It is the day of the reaping. Panem is the country that was formed after a series of environmental disasters and a brutal war over what land remained. Initially Panem was a peaceful, prosperous country. It consisted of the Capitol, located in what used to be called the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by thirteen districts. However, the districts rose up against the Capitol in what came to be called the Dark Days. Twelve districts were defeated, and the thirteenth District was destroyed.
The Treaty of Treason was signed in which the Hunger Games were implemented. Each year, on what is called reaping day, each of the districts must provide a boy and a girl, called tributes, to be sent to the Capitol. There they fight to the death in the Hunger Games, in an outdoor arena. The last tribute alive is the victor who receives gifts and wealth. That victor is expected to mentor the next year's tributes from their district.
The Hunger Games are a punishment for the uprising of the districts and a reminder to them that the Capitol is in absolute control and rebellion will not be tolerated.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen lives in the poorer part of District 12 known as the Seam with her mother and her twelve-year-old sister Primrose (Prim). District 12 is located in a region known as Appalachia. Their house is almost at the edge of the Seam, near a pasture called the Meadow. Katniss and Prim's father died in a mining explosion five years earlier. Their mother went into a deep depression and was unable to care for them, resulting in the family almost starving to death. However, Peeta Melark, son of the local baker, saved Katniss and her family by providing them with two loaves of freshly baked bread, loaves that Katniss believes he deliberately burned so they could be discarded. It was after this that Katniss spied a dandelion and realized that she knew how to save her family from starving. She learned to gather greens from the meadow and to eventually hunt outside the fence that surrounded the district, bringing home rabbit and squirrel to eat or trade for other supplies.
Katniss has awoken early on this reaping day to meet up with Gale Hawthorne, a handsome boy who shares her love of hunting. The two share a goat cheese Prim has prepared and discuss the reaping. Gale suggests they consider running away from the district to live on their own but Katniss knows this is impossible as they both have younger siblings at home. After fishing. harvesting greens and strawberries they head back to the district and the reaping ceremony.
Those children between the ages of twelve and eighteen are eligible for the reaping. At age twelve, your name is entered once, at age thirteen, twice, and so on until at age eighteen children have seven entries. But those who are poor and hungry can obtain extra food in exchange for a tesserae. One tesserae entitles one person a year's supply of grain and oil. Katniss has been adding three tesserae each year, so now at this reaping her is in twenty times. Gale who has younger siblings, has his name in forty-two times.
This is Prim's first reaping. The reaping ceremony is held in District 12's square. Attendance is mandatory, with the children sorted into pens by age. A temporary stage has been set up in front of the Justice Building with chairs and two glass balls containing the entries. On stage is Mayor Undersee, and Effie Trinket, District 12's escort in her spring green suit and pink hair. The mayor reads the history of Panem and the list of the two past victors from District 12, only one of which, Haymitch Abernathy is alive. He arrives very drunk and stumbles to his chair. Effie begins the draw for the tributes and the first name called is that of Primrose Everdeen.
Horrified that her young sister has been selected, Katniss runs to the front, screaming that she will volunteer instead. She is accepted but when Effie asks for a round of applause, no one complies. With Prim hysterically screaming, Gale hauls her away from Katniss. Suddenly and quietly, everyone in the square gives Katniss the old and rarely used gesture of respect in the District, that of three fingers on the left hand held to the mouth and then raised. Haymitch staggers over to Katniss, praising her before falling off the stage and knocking himself out. The boy tribute is Peeta Mellark, son of the baker. Katniss insists they are not really friends but she does remember how he saved her family from starvation by giving her two burned loaves of bread. After the reading of the Treaty of Treason and the playing of the national anthem, Katniss and Peeta are taken into the Justice Building to say goodbye to their families.
Katniss offers Prim advice on how to survive and asks Gale to help look after her family. She is also visited by Peeta Mellark's father who brings her cookies and tells her that he will watch out for Prim. Madge, daughter of the mayor quickly visits to give Katniss the gold pin she was wearing and has Katniss promise to wear it in the arena. Katniss realizes the pin is of a mockingjay.
During the rebellion by the districts, the Capitol bred muttations which were genetically altered so they became weapons. The jabberjay was one such creature, used by the Capitol to spy on the districts. It could memorize and repeat human conversation. These male birds would return to the Capitol providing them with tactical information. When the rebels discovered the jabberjays abilities, they fed them misinformation, leading to the Capitol to eventually abandon them to die off. However, the jabberjays mated with female mocking birds, creating mockingjays who could repeat human melodies and bird songs. They became a sign of the rebellion's ability to outwit the Capitol. Gale also comes to say goodbye and urges Katniss to make sure she is armed either with a knife or better, a bow and arrows.
Then she and Peeta are whisked away on the high-speed tribute train to the Capitol. On the train Katniss and Peeta are fed delicious rich food and watch the recap of the reapings with Effie. Haymitch continues to be profoundly disinterested in helping them. Katniss begins to struggle with her feelings regarding Peets who is kind to her. She reflects back on how his act of kindness saved her and her family, and led to her being able to find food to allow them to survive. She was able to eventually master the bow and arrows her father made for her.
Eventually Peeta, but especially Katniss confront Haymitch who promises to help them as long as they don't interfere with his drinking. Cinna and Portia work with Katniss and Peeta to make them unforgettable to the people and the Gamemakers, creating Katniss as "the girl on fire". Meanwhile, Haymitch develops a strategy with Peeta to make them appear to be in love, creating the unusual angle of star-crossed lovers. This strategy, without Katniss's approval, leads to tension between her and Peeta. While Katniss wants to win the games so she can return home to Prim and her mother, she also doesn't want to harm Peeta.
Discussion
The Hunger Games is the first novel in the trilogy of the same name by author Suzanne Collins. The novel, a dystopia, explores the theme of children in war, reparations in war, and violence and terror as a means of control.
The Hunger Games are a contest held in a vast, open arena where children, between the ages of twelve to eighteen, from each of the twelve remaining districts of Panem, fight one another to the death. The games are both a punishment for the rebellion of the districts and a reminder of the power and absolute control the Capitol holds over all of the people from the districts. Any further rebellion will bring about total destruction like that of District Thirteen.
The novel is divided into three parts, Part I The Tributes, Part II The Games, and Part III The Victor. It is narrated by the heroine, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who volunteers to replace her sister as the girl tribute for District 12. Katniss is a survivor, having almost starved to death after the death of her father in the coal mines, and the mental breakdown of her mother afterwards. Using the hunting skills and wood craft taught to her by her father, Katniss is uniquely prepared for the games in a way that none of the other tributes are. Although the "Career Tributes" who come from the wealthier District 1, 2 and 4 are physically trained for the games, they do not have the skills that Katniss has. She not only knows how to hunt, but how to hide and survive in the wild. Before she leaves District 12, Gale reminds her of her exceptional abilities as a hunter. But Katniss tells him she doesn't hunt people. " 'How different can it really be, says Gale grimly. The awful thing is that if I can forget they're people, it will be no different at all."
The selection of Peeta Mellark as the boy tribute for District 12 leaves Katniss conflicted. Her goal is to win the Hunger Games, but to do so means she will have to kill Peeta as only one tribute can win. However, she is alive because of Peeta's act of kindness several years ago that changed the fate of Katniss and her family. Katniss doesn't know why Peeta risked a beating to feed her and her family. He continues to help her in the Capitol: he steadies her in the chariot procession, covers for her when she recognizes the Avox girl, and reveals her hunting skills to Haymitch. In spite of this, Katniss doubts his motives. leading her to believe that this is a ruse to lure her into thinking he is not a danger to her. "Don't be so stupid. Peeta is planning how to kill you...The more likeable he is, the more deadly he is."
Further complicating the situation is Haymitch's strategy to have them be close friends, something both Katniss and Peeta object to. Katniss and Peeta have never been friends and she doesn't see the purpose because eventually they will be adversaries in the arena. Haymitch's request causes confusion in Katniss who doesn't understand Peeta's apparent interest in her. "It's weird, how much he's noticed me. Like the attention he's paid to my hunting," She also notes that she too has kept track of him, noticing that at school he's good at wrestling. This leads to the inevitable comparison to Gale with whom Katniss has a deep friendship. She's never questioned Gale's motives, whereas she finds herself always questioning Peeta's. Things become even more troubling for Katniss when Peeta admits to loving her during his interview with Caesar Flickerman. This only serves to infuriate Katniss but Haymitch explains that Peeta has made her look desirable and the two of them as star-crossed lovers. When she objects to this false role, Haymitch reminds her that it is a show and that playing the part of lovers may help one of them to win.
Katniss and Peeta have different approaches to the Hunger Games. Peeta is "...struggling with his identity. How to maintain his purity of self." He believes he will kill when the time comes but he also wants "...to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games." Katniss is more concerned with the practical realities of surviving the Games. However, throughout the time in the arena, Katniss's view of Peeta gradually changes. During the Games, Peeta continues to help Katniss: he signals to her not to run to the Cornucopia, he joins with the Careers who are determined to kill Katniss to protect her, he fights Cato allowing her to escape resulting in him being seriously injured. Katniss realizes he's not her enemy and she's grateful for the advantages he's given her but she now dreads the possibility she may have to fight him to win.
With the change in the rules, allowing two tributes from the same district to win, Katniss focuses on playing along with Haymitch idea of star-crossed lovers. However, when Peeta explains how he has had a crush on her for years, this further complicates the situation for Katniss because she now wonders if what he's saying is the truth and not made up for the Capitol's consumption. "For a moment, I'm almost foolishly happy and then confusion sweeps over me. Because we're supposed to be making up this stuff, playing at being in love, not actually being in love." Eventually, after the Games and on the train back to their district, it becomes painfully apparent to Peeta that Katniss was being coached by Haymitch and that her love for him was an act. "I want to tell him that he's not being fair. That we were strangers. That I did what it took to stay alive, to keep us both alive in the arena. That I can't explain how things are with Gale because I don't know myself. That it's no good loving me because I'm never going to get married..." The novel ends with Katniss's conflict over Peeta unresolved and deepening. She owes her life to Peeta but while she doesn't love him, she has experienced something with Peeta that Gale can never understand. At the same time where does this leave her with Gale who has had to watch their "lovers" narrative during the Games?
In this first novel Katniss is gradually set up to become a symbol of rebellion. Katniss has the right character to rebel: she's bold and courageous enough to force the Gamemakers to notice her. Prior to the Hunger Games, during her private session with the Gamemakers, she becomes angry at their cavalier inattention. The purpose of the session is to highlight a particular skill in the hopes of getting sponsors during the games and of being ranked. However, Katniss finds they are focused on the roast pig complete with an apple in its mouth. "Suddenly I'm furious, that with my life on the line, they don't even have the decency to pay attention to me. That I'm being upstaged by a dead pig...Without thinking I pull an arrow from my quiver and send it straight at the Gamemakers' table. The arrow skewers the apple in the pig's mouth and pins it to the wall behind it." She has defied the Gamemakers and broken the rules. She is a game piece they had better pay attention to.
Katniss's experiences in the arena begin to change how she views the Hunger Games and the Capitol. Prior to the reaping, Gale was angry at Madge, the mayor's daughter who has a very slim chance of being selected because she has so few entries in the reaping. At this time, Katniss considered Gale's rage pointless because it changes nothing. However, with the brutal death of Rue, a young tribute whom Katniss felt protective of, she begins to understand Gale's rage and Peeta's desire not to be a pawn with no way to resist. "Rue's death has forced me to confront my own fury against the cruelty, the injustice they inflict upon us. But here, even more strongly than at home, I feel my impotence. There's no way to take revenge on the Capitol. Is there?"
Her revenge takes the form of decorating Rue's body with beautiful wild flowers, to show that a child lost her life in the most brutal way, as entertainment. Katniss does this "...to shame them, to make them accountable, to show the Capitol that whatever they do or force us to do there is a part of every tribute they can't own. That Rue was more than a piece in their Games. And so am I." Rue's death changes Katniss. Her compassion for the dying young girl, forces the residents of the Capitol to face the humanity of the tributes who they see as uncivilized and barbaric. "Something happened when I was holding Rue's hand, watching the life drain out of her. Now I am determined to avenge her, to make her loss unforgettable, and I can only do that by winning and thereby making myself unforgettable."
Katniss does just that when the Gamemakers revoke the decision to allow two winners. Knowing the Capitol must have a victor for the Games, Katniss knows she cannot, will not kill the one person who was responsible for saving her and her family years ago. She also refuses this final manipulation by the Garmemakers who have tortured her and ten other tributes in the name of entertainment. So she defies the Capitol, outwitting them at their own game by having Peeta and herself decide to die by poison rather than kill one another. They call the Capitol's bluff and are allowed to live.
After the Games, Haymitch reveals just how dangerous this has become. He tells her "Word is the Capitol is furious about you showing them up in the arena." He tells her that she must continue to pretend that she is madly in love with Peeta as this is her only defense for concocting the double suicide. Katniss was only concerned about outwitting the Gamemakers not making the Capitol look bad. "But the Hunger Games are their weapon and you are not supposed to be able to defeat it. So now the Capitol will act as if they've been in control the whole time. As if they orchestrated the whole event, right down to the double suicide. But that will only work if I play along with them."
Despite all her efforts to force the residents of the Capitol to see the humanity of the tributes and the reality of what the Hunger Games are, it is evident the message has not landed. When she's being prepared for the Victory Tour by her prep team, Katniss notices how self-absorbed they all are, talking about what they were doing or where they were when a specific event occurred during the Games. "Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena."
The Hunger Games is a dystopian novel whose story is set in a post-apocalyptic United States. In a dystopia, world building is of prime importance and in this first novel, author Suzanne Collins begins to develop that world, called Panem which was formed out of the ruins of the apocalypse. It was a country comprised of the Capitol ringed by thirteen districts. Between the Capitol and the districts in the east are the Rocky Mountains, forming a natural protective barrier. For some reason, not revealed, the districts rose up against the Capitol but were defeated. The president of Panem, Coriolanus Snow resides in the Capitol. Citizens of the Capitol are wealthy and well fed. Katniss describes the city as so grand, that the cameras "...have not quite captured the magnificence of the glistening buildings in a rainbow of hues that tower into the air, the oddly dressed people with bizarre hair and painted faces who have never missed a meal." This is in stark contrast to life in the districts: District 12 where people labour in dangerous conditions in the coal mines, have no running water or electricity, and not enough food to eat. Peacekeepers are stationed in each district.
As punishment for the rebellion and also as a warning to never rebel again, the Capitol instituted the Hunger Games, in which children from the districts, named tributes were to fight one another to the death, until only one, the victor, remained. They have been a feature of life for the past seventy-four years, suggesting the Capitol has successfully ruled with an iron fist over the people of the districts. Collins seems to have drawn from Roman history for this element of the back story. The name, Panem is a reference to the Latin saying, "Panem et circenses" or bread and circuses, a Roman strategy to provide bread and entertainment to keep the people of Rome content and draw their attention away from problems within the Empire. In the novel the Hunger Games replace the Roman gladiatorial games. The children selected for the games are called tributes, which in Roman times was a tax paid by the people to the government. In the Hunger Games, the children taken in the reaping, are therefore the payment to the Capitol for the lives lost in the rebellion and insurance against future rebellion. This reign of terror seems to have subjugated the districts totally, with only isolated acts of rebellion mentioned.
Collins has populated her novel with characters who are not only interesting but who have memorable names. The heroine, Katniss Everdeen, bears the name of a traditional native plant and the character herself may be Native American given her description as similar to that of Gale with "straight black hair, olive skin" and gray eyes. The plants form tubers which can be harvested as described in the novel. Katniss's sister, Primrose is named for delicate flower that has medicinal uses. This name is not surprising given that Katniss and Prim's mother is a traditional healer. District 12 escort, Effie Trinket offers readers the perspective of a resident of the Capitol and their view of people from the districts. For example, on the train, Effie expresses shock that Katniss and Peeta don't eat with their hands.
The Hunger Games is a refreshingly well written novel, picking up on the trend of dystopian novels in the young adult category. It explores the role of tyranny in maintaining control of a population and the theme of rebellion while offering a solid story with engaging characters. The second book in the Hunger Games will most likely focus on the repercussions of Katniss's actions at the conclusion of the games, and the further development of what appears to be a love triangle between Katniss, Gale and Peeta. It is hoped that there will be more character development of other characters important to the story including Peeta, Haymitch, Effie and Gale.
Book Details:
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
New York: Scholastic Press 2008
374 pp.
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