I'm from the government, and I'm here to control you: Books 1 and 2
Although I've read 11 books so far this year, I'm only going to talk about the two most recent books I've finished, Matched by Allie Condie and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
In many ways, the two make a natural comparison: both are dystopian YA books featuring teenage girls trying to come to terms with the highly restrictive rules of the societies in which they live. In both books, both young women show they are stronger than at first thought, stronger than they thought. And both young women, over the course of each book, come to question what they thought was right, and in their own ways, start to fight back.
In The Hunger Games, the nation of Panem sits in a far future North American continent. The Capitol is surrounded by 12 districts. Most people in the districts are very poor, while in the Capitol, there is no want. Ever year, there is a lottery, called Reaping Day, to pick two Tributes from each district to participate in The Hunger Games, a televised death match game that leaves just one Tribute standing at the end. The Tributes are one boy and one girl between 12-18. Because of poverty, people can get certain provisions, but each time they do, they get additional entries into the Reaping Day lottery. Thus, the more desperate and poorer people will likely end up with many more entries than the well-to-do, and thus a greater chance of being picked as a Tribute. And all entries are cumulative, so the older children also have a greater chance of being selected. In this world, Katniss Everdeen tries to keep her family from starving. Her district is the poorest of the 12. She's lost her father in a coal mine accident, and she illegally hunts with her best friend Gale in the forest surrounding their forest to try to provide food for her family, and make a little money selling what she can on the black market.
When Katniss' 12 year old sister Prim is selected on Reaping Day, Katniss immediately steps in as a volunteer to take her place. She is whisked off with Peeta, the boy Tribute and son of the local baker to the Capitol. And from the moment they are taken away, they are treated to unimaginable luxuries, including more food than Katniss has ever seen. But Katniss doesn't trust Peeta, who seems genuinely interested in being her friend, because she knows that in the end, it's every person for themselves in the Games. However, their mentor, the only person ever to win the Games from their district decides to go for a love angle to gain public sympathy and support for the two. Only, for Peeta, it isn't a game. He's very much in love with Katniss, and has been since they were young children.
Much of the book surrounds Katniss' entry into the Hunger Games, how she tries to survive, how she struggles to define her feelings for Peeta. In the book, it's stated that The Hunger Games were devised by the Capitol to remind the districts of their failed coup at some point in the past, to remind the districts that they literally hold the lives of everyone in the districts in their hands.
I thought the book was very well written. I almost hate saying I enjoyed it, because the premise is so horrific - taking entertainment from watching teenagers kill each other to see who is the last person standing. But I did enjoy it, and look forward to reading the other two books in the series. While reading this book, I couldn't help but wonder, how did this society get to this point, why do people go along with this annual slaughter? Will someone rise up from the districts and find a way of uniting them against the horrors of the Capitol?
After reading this book, I picked up Matched. It had been recommended last summer in a YA panel at one of the cons I went to. In the perfect society, everyone's actions are controlled down to the minute. The culture of their world has been made simple, so there are only the One Hundred Songs, One Hundred Poems, etc. Every aspect of their lives are decided by statistical probabilities, including their education, their jobs, their leisure activities, their diets. And their future mates. The burden of all choices are taken away from people, and in return, they get to live in a perfect world with no uncertainty, and die peacefully on their 80th birthday. In the year that every teenager turns 17, they attend their Matching banquet, where they find out who they're slated to marry. At the beginning of the book, Cassia is thrilled and excited about her Matching banquet. As much for the rare piece of chocolate cake as she is to find out who her Match is. Only it doesn't quite go as she expects. She finds she is Matched with her best friend, Xander. But the next day, when she looks at his data card, she finds a different face comes up as her Match, another friend, Ky. She is confused by what she thinks is a glitch. She finds out that Ky is an Aberration (his birth father committed a serious infraction that got Ky removed from his home and sent to an adoptive family and marked for life). As an Aberration, Ky will never be allowed to be Matched. Cassia however finds herself intrigued with him, spending more time with Ky, learning about him.
During the course of the book, Ky teaches her about his former life. When Cassia finds a forbidden set of poems by Tennyson and Dylan Thomas, she shares those with Ky. He teaches her to write, something forbidden by their society. (I think if people had the ability to write, they would use it to create, and their society wants no new creation - that would create too much uncertainty.) In the course of the book, Cassia comes to question whether her perfect life is so perfect, whether Xander really is her perfect Match.
There's a lot familiar about the dystopias of both books. They are not original in content, but that doesn't mean they are not relevant or meaningful books. In a way, it's unfair to compare the two, because they're very different. On the one hand, I thought The Hunger Games was a much more well written book. It grabbed me from the beginning and kept me. In Matched, I didn't really start to connect with the characters until about 1/3 into the book. But in the end, I found that I had a more emotional connection with Matched than I did with The Hunger Games. Cassia's rebellion is more internal, it's quiet, and to me, there's something powerful about that. While The Officials know to keep their eyes on her, she hasn't overplayed her hand, she has kept things close to the vest. She has secrets The Officials cannot imagine, and I think in the end that will harm them more. At least I hope so. Katniss, on the other hand, has played her hand well, but she has let everyone see what she's made of, what she's willing to do to get what she wants, to protect her family and those she loves. And the powers that be are well aware of what a potential danger Katniss is.
It's hard not to read these books and think about our own current society, where the government tells women what medical decisions they can and cannot make, where the government wants to tell gay people they cannot marry the ones they love, where schools take away perfectly good lunches from kids and give them sanctioned lunches. It's really hard not to think about the excesses of where our nanny state is going when reading these books. Of course, they are meant as cautionary tales, and the question them becomes, are we going to wake up in time to stop these abuses to our personal freedoms? As these books show, there are a lot of people who are more than willing to give up their freedoms for what they think are certain guarantees (and boy, don't we see this every day when the TSA assaults travelers all in the name of "protection?"). But there are also people who are willing to fight against this kind of curtailment of our freedoms, and therein lies hope for us all.
In many ways, the two make a natural comparison: both are dystopian YA books featuring teenage girls trying to come to terms with the highly restrictive rules of the societies in which they live. In both books, both young women show they are stronger than at first thought, stronger than they thought. And both young women, over the course of each book, come to question what they thought was right, and in their own ways, start to fight back.
In The Hunger Games, the nation of Panem sits in a far future North American continent. The Capitol is surrounded by 12 districts. Most people in the districts are very poor, while in the Capitol, there is no want. Ever year, there is a lottery, called Reaping Day, to pick two Tributes from each district to participate in The Hunger Games, a televised death match game that leaves just one Tribute standing at the end. The Tributes are one boy and one girl between 12-18. Because of poverty, people can get certain provisions, but each time they do, they get additional entries into the Reaping Day lottery. Thus, the more desperate and poorer people will likely end up with many more entries than the well-to-do, and thus a greater chance of being picked as a Tribute. And all entries are cumulative, so the older children also have a greater chance of being selected. In this world, Katniss Everdeen tries to keep her family from starving. Her district is the poorest of the 12. She's lost her father in a coal mine accident, and she illegally hunts with her best friend Gale in the forest surrounding their forest to try to provide food for her family, and make a little money selling what she can on the black market.
When Katniss' 12 year old sister Prim is selected on Reaping Day, Katniss immediately steps in as a volunteer to take her place. She is whisked off with Peeta, the boy Tribute and son of the local baker to the Capitol. And from the moment they are taken away, they are treated to unimaginable luxuries, including more food than Katniss has ever seen. But Katniss doesn't trust Peeta, who seems genuinely interested in being her friend, because she knows that in the end, it's every person for themselves in the Games. However, their mentor, the only person ever to win the Games from their district decides to go for a love angle to gain public sympathy and support for the two. Only, for Peeta, it isn't a game. He's very much in love with Katniss, and has been since they were young children.
Much of the book surrounds Katniss' entry into the Hunger Games, how she tries to survive, how she struggles to define her feelings for Peeta. In the book, it's stated that The Hunger Games were devised by the Capitol to remind the districts of their failed coup at some point in the past, to remind the districts that they literally hold the lives of everyone in the districts in their hands.
I thought the book was very well written. I almost hate saying I enjoyed it, because the premise is so horrific - taking entertainment from watching teenagers kill each other to see who is the last person standing. But I did enjoy it, and look forward to reading the other two books in the series. While reading this book, I couldn't help but wonder, how did this society get to this point, why do people go along with this annual slaughter? Will someone rise up from the districts and find a way of uniting them against the horrors of the Capitol?
After reading this book, I picked up Matched. It had been recommended last summer in a YA panel at one of the cons I went to. In the perfect society, everyone's actions are controlled down to the minute. The culture of their world has been made simple, so there are only the One Hundred Songs, One Hundred Poems, etc. Every aspect of their lives are decided by statistical probabilities, including their education, their jobs, their leisure activities, their diets. And their future mates. The burden of all choices are taken away from people, and in return, they get to live in a perfect world with no uncertainty, and die peacefully on their 80th birthday. In the year that every teenager turns 17, they attend their Matching banquet, where they find out who they're slated to marry. At the beginning of the book, Cassia is thrilled and excited about her Matching banquet. As much for the rare piece of chocolate cake as she is to find out who her Match is. Only it doesn't quite go as she expects. She finds she is Matched with her best friend, Xander. But the next day, when she looks at his data card, she finds a different face comes up as her Match, another friend, Ky. She is confused by what she thinks is a glitch. She finds out that Ky is an Aberration (his birth father committed a serious infraction that got Ky removed from his home and sent to an adoptive family and marked for life). As an Aberration, Ky will never be allowed to be Matched. Cassia however finds herself intrigued with him, spending more time with Ky, learning about him.
During the course of the book, Ky teaches her about his former life. When Cassia finds a forbidden set of poems by Tennyson and Dylan Thomas, she shares those with Ky. He teaches her to write, something forbidden by their society. (I think if people had the ability to write, they would use it to create, and their society wants no new creation - that would create too much uncertainty.) In the course of the book, Cassia comes to question whether her perfect life is so perfect, whether Xander really is her perfect Match.
There's a lot familiar about the dystopias of both books. They are not original in content, but that doesn't mean they are not relevant or meaningful books. In a way, it's unfair to compare the two, because they're very different. On the one hand, I thought The Hunger Games was a much more well written book. It grabbed me from the beginning and kept me. In Matched, I didn't really start to connect with the characters until about 1/3 into the book. But in the end, I found that I had a more emotional connection with Matched than I did with The Hunger Games. Cassia's rebellion is more internal, it's quiet, and to me, there's something powerful about that. While The Officials know to keep their eyes on her, she hasn't overplayed her hand, she has kept things close to the vest. She has secrets The Officials cannot imagine, and I think in the end that will harm them more. At least I hope so. Katniss, on the other hand, has played her hand well, but she has let everyone see what she's made of, what she's willing to do to get what she wants, to protect her family and those she loves. And the powers that be are well aware of what a potential danger Katniss is.
It's hard not to read these books and think about our own current society, where the government tells women what medical decisions they can and cannot make, where the government wants to tell gay people they cannot marry the ones they love, where schools take away perfectly good lunches from kids and give them sanctioned lunches. It's really hard not to think about the excesses of where our nanny state is going when reading these books. Of course, they are meant as cautionary tales, and the question them becomes, are we going to wake up in time to stop these abuses to our personal freedoms? As these books show, there are a lot of people who are more than willing to give up their freedoms for what they think are certain guarantees (and boy, don't we see this every day when the TSA assaults travelers all in the name of "protection?"). But there are also people who are willing to fight against this kind of curtailment of our freedoms, and therein lies hope for us all.