Lethal Society: Hunger Games and Dystopian Literature

For those of you who like dystopian literature, The Hunger Games is for you. In The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins sets up an Orwellian society in which freedom is limited if not non-existent and the government wields total control. As a means of enforcing and maintaining the dominance of the Capitol and to discourage revolt, the nation of Panem created the Hunger Games. Every year, two children, one boy and one girl, are randomly chosen in a lottery from each of the Twelve districts of the Capitol. These twenty-four individuals are then granted the privilege of representing their homes in a fight to the death in the Capitol, in which only one survivor attains glory, the rest just a body bag. When Katniss's younger sister gets chosen, Katniss volunteers to go in her stead. She and Peeta, the boy chosen to compete with Katniss, are whisked away to the Capitol where they encounter a foreign world of indulgence and frivolity unknown to two kids from the poorest district in the state. As they try to navigate this new world and maintain their identities in a system set up to push them to their breaking points and turn them against one another, Katniss and Peeta learn just how little their lives matter to those in power.

This book reminded me of Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery," in which a community has a lottery and whoever wins is stoned to death on the spot. No one is exempt, even small children. The Hunger Games had the same disturbing shock factor. It's sick, the idea that children would be thrown into an arena to kill one another while the entire nation watches as if it is the Olympics. But that is what dystopian literature is designed to accomplish, namely shock the reader into critically examining one's own society. Like "The Lottery," The Hunger Games asks the question, Do we set up society in a way that crushes people, a society of death and oppression? This novel takes the question a step farther making us consider whether we are the victims or the perpetuators of the system, as well as forcing us to consider the role government plays in controlling and limiting freedom. Panem is set up in Twelve districts with District One being the capital and the richest and Twelve being the poorest. There used to be a Thirteenth but the Capitol decimated it for rebellion, leaving the ruins as a reminder to the other districts of the price of revolt. The Hunger games is another means of this control, reminding each person that they are totally under government's power and the slightest offense means death. In the poorer districts people are forced to watch the hunger games, but in the richer ones, the games are a spectacle. People actually train their children to compete and the games represent a chance at honor. The game keepers even leave the stadiums of the games set up so that families can vacation there and replay the deaths of competitors on the spot where they occurred.

And no one questions this set up, knowing that to do so means certain death not only for oneself but one's family and friends. It the lie of silent assertion, as Mark Twain would say. We perpetuate oppression and inequality by remaining silent, as if nothing were wrong. And we all do this. But, you ask, how much power to the citizens of Panem really have, if their government exercises such iron control? Seemingly little. But the government draws its power from the people. If the richer districts recognized the extreme poverty of the poorest districts and the sheer wrongness of sending a twelve-year-old into a gladiatorial stadium with eighteen-year-olds and people stopped watching the hunger games, the games would no longer be effective as a means of control. It is the fact that people watch that make the games efficacious, not the games themselves. This, however, would require that the districts recognize one another as co-victims of the Capitol, meaning the rich would have to stop dominating the poor. As far as I am aware, this has never happened before. We do it to minorities, the poor, or currently suspicious people, depending on who we are in conflict with at the moment. People accept it and it continues. Thus, while Panem may appear to be an unrecognizably oppressive nation, elements of its exaggerated problems occur in our world as well, and it is important and neccesary to contemplate just what role we play in contributing to the state of things.

There is a sequel to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire. I have not read it but intend to, because now I am invested in the outcome. Will our heroes survive or will the system crush them like it has so many people?