Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

I just finished reading Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, a few minutes before sitting down to write. First thought: Hunger Games reads hard and fast. By hard, I don't mean "difficult to comprehend." I mean that the blows just keep coming as thick and fast as the pages keep turning.


Collins pulls us into a post-apocalyptic world in which order is maintained through a cruel parody of the Olympics--the Hunger Games. The games demonstrate the power of the central government of Panem over the provinces. All residents of the country are forced to watch as 24 contestants--two from each district (or state) battle to the death in an arena as rigged against all of them as they are against each other.


Katniss becomes the contestant (or tribute) from District 12, a coal-mining region that resembles the Appalachians--hilly and green, fertile. But the mining people of the district--Katniss's people--are starving. Katniss and her friend Gale dare to go outside the fence to find food to feed their families. I will not tell you how Katniss comes to be one of the tributes from her district, but I will tell you that it made me gasp. Katniss is joined by the boy tribute, Peeta, who is a towny in District 12.


Katniss and Peeta (and I, as a reader) are then swept up in the games--a gruesome contest of wit, strength, cunning, and survival. Again, I am not going into detail here. However, my gasp at Katniss's selection ceremony was repeated over and over as certain scenes crystallized into some of the most poignant moments I have ever read. You may need kleenex, but keep in mind that this is the first book of a trilogy. Knowing that someone is going to survive helped me keep going through some pretty grim events.

The hero couple from the movie Logan's
Run (that's Michael York on the left).

A recurrent theme in this book is exactly how much rebellion against the Capitol of Panem will be tolerated--and whether Katniss and her associates can stay within these boundaries. As the characters mature, will they make the choice to live in the wild? Will they become fighters for freedom? Katniss, Gale, and Peeta have demonstrated in this book that they have the skills to do so. This theme places Hunger Games solidly in the tradition of 1984, Logan's Run, and numerous other science fiction and fantasy stories in which a sterile or controlled environment is breached or escaped and heroes seek their own fortunes. Even my favorite movie, Jeremiah Johnson, is a form of this story.


The idea of the winner-take-all games is also not new--but it is done so well here that it does not feel at all stale or derivative. Cheers to Collins.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in the
movie of Hunger Games, 2012

My next issue is whether Katniss's journey is a hero journey--a quest. She is invited to step out of her milieu, she is cast into an underworld of a kind, she acquires tools, allies, mentors, and emerges victorious. But this is only phase 1 of Katniss's journey. She doesn't reach adult understanding in this book, especially with regard to her relationship with Peeta. At the end of this book she is on the cusp of adulthood, on the edge of self-determination. She has not yet transformed.


I thank Collins for writing such a good female character--one who is brave, strong, smart, and skilled without being unrealistic. Katniss is not a super-hero. She even has braids like Pippi Longstocking, my gold standard for heroines. However, Katniss doesn't have to be comic to be strong, a hayseed to be smart. I am in love with her and want to adopt her as my daughter and nurture her courage and help her grow up and out into a wide, wide world. Our world needs girls like this and people to nurture them.


I can guarantee that I'll be reading Catching Fire, the second book in the trilogy, tomorrow.


Sidebar: Pippi Longstocking

Pippie Longstocking, from the books by Astrid Lindgren, was my favorite girl character from my childhood reading. She was strong, smart, funny, skilled. She could live on her own. She could walk the ridgepole! (Which I admired even though I didn't know what a ridgepole was.) She walked where her path took her, exposing humbug and hoohaw, sticking up for the weak, daring whatever there was to dare. In exchange, she was ugly, awkwad, and ridiculed. It was worth it to her, I think, if Pippi could be seen as having an inner life.


Not for me the Laura Ingalls Wilders or Rebeccas of Sunnybrooks. My life has been one long ridgepole, and I'll walk it awkwardly, but straight and sure!






Sidebar: Logan's Run
When I was a freshman at Ohio State in 1978, I would go over to West Campus (since dismantled) early each morning and study in one of the classrooms. As the height of modernity, there was a TV monitor in that room and every morning it would show Logan's Run, a movie I had already seen a few times. All quarter long, I took in Logan's Run along with Psych 100, Biology, and Classics. It's difficult to say which had a longer-lasting impact.

The fatal dot from Logan's Run

Michael York plays Logan, who gradually becomes aware that the treasured ceremony of passing over into a different world is really a ritualized method of population control--there are no old people in Logan's world. When an implant glows in your palm, it's your time. Logan decides to escape--that's his "run." One of the most poignant scenes is when he (and his of course scantily clad female companion) see an old person for the first time. I developed a great love for this B-movie-so-good-it-gets-an-A over the course of that quarter. I never knew why it repeated morning after morning. If you know, please get in touch with me.