Brett Moore

Stacey Dearing
English 106
February 17, 2015
The Hunger Games Review
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a wildly popular dystopian novel that has taken
Americas youth by storm. The novel is very interesting read and its themes carry important wait
about todays society. This novel takes place in a post war country that is split up into twelve
districts controlled by the capitol. The main character and narrator, Katniss Everdeen, lives in the
poorest district and through her thoughts you learn the dynamics of the government and that
hunger games. The hunger games are a blood sport designed by the capitol to punish the districts
for a rebellion that took place 74 years ago. Most of the plot is looking at Katnisss experience
before she enters the games and what she does within the games to survive and also how she
interprets what is happening to her. The Hunger Games was at the forefront of the modern
interest in dystopian novels. This novel is about an overly oppressive government that punishes
its people for a rebellion over 70 years before. I would recommend this book to anyone who
enjoyed the movies because of the level of detail and perspective that the books contain. This
book would also be good who enjoys the dystopian genre and novels like The Giver and 1984.
This book would be good for everyone who enjoyed the movies because not only does it
have things that the movie missed but it is written in first and gives us insight in to what is
happening in Katnisss head. In the movies the setting clearly shows that the people within the
novel are living in poverty and oppression, however through the first person writing of the book
you can discover so much more about the people in the different areas of the book and that not
all the people under the government face the same amount of poverty. The fact that the book is
written in first person also allows us to learn more about what is driving Katniss and also helps
us more clearly understand the themes of the story. What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a

world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit
to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by?(Chapter 5, Paragraph
27(Dont have page numbers yet)). The first person writing in this quote allows us to learn about
the vast difference between the two types of people in this novel. The availability of food is lost
in the movies because viewers dont have Katniss narrating all of her thoughts like they do in the
book. With this narration the reader also learns more about her character and the lifestyle she has
had to live just to get enough food for her and her family. This important to the dystopian genre
the novel is written in because the reader sees that everyone is living in poverty and that in some
cases people are forced to use extreme measures in order to get what they need to sustain
themselves.
The Hunger Games embodies the dystopian genre by creating a government that has total
power over the people they govern. Susanne Collins develops a world where every district of the
country has one purpose that will serve the capitol while the people who live in each district get
no extra benefits from their labor. The amount of oppression is taken to the extreme because of
the hunger games, where the capitol basically sacrifices two children from every district as
punishment from a rebellion from long ago. The control of the government doesnt end at the
hunger games either, they control almost everything in the hunger games and limit the choices
the people in the games have. Everyone knows they could destroy us all within seconds of the
opening gong. The real sport of the Hunger Games is watching the tributes kill one another.
Every so often, they do kill a tribute just to remind the players they can (Chapter 13,
Paragraph16). This quote exemplifies the capitols total control even within the hunger games.
Not only does the capitol for the people within the games to fight one another but they force
them to fight knowing that no matter what they are going to die either by the other contestants or
by the gamemakers. The capitol also forces the people to watch the hunger games, to watch as

their children fight each other the death. Another part of the games that is constantly controlled is
supervision of the contestants. There is never a private moment for the people within the games
and this makes the games more than just a physical struggle but also a mental struggle to seem
strong to people outside of the games. This quote adds to the overall dystopian theme of the
novel by showing the total over control this government. This shows the governments true
power by allowing people to believe that they have some choice in the actions they take but the
ultimate decisions are being made by the government that controls them.
Dystopian writing has always had strong connections to the current social climate the
world is in. The Hunger Games is no different in this regard. Like other dystopian novels it
creates situations that cause the reader to look at their own lives and the situations they find
themselves in. In utopian writing, younger readers must grapple with social organization; these
utopian works propose to teach the young reader about governance, the possibility of improving
society, the role of the individual and the limits of freedom (Hintz/Ostry Page 1). This quote
from Hintz and Ostry tells the reader that these types of writings leads to young people learning
about more than just reading skills. It says that young readers will learn more about social
organization and self-governance because they will be more self-aware about what happens to
them after learning about the dystopian world they just read about. Reading dystopian novels
teaches the youth about the importance of their freedom and the individual rules that they have
the opportunity to partake in. While most people think that dystopian novels only teach us about
the worst possible outcomes of some types of governments. However this evidence gives the
reader the insight that people who read these novels can learn all about personal roles and how
each person can work with one another to improve a society as a whole.

Works Cited
Hintz, Carrie. Introduction. Print.
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2008. Prin