: Re: Preventing the symbolic conflict of "Hunger Games" from overshadowing widespread social plight SPOILER ALERT: Questions and answers may contain spoilers for all three books in the Hunger Games

@Barnes643

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OK, this is my take on the stories.

All three books contain a hunger game. The first one is the standard hunger games. The second one is the results of Snow being determined to kill off Katniss, and the third is the "real" games, spread into the Capital.

At another level, the Capital represents the entertainment industry - Hollywood, if you like, but more than that, and wider. They are untouched by the suffering that they inflict, just to have their entertainment. It reminds me of things like Jerry Springer, where peoples suffering is used for ratings. It is also drawing from the reality shows (x-factor etc), where people are "used" for the purpose of entertainment, without any real consideration - often - for what it does to the people concerned.

For me, the message that was throughout the books was about what happens when your entertainment becomes real. When you are entertained by oppressing people, what happens when the oppressors fight back, and confront you in the street. The games started as a rather symbolic indication of oppression, but in the second book became a more explicit weapon of Snow to destroy opponents. In book 3, the game became real for everyone ( not that, for Katniss and the other tributes, it wasn't in the earlier versions ). We like killing and death for entertainment, as long as it is carefully controlled and contained. We don't want the reality of it brought to our faces.

Questions: What plot thread .... In the first book, the games were just an interruption to the normal oppressive life that District 12 lived. But it served to highlight the difference between the poor districts and the rich capital. By the third book, the games had erupted out of the arena (the rescue at the end of book 2 can be seen as symbolically taking the games out of the safe arena, and Katniss breaking the force field was critical to that). And it showed that the oppression that the games represented was far more significant than appeared in book 1.

How would I change it? Actually, I think Collins did a good job. The writing is not brilliant, but it kept me reading, and I enjoyed it. Yes it could be improved, but then, so could pretty much any book. I might want to change it by looking at the other districts more, to see how the social oppression was experienced in other places, to see the various forms it took. In District 12, it is mainly either quite gentle or totally destructive. But there are other forms of social oppression, that could have been shown around the other districts. I can see that for some of them, being selected as a tribute might have been a positive, as dying would be better than living.

In some ways, Collins makes the situation too simple. District 12 are poor, but happy, and their oppression is that they are kept poor. In district 13, they are oppressed by their own people ( which is significant for the finale ), but accept it as fighting for the right cause. But seeing the real breadth of oppression would show how significant it is - and would probably make it unsuitable for the teenage audience it is aimed at.

TLDR version - more experience of the breadth of the oppression, and the forms it can take. The insidious forms, and the explicit forms. To see all of that in the context of the games might have made the connection better.

I hope this is answering your questions!

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