine Katniss as a heroine, look at the premise and whether or not it promotes violence, how The Hunger Games is a commentary on our current pop culture, and lastly, we'll take a look at the love triangle, such as it is. Spoilers? Absolutely. Skip to "My Rating" if you don't want to be spoiled, but otherwise, read on!
As a young adult novel, there's a tendency to expect the books of the genre to carry certain positive messages (whether they should is another story), and when a book has a premise like this one, it's easy to make assumptions. It's also easy to get confused.
Katniss is an interesting character. For my money, she works as a developed heroine: she's not a damsel in distress; she has friendships with both women AND men; she does everything she can to protect her family, and that everything includes sacrifice: she took her sister's place in the Games, and no matter what you think of Katniss's decisions in the arena, that's a pretty heroic and moral thing to do. Katniss volunteered knowing it could very well mean her own death, but by volunteering, she's saving her sister's life. There's no question that this makes Katniss a good person. Someone to look up to.
There's also the interesting way Collins chose to handle Katniss's kills. Kills are either accidental (the berries, the wasps--whatever they were called), in defense of the weak, or mercy kills. While I think Katniss's first kill is that boy who goes after the same backpack as she (I could be wrong, it's been a while since I finished this) and that counts as survival, I think that on the whole, if one steps back and examines the nature of the games and how Katniss killed, she did so pretty honorably.
Then there's how she played them. Some readers are pretty upset that Katniss uses her body in order to get what she wants and needs. She fakes feelings for Peeta to save them both, and frankly, this isn't exactly immoral. If it's a choice between kissing a boy and getting rewarded with food and medicine (which could be construed as prostitution if one wanted to really examine it, but really, I don't think that holds much water), or not kissing a boy and letting infection kill him and starving yourself, well, I know what I'd pick. If you'd pick otherwise, I'm not sure I'd want to hear your reasons. Did Katniss have other options than the two I presented? No. And wishing the author had GIVEN her other options doesn't change the story. Katniss did everything she could to survive, and on the whole, she acted honorably. That she had to manipulate Peeta's feelings is another matter that we'll talk about later, but I don't have any issues with how Katniss played the Game. Threatening to eat the berries was GENIUS.
Then there's the dichotomy of her feminine and masculine side. I'm not sure what the problem is here. I completely bought Katniss as the provider for her family, and hunting didn't make her a man-with-boobs by any means. She didn't have a masculine attitude at all, which is how I define men-with-boobs. Female characters who, female names and body parts aside, simply act like men.
But Katniss has a feminine side, albeit an awkward one. I understood one of the tribute's reactions to Katniss twirling in her dress, but nerves will get to a person, and let's face it: if you've lived in poverty ALL OF YOUR LIFE and you're suddenly showered with riches and given the biggest make-over ever, isn't that going to make you a little giddy? And if you're female, won't it make you act a little girly? It's hard not to be excited when your reflection looks NOTHING LIKE YOU but you know it is, but maybe Katniss was supposed to be completely hateful and stoic about the whole thing, even the good. Sure, you can look at the makeover as a kind of wish-fulfillment, and you wouldn't entirely be wrong. But you'd be partially wrong, and I want to talk about why.
I'm an entertainment whore of sorts. Not only do I know completely random stuff about all of the television shows I watch (and the bands I listen to), but I also know completely random things about stuff I DON'T watch, bands I DON'T listen to. Entertainment is an addictive culture, and it's meant to be. Reality television is ESPECIALLY addictive, and it's the kind of thing you hate yourself for loving. Last year, I was obsessed with season eight of American Idol, and say what you want about how much you hate that show and all it stands for, but when you watch it from start to finish, you grow attached to certain contestants and you invest a LOT of emotional energy into their success and failure. You also support the franchise through votes and iTunes downloads and by reading interviews and participating in fan communities.
It's an addictive culture.
In light of reality television, The Hunger Games makes all the sense in the world. Sure, it's an evil and vile thing, but you've got a priviledged class sponsoring and supporting these nobodies for poor districts and watching them fight to the death. It's staged reality, and when you translate The Hunger Games to something like American Idol or Survivor, it should be easy to understand the nature of the audience, especially if you've ever obsessed over any of those shows yourself.
If you haven't obsessed over a reality show, then I'm not sure what to tell you. The audience's reaction makes PERFECT SENSE, as does Katniss's perspective of playing the Games, because she knows from YEARS of watching what makes good tv, what will win her favor, and what will help her win.
What trips people up, I think, is the violence of it all. But in that sense, you kind of need to take my reality tv example and merge with it sports events (for example, football of the American sport, not soccer), and then add the grandeur of the Olympics and . . .
Come on. How does this NOT make sense? The premise of the City using these Games to manipulate and control their districts after that one uprising makes all the sense in the world. It's a corrupt government, and they use these Games to demoralize the districts, to beat them down, and to keep them from wanting to team up with each other to take the City down. Why team up with another District when its tributes keep killing your tributes?
That's why Katniss's treatment of Rue was so spectacular. It's why Thresh gave Katniss a pass, because she DESERVED it for showing courtesy and true alliance. I don't remember reading where any of the district tributes started off by trying to kill EACH OTHER right away. Chances are, kids from the same district put off killing each other until the very last minute, unless they're from one of the districts that celebrates the Games and glorifies violence as a form of entertainment (really, the subtext here is so transparent), and in that case, their home crowd won't care if they turn on each other. They just want the strongest to survive.
People criticize why the tributes don't band together and rebel against the Games and the City. Why should they? This is the world they grew up in. While they know it's unfair, do they truly understand like you and I do that it's wrong? Besides, if the tributes banded together to overthrow the Games and the City in book one, what'd be left for the rest of the trilogy? Rebellion takes time to ferment, takes time to organize, so I'm not going to criticize Collins for making these kids act according to the world's culture she's created. It all makes sense, even if it offends your sensibilities.
Because the beauty of books like this is that it doesn't glorify violence, but rather it uses violence to show just how senseless it really is. And trust me, this isn't a subtle book by any means. Collins's style is pretty transparent and straightforward, and at times it makes her writing a bit clumsy (But if this is Prim's, I mean, Rue's last request… (234).
I have to give kudos to the Twilight nod on page 214 though: But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened. Maybe that was an accidental Twilight nod, but I giggled nonetheless.
People have complained that the rule changes seemed to convenient and too unbelievable. What rule change? The one where they announced that two tributes from the same district still living at the end would be declared dual victors? They never intended to honor that: it was all part of the entertainment gag and a ploy to play on viewers' emotions because of Peeta's love for Katniss. They wanted to see them survive to the end, and then that "rule" intentionally being reversed was just a way to make sure the final two would provide MORE DRAMA at the end. Because Katniss wouldn't have gone after Peeta otherwise, so it was all a ratings ploy. Only it backfired because Katniss and Peeta threatened to go all Romeo & Juliet on their asses, and that would've ended in ratings disaster. They HAD to change the rule then, because there would've been an UPROAR if there was no winner to the Games.
Unbelievable? Hardly. Convenient? No. If there's another "rule change" I'm missing, let me know, but know that anything they did to the tributes during the Games was ALL for the sake of drama and ratings, and that is in perfect keeping to the entertainment quality of the Games.
Now, about that love story/triangle. The triangle itself was weak. Gale is the guy friend who you know so well that the idea of marrying and having kids with him is kind of weird, because he's kind of like a brother, but once you get used to the idea that he's in love with you, he becomes something else entirely. Maybe not a true love, but someone more interesting and different and strange. Or, more in the case of Katniss, Gale is the kind of guy you know you'll marry and have kids with, but that's far away in the "one of these days" future. There's no romance involved, just inevitability.
That's why the triangle is CURRENTLY weak. Hopefully that will change.
Now, in terms of the love story, I equally like and dislike it. I like it in that it THOROUGHLY MOTIVATES THE PLOT OF THE GAMES. The love story admission is what invested the audience in Katniss and Peeta, is why the various "rule changes" happened for the sake of entertainment, and why Katniss could get away with the treat of suicide, because if the love story hadn't purposefully been played up, then we would NOT have gotten that ending to the Games. To people who wish Katniss and Peeta found a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAY to win the Games without resorting to romance (nay, not have Peeta in love with her at all), to you I say, tough cookies. That's not the story Collins is telling, and like any romance worth it's weight, if you take the romance plot out of the book, the story itself should collapse. And despite the great premise and exciting chapters, if you take out the romance, this story collapses. So it's essential to the plot, whether or not it's rendered well and/or you don't like it.
But while I understood Katniss's suspicion of Peeta's affection, her fierce disbelief that he might ACTUALLY be in love with her really grated on me. Yes, I understand WHY she thought that: she's a product of her culture after all, and she's all about survival and assumes others are too, but it wore thin after a while. The moment that made me cringe the most was when Katniss threw out the cookies that Peeta's father gave her because she thought it was a part of a plot. Oh, that made me cringe. I wanted to reach into the pages and rescue those cookies!
My Rating
Worth the Cash: the only thing I would warn ANY potential reader is this: pay VERY CLOSE ATTENTION to the summary on the book jacket, because the book is exactly what it advertises: kids killing kids for entertainment. If this premise bothers you, don't bother with the book, because you won't be happy, and you won't be able to see what Collins is really doing. Otherwise, this is a solidly good dystopia that reads really fast and engages the reader. Sure, it's a little obvious in several regards, and the ending isn't a resolution at all (which is why I'm glad I've got book two waiting in the wings), but it's a good story. Katniss is a pretty solid heroine too: she's resourceful and smart, a loner who doesn't completely shut out those around her, someone who knows the meaning of sacrifice. It's a good read, and I know why it's so popular. I wasn't falling all over myself in love with this, but I'm glad I read it, and I'm happy to read the rest of the trilogy.
Cover Commentary: I might be crazy, but for some reason, I've always gotten Russian vibes from this cover. Something about the font and the color usage and . . . I'm not sure what it is. Definitely, the cover grabs your attention, but I'll admit I was perplexed for a while by it. Now whether I'm the only one who was perplexed by this cover is another story . . . :)
Next up: An Autumn War by Daniel Abraham