Posts Tagged: The Hunger Games

They were easy to spot: each was an accidental heroine, wholly unaware of her strengths, concerned to the point of obsession with her shortcomings.

In 1996 Helen Fielding burst onto the scene with Bridget Jones’ Diary, a novel-in-journal entries featuring a hapless, slightly overweight thirty-something struggling to land a boyfriend. The book went on to sell 2 million copies and, soon after, became a blockbuster film starring Colin Firth and Renee Zellweger. Predictably, in the years that followed, we began to see the “Bridget Jones” character everywhere. They were easy to spot: each was an accidental heroine, wholly unaware of her strengths, concerned to the point of obsession with her shortcomings.

From Twilight’s admittedly problematic Bella, to Game of Thrones’ ineffectual Sansa Stark [Editor’s Note: Just keep reading/watching, Anna. ;)], women who were the recipients, not the perpetrators of action began to overwhelm our fiction.  And these women, often depicted as heroes, succeeded in spite of their insecurities: after encountering a guide or a mentor,  each experienced a pivotal moment that guided her inner heroine out of the shadows and into the light. Read More »

The Hunger Games by Suzanne CollinsTo follow up on my recent review of The Hunger Games, I wanted to point out a handful of articles that touch on some of the issues that I juggled about, concerning specifically the politics of the novel, Katniss’ place in society and her role in sparking political upheval, and the likelihood of an event like the Hunger Games ever becoming an reality.

The first of the articles is called “The Missing Hunger Games Line” and concerns a single line of dialogue that was left out of the film adaptation, a line that the author, Marcy Kennedy, feels is important to the overarching themes of the series:

Even though I loved The Hunger Games movie that released Friday, I couldn’t help but notice that the screenwriters left out one of the most important lines in the book.

The night before the Games begin, Katniss finds Peeta on the roof of their hotel, watching the Capitol celebrate.

Peeta tells her, “I keep wishing I could think of a way to…to show the Capitol they don’t own me. That I’m more than just a piece in their Games.”

This makes no sense to Katniss.

[…]

Katniss didn’t set out to change the world. She just did what was right and change followed. She had no idea of the chain of events her seemingly small actions would cause.

It works the same way in real life.

When I was twelve, the boy who sat behind me in class would ask me to explain all our school work to him. I dreaded feeling that pesky tap-tap on my shoulder. When I finally lost my temper, he confessed—he couldn’t read. Somehow he’d slipped through the cracks, dismissed as either stupid or lazy, when he wasn’t either.

So I taught him (and felt guilty about snapping at him). At the time, I didn’t think it was anything important, but a couple years later, I overheard him telling a teacher how much I’d helped him and how much it meant to him.

I treasure that memory.

Kennedy examines what makes Katniss a catalyst for change in her world and has me thinking about some of my concerns regarding her passive role in the novel, and whether she’s not something of an unreliable narrator who unintentionally plays down her role in events or is just plainly blind to the effect she has on other people. The ideas presented by Kennedy have me reconsidering many of the opinions I originally formed after reading the novel.
Read More »

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games

By Suzanne Collins
Trade Paperback
Pages: 384 pages
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: 09/14/08
ISBN: 0439023483

EXCERPT

Oh, The Hunger Games. The first volume of Suzanne Collins’ world-beating trilogy first dropped onto my radar a few years ago, when the online sphere was abuzz with the release of Mockingjay. I battled the tide of popular influence for years, but with the recent release of the film, and needing a quick divergence from the doldrums of my current reading habits (do Robert Jordan’s books ever end?), I figured it was time to join the masses. I’m a slavering Harry Potter fan and can’t resist a good YA book, especially when they’re a national phenomenon (and don’t involve sparkling vampires), for long. I started The Hunger Games on a Saturday morning and, after a few grudging distractions and a night of sleep, I finished it Sunday afternoon. I turned the final page feeling thrilled and confused, satisfied and emotionally drained. And, ultimately, conflicted.

First off, I haven’t read Battle Royale, the 1999 novel by Koushun Takami, or watched the film, which shares strong similarities with The Hunger Games, so I can’t make comparisons there or suppose on how Collins might have been influenced. She says she had not read the novel or seen the film before beginning work on the series and I will take her word for it.
Read More »