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Entry tags:	book review, boy-meets-girl, dystopian, war, ya

Young Adult literature review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is definitely a book that combines a number of different elements. You’ve got a futuristic plotline involving the nation of Panem, you’ve got children being pitted against each other in fights to the death, you’ve got a government that’s watching every move and often choreographing things to their own liking, and you’ve got boy/girl tension on several levels. Ender’s Game meets Lord of the Flies/Battle Royale meets 1984 meets any number of YA boy/girl tension books. Suzanne Collins is certainly ambitious!

According to a Publishers Weekly interview, Collins "cites the Greek myth of Theseus, in which the city of Athens was forced to send 14 young men and women into the labyrinth in Crete to face the Minotaur. 'Even as a kid, I could appreciate how ruthless this was,' Collins recalled. 'Crete was sending a very clear message: Mess with us and we'll do something worse than kill you. We'll kill your children.'"

And kill them Crete-turned-Panem does. But to back up a moment, a little bit of a synopsis is probably in order.

Through an unexpected and courageous turn of events, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen finds herself a contender in the nation of Panem’s annual Hunger Games competition. Essentially, the Hunger Games are a televised gladiator-esque competition in which two children (one boy, one girl) between the ages of 12 and 18 are drawn from a lottery from each district of the nation. These children and teens are then groomed at the Capitol and shown in a series of interviews, are given ratings according to their weaponry, fighting skills and tactics, and then finally all brought into the arena, where they are forced to fight each other to the death over the next several weeks. The arena is essentially a terrain containing woods, lakes, and streams, so it’s rather large, and conducive to hiding, plotting, and seeking each other. They are also conducive to death with the mines, flames, and an endless number of weather changes (freezing temperatures, sweltering humidity, floods) that can randomly occur, since the Capitol (just as everywhere else in Panem) has eyes everywhere, and the goal of the games is for there to be one left alive at the end.

But Katniss is nothing if not smart, and together with the boy who “won” the lottery (Peeta, a baker's son), they form a plan to win the crowd’s favor. If they can win some favoritism, they have a good chance of winning, since support can come in the shape of food, water, and medicine delivered to them in the arena. Why not pretend to be star-crossed lovers? With Katniss and Peeta playing up their woeful, doomed love for each other, they can buy some time, and hopefully some help from viewers and “sponsors” outside the games.

But what happens when other contestants begin to die and their numbers dwindle? There can only be one winner. And what happens when Katniss and Peeta’s charade of playing two desperate teens in love begins to get confusing?

At first, I thought this book would be predictable, and in one sense, I was right. As an adult reading the book, there were many times when I thought Collins was using the bait-and-switch method of storytelling a little bit too often. She directs you to expect one thing, then turns it on its head. In one respect, it’s brilliant storytelling because if one thing is certain, I was not putting this book down, because I wanted to see if what she was predicting for the plotline would indeed turn right around. On the other hand, once it became apparent that the bait-and-switch method was going to be used more than once, it did make it fairly easy for me to predict what would actually happen. But even though I did generally do so, the end result was still that I was engrossed in this book because of the fluid storytelling.

In addition to the confusing romantic intrigue and the political horror of The Hunger Games, though, there’s also (of all things) a fair bit of dry humor. Despite her situation as a forced fighter in the games, Katniss still manages to make readers smile with her remarks about the stylists in the Capital, the frou-frou lives they seem to live, and their accents. Katniss is a likeable protagonist, in addition because she’s empathetic to her teammates, and has a good head on her shoulders, is self-sufficient in that she can provide food for both she and others as needed. Her empathy is often what drives the plot, and it’s interesting in part because while she holds so much empathy for the others, she’s also in a situation where she’s being asked to kill them.

As I neared the end of the book, I did begin to get more and more anxious, because pages were becoming fewer and fewer, and things were not closing up properly, there were things I still wanted to know! I definitely wanted more closure to the book, which means I am anxiously waiting for the second in what appears to be a trilogy, Catching Fire, which comes out in September.


Roundup:

I’d recommend this for readers: ages 12+

Similar (in various ways) to: Ender’s Game, Lord of the Flies, Battle Royale, 1984, The Giver

Genre(s): Dystopian, boy-meets-girl, war

Will this eventually be turned into a movie?: I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that according to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate Films has picked up The Hunger Games and thankfully Suzanne Collins will be writing the film adaptation. I have great faith in Lionsgate, and great faith in the film since they’re letting the author have some control.

Would I read this more than once?: Yes