ALPERN AT LARGE - I was stunned and concerned to learn that my son’s fifth grade class is so replete with kids who’ve already read Suzanne Collins’ best-selling book The Hunger Games that my son was on the verge of being the only one in his class still not allowed to read the book. So I did the only thing I could think of: I read the book myself.
I can definitely see how this book became a best-seller—as with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Scholastic has published an exciting and fast-moving trilogy of books that (for those of us who remember it) is reminiscent of John Christopher’s “The Tripods Trilogy”, which was also set in a post-apocalyptic world where life was so cheap that children are routinely placed in harm’s way and often suffer merciless maiming and even death.
The Hunger Games of Suzanne Collins hearkens to a world that is entirely different than our own, unlike the Harry Potter series of J.K. Rowling which exists within our world but is hidden by a Ministry of Magic which seeks to coexist with the non-wizarding majority. It should be noted that the Harry Potter books were meant to be read, one book for each year, from the fifth to the twelfth grade. No such age-restricted limitation of reading Ms. Collins’ books has been established.
The world of The Hunger Games takes place hundreds of years in our future, where North America has suffered a variety of natural (and perhaps manmade) disasters and is now dominated by the nation of Panem, which has its capitol in the Rockies and which has subjugated or destroyed its outlying districts after these districts unsuccessfully rebelled. The twelve surviving districts supply food, energy and raw materials while being run as a police state that intentionally subjugates the districts’ residents by starving the residents in these districts.
Natural and technological horrors abound in the intentionally technologically-backwards districts, but none more horrible than the “reaping” of one girl and one boy each year from each district via a lottery system to participate in the televised and hyped Hunger Games. Participation of all children ages 12-18 into this lottery is compulsory, but many children volunteer to have extra lottery tickets (with increased risk of being chosen) in their names in return for increasing their family’s pathetic food rations.
The nature of the annual Hunger Games is simple: with television feeds aplenty, and audience and “sponsor” participation to support individual contestants, each of the 24 children/teenagers are to fight to the death until only one of them survives and becomes the winner for that year and live well for the rest of their lives.
At this point, it should become evident that The Hunger Games is more akin to Lord of the Flies by William Golding or to George Orwell’s 1984 than it is to the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Narnia series. It is both a condemnation of the society of Panem (which has become far too comfortable subjugating and dehumanizing its districts) and our own society, which is increasingly being dominated by governmental and media/celebrity-dominated institutions.
Furthermore, The Hunger Games all too graphically describes the nightmarish ordeals and deaths of the children, at both each other’s hands and from the technological concoctions and devices created by those running the Hunger Games, and it equally excoriates a futuristic society that has become far too comfortable watching these children and teenagers suffer and die.
Of greatest significance and relevance to our own society (the ones reading this book, and/or watching the movie) is whether we are moving in this direction with our own current reality shows, and whether our increasing acceptance of trivializing the humanity of on-screen television personalities is being done to the detriment and loss of our own individual humanity.
In other words, this book is supposed to hit home. It’s supposed to raise all sorts of discussions about the role of government in our lives, the questions raised by supporting the civil rights of all peoples, the benefits of not blindly accepting the rules handed down to us by our central governments, and whether we are on our way to being as enslaved to our own voyeuristic and insensitive fetishes as is the future society of Panem by our endless pursuit of reality shows and games.
The book is also ideally suited for children/teenagers in high school (late middle school at best!) to go over and debate these important issues in a proper educational setting. It is NOT ideally suited for elementary school children, for whom we protect against learning of the horrors going on throughout the world.
Yet sooner or later, the harsh realities and complicated lessons must come to our children—and while I think that parents do well to adhere to the PG-13 rating of the movie based off The Hunger Games, it’s pretty hard to turn down the request of a child to read a book. It’s a page-turner, and a novel that does as excellent a job at character development (emphasizing both the strengths and weaknesses of the first-person, narrating main character) as did the aforementioned “Tripods trilogy” of John Christopher.
It is also a novel that is one big horror story, and one which can lead to neuroses, nightmares and psychological discomfort that parents would do well to watch for. And although the book and its two sequels will hopefully give young readers (or even very young readers) a lot to think about in our increasingly-shallow and increasingly-Machiavellian society, it is not a mindless video game or reality TV show.
In fact, the appreciation of reading and writing—accompanied by a distrust of reality TV shows and idiotic, time-wasting computer games—is arguably something that The Hunger Games trilogy truly offers its readers. That, and the need to bravely adhere to one’s own humanity and selfless deeds in a world that is increasingly dehumanized, and which increasingly depicts courageous and altruistic efforts as being performed only by “suckers” and “fools”.
My son is a reader—he’s blasted through the Harry Potter, Narnia and other books with such a passion for reading that I cannot help but be proud. So I will refuse him access to the movie until he is close to or at least age 13, let him know I have strong reservations about him reading The Hunger Games, and then make sure he has his questions thoroughly answered as he reads and comprehends the book.
And may the odds be ever in his favor.
(Ken Alpern is a former Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Vice Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
Tags: Ken Alpern, Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, JK Rowling, George Orwell, 1984
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 26
Pub: Mar 30, 2012