Book Review: The Hunger Games

I finally read The Hunger Games last week. I’m so glad I did.

What follows will contain some spoilers, so be aware.

I didn’t expect it to be this good. From the cover I was expecting something sleek and stylized-- an action-adventure story marketed to ten-year-old boys. 

 They look like Matchbox cars, don’t they?

I thought there would be explosions and danger and triumphant victories for everyone. There was some of that, of course-- lots of explosions and danger-- but the excitement’s not really the most important part. 

The most important part is arrows.

I think what I really like about this book is Katniss as a character. In a way, you can consider the entire novel a character study of her. Suzanne Collins establishes right away that Katniss is a rugged survivalist who will do pretty much anything it takes to go on living. She also establishes an important exception: Katniss will sacrifice herself right away to protect someone she really cares about.

These two characteristics by themselves aren’t anything to write home about. (They describe pretty much every male action hero ever created, as far as I can recall). What makes this story different is the kind of situations they’re applied to. 

Here is where the spoilers begin, so be warned: The Hunger Games, as you probably know, is about the world’s most horrible reality show. Panem-- the country that makes up most(?) of postapocalyptic North America-- consists of a Capitol and twelve Districts. The Capitol is where all the wealth is; the enslaved Districts provide all the labor that creates it. Every year each District must send two “tributes,” a boy and a girl aged twelve to eighteen, to the Capitol to participate in the Hunger Games. The kids are sent to an arena out in the wilderness, where they must fight each other to the death until only one is left alive. That one winner will spend the next year touring the country as a government propaganda tool. Winners then spend the rest of their lives as seasonal coaches, preparing their districts’ tributes for future games.

Remember, though, that this tournament is also a reality show. Every tribute is fitted with a tracer before entering the arena, and the cameras then follow them all for the rest of the Games, broadcasting whatever looks interesting at the moment to the rest of the country. The Games are mandatory viewing, so everyone in Panem knows what happens-- including the tributes’ friends and family in their home Districts. Popular tributes can collect sponsors, who can then pay the exorbitant fees needed to send them supplies that will give them an edge over their competitors.

Did you see The Fifth Element? Remember how Korben Dallas had to be on the galactic radio show(?) with Ruby Rhod as a condition of his win? Remember how he didn’t like it at all, and was about the worst media personality ever? 

(Sorry, I could only find it in French.)

Yeah, that’s Katniss, on a regular day. Only worse, probably, because she hates everyone in the Capitol and has a hard time hiding it. There’s a big interview before the games, and it would be natural for Katniss to flip everybody off and make it clear how much she despises the whole operation. The “principled” thing would be to refuse to participate any more than was actually necessary.

Remember the sponsors, though? They’re the difference between life and death in the Hunger Games, and the interview is a great way to win some. So Katniss does something much more difficult than defying the Gamemakers: she plays up to them. She laughs, and flirts, and twirls in her Capitol dress, and generally acts like she’s happy to be there. She doesn’t act at all like herself, and so I guess you could argue that she’s not “true to herself” the way a lot of YA heroines are. But she does win those sponsors.

Then Peeta-- her fellow tribute from District 12-- spices up his own interview by admitting to the entire country that he’s in love with Katniss. Katniss, of course, had no idea; in fact, she thinks he’s making it up for sympathy. The audience, however, goes crazy. Haymitch, the District 12 coach, knows that ratings will soar (and sponsors will come running) if Katniss and Peeta can pull off a “star-crossed lovers” act. When the games begin, he signals to Katniss that this is the way she needs to play things.

It’s easy for Peeta to play his part, because he’s not actually acting. With the cameras on them all the time, though, Katniss has no way to talk to him about the need for deception. She has to decide for herself whether to play up the romance angle (and thereby win sponsor gifts Peeta desperately needs) or keep things platonic and hope they can survive on their own.

Once again, she takes the more distasteful option. Here it’s difficult for two reasons: 1) She must betray Gale, her best friend and not-quite-boyfriend in District 12, by pretending to fall in love with someone else. 2) She must betray Peeta, the near-stranger who has loved her since she was five years old, by pretending to fall passionately in love with him when she has no romantic feelings for him. Both of them are going to be hurt, and both are going to blame her, but it’s the only way for both Katniss and Peeta to survive-- and so she does it without hesitation.

I really think this is a more nuanced, morally ambiguous situation than most YA heroines have to face. There is no clear “right choice.” If Katniss had chosen to defy the Gamemakers at the interview-- if she’d ignored the questions, or criticized the Games, or recited revolutionary poetry-- it would have been justified. (Not very smart, considering that the government knows the exact whereabouts of every one of her loved ones, but still justified.) If she’d decided to “be true to herself,” and had refused to feign feelings for Peeta that she didn’t really feel, that would have been justified, too. (Peeta might even have preferred it.) But we’ve known from page one that Katniss was a survivor, and so we know she could only have done one thing in either situation. It wasn’t a matter of being right or wrong; it was a matter of being Katniss.

As I said, I haven’t read either of the other books yet. I think I’m going to take a bit of a break before I do-- my reading list is long, and my mind needs to recover some from the unrelenting grimness of Panem. I’ll probably see the movie, though. My love for Rue (the other thing I loved about this book) demands it.

So. The Hunger Games. You’ve probably read it already, because as with many good things I seem to be the last to this party. But if you haven’t, then get thee to a bookstore or library and pick it up. And may the odds be ever in your favor.