As promised, I read The Hunger Games. I finished the first book a few days ago, and I
am now quickly approaching the middle of the second. As you know from my
previous post, I enjoyed its movie adaptation less than I expected. I thought
it was less than all the hype promised, but it was nonetheless enjoyable. I
think The Hunger Games is nowhere
near as good as Harry Potter, but it
certainly has its merits.
Unlike the futuristic concepts of decades
ago, The Hunger Games depicts a
future that is not far from our present. In what was once known as North
America, there is a small nation called Panem. Panem is governed by the
Capitol, surrounded by twelve districts, each serving the Capitol with its
specialties in trade and commerce. However, the Capitol also happens to be a
corrupt government that subjects the twelve districts to the annual Hunger
Games, a gladiatorial tournament that gathers a boy and a girl, ages twelve to
eighteen, from every district to fight to the death.
On the 74th Hunger Games, a
sixteen-year-old girl from District 12 named Katniss Everdeen volunteers to
enter the Games, taking the place of her twelve-year-old sister Primrose “Prim”
Everdeen, whose name was drawn.
The good …
Like Doug Walker, also known as the
Nostalgia Critic, I appreciate that this post-apocalyptic allegory of
contemporary pop culture acknowledges that its very young target audience can
handle the intensity of its contents. I think the concept is tight and clever,
and it is cleverly done. This reimagined future of civilization is haunting and
manages to be believable.
I like that the narrative is fast-paced.
The deceptively thick book can be finished in two to three weeks—one if you
have enough spare time. The way the plot escalates is another factor; no matter
what you like or dislike about the book, you will want to keep reading. This
was true for me even if I’ve seen the movie before reading the book; besides, I
wanted to know if there was anything I missed.
Well, I did miss one thing, and it was
actually one of the cleverest parts of the movie: the supposed love triangle.
Because we can’t have the movie adaptation told exactly as it was shown in the
book, so in the movie, it kinda fell flat. Although Haymitch and Effie in the
movie encouraged Katniss to keep up with Peeta’s declaration of love on
national television, there was nothing in the dialogue that suggested it was
all for show. I actually believed that Peeta really was in love with Katniss
while Katniss is confused by her own hormones and decided to play with the boy.
The movie handled it poorly, and I shall get to that later. The book, on the other
hand, handled it much better.
While Katniss is set on not marrying and
having children because she doesn’t want to put her future children into the
Hunger Games, she clearly has feelings for her best friend Gale. She claims he
is the only one she is fully comfortable with, the only one she readily smiles
for—more on that later. Anyway, so Katniss has sworn to stay single, which is
not to say she openly rejects romance or the possibility of it. She would be
happy to look forward to a future with Gale if it weren’t for the Hunger Games,
and Gale feels the same. Peeta comes into the picture, claiming on national
television that he has a crush on Katniss. The media presents this as reality
TV drama.
In the movie, this was played out way too
subtly for me. Without the luxury of having Katniss’ thoughts to guide the
audience, we had no way of knowing that it was almost entirely a ploy of Peeta
and Haymitch to help Peeta and Katniss win. While this was explored in the
movie, when Haymitch explained that appealing to melodrama and sympathy is a
great way to get in the good graces of the sponsors of the Hunger Games, the
narrative of the movie makes it clear that Peeta’s feelings were real, and
Katniss developed her own feelings for him later. In the book, this was not the
case at all. Whether Peeta’s feelings for Katniss were real is left ambiguous,
while Katniss is outright pretending and doing a believable job at it for the
cameras. The challenge is that she will have to keep pretending, and this draws
Gale away from her. I am impressed with how this was played out in the books,
so I got ticked off that many fans act like this was a love triangle at par
with Twilight. It is not. This is
much, much better than any standard love triangle. I like how complex and refreshing
it is.
To my surprise, I actually became fond of
Peeta. It is true that they say that he and Katniss complement each other. He is
good at the things she’s not good at; and she is good at the things he’s not
good at. He is not a good combatant, but he has remarkable showmanship while
Katniss can put up a fight though putting on a show takes great effort from
her. I like this setup even though it is still clear that Peeta is created the
way he is to make Katniss seem strong and independent by comparison.
The bad …
The
Hunger Games is told entirely in Katniss’s first
person point of view, in an attempt to display the horrors of the Hunger Games
from the eyes of its doomed participant. The Hunger Games is a dehumanizing
so-called tradition of a so-called society, not unlike how present-day reality
shows allow their so-called stars to lose their dignity in exchange for money
while the viewers end up taking these shows too seriously. Knowing this, it
probably doesn’t matter what the background the protagonist comes from. I don’t
think it matters what the protagonist thinks of the games. The constant is that
it is an unnecessary sacrifice to make, especially for an already-crumbling
nation. Yet “acclaimed” author Suzanne Collins feels the need to shove a sob
story in there.
Now, Katniss has had a hard life.
Apparently, District 12 is the poorest district, where people regularly die of
starvation. Katniss had to singlehandedly keep her family from meeting that
fate by hunting in the woods with her best friend Gale. Katniss’s father died
when she was 11 years old, and her mother went catatonic, neglecting her two
young daughters for several months on end, essentially leaving them to fend for
themselves. Katniss has hated her ever since. I don’t see any purpose in this
except for the reader to take pity on Katniss. I think this is unnecessary
because being drawn into the Hunger Games at all is a horrific tragedy in
itself. I have an impression that this also gives the character an excuse to
justify complaining about her lot in life in every opportunity.
As you would read from my review of the
movie adaptation, I was repelled by the incredibly grumpy protagonist. I had
been hoping I would like Katniss better if I read the books; to my
disappointment, she was even worse there. Don’t get me wrong; I understand
where she’s coming from. Most readers recognize her poor behavior as symptoms
of post-traumatic stress disorder. From her background, it’s actually not very
surprising. But I think this could have been handled better.
One of the greatest things that bother me
about Katniss’s troubles is her relationship with her mother. Katniss “cannot
forgive” her mother for neglecting her and her sister Primrose following the
death of her husband in a mine accident. I suppose it would be reasonable to be
resentful because, after all, it is a mother’s duty to care for her children
regardless of her own troubles. But this is no excuse for Katniss to fault her
mother for it by giving backhanded insults at dinner, distancing herself from
her unless being otherwise hostile, and yelling at her just before Katniss goes
off to the Hunger Games. Katniss may be hard-worn from the constant threat of
starvation, but I find it hard to believe that she has so little emotional
capacity to understand what her mother was going through and reach out to her instead.
Katniss missed her dear father as much as her mother missed her husband. Even
if they missed the same person in very different ways, I think Katniss should
have had the capacity to think, “Hey, my mother is so lonely, and I’m lonely,
too. Maybe if we mourn together, we won’t feel as bad.”
Obviously, she doesn’t have the capacity.
Maybe it’s the malnutrition reducing her cognitive skills, but I digress. What
bothers me about this is that in no way that this behavior is presented as
wrong. Just because Katniss is the protagonist, everything she does is somehow
justifiable. If she’s angry, she can rile against her mother all she wants.
Nobody calls Katniss out for it—not even Primrose, who actually gets along with
her mother.
The ugly …
I probably wouldn’t mind Katniss pointing
out how horrible her life is, but her language is always so full of hate and
contempt and general unhappiness that it exhausts me rather than drawing any genuine
sympathy from me. We constantly get reminded how her life is a constant
struggle and how sorry she feels for herself having to be the only one to feed
her family and being angry with her mother for doing nothing. “I can never
forgive her,” she says several times throughout the book, especially in the
first act. She has been worn to the point of being emotionless. Yes, we can
tell when she is being angry or sad, but we almost never witness her feeling
anything else. She says she loves her sister, but she had to say it rather than
demonstrate it besides the motherly way she cheers Prim up. We see how affected
Katniss is whenever she is with Rue, but there were way too little
demonstration of this affection.
Even smiling alone takes tremendous effort
from Katniss, and when she does it with genuine love as she shows hers to Gale,
it was told in a way that doesn’t come naturally for her. Some people don't smile because they are too depressed to smile with genuine happiness. While this is clear in Katniss's case, I got really annoyed that she says it like she has to remind herself to smile when around Gale, and not because she just smiles because it's him. None of this comes
off as natural or believable. Yes, I remember being this depressed when I was
also sixteen; smiling really does take tremendous effort, and my portraits from
that time were terrible. But keep in mind that stoic people, recognizable as people who almost never smile, never smile because they don't feel like it, not because they consciously choose to frown all the time.
This would not have been annoying at all if
it weren’t for Katniss constantly reminding the reader that being stoic is a
conscious effort. When she becomes aware that she is in the public eye, she
reminds herself to keep a straight face, apparently to hide any hint of fear or
sorrow. I honestly do not see any logical purpose to this. I think that if she
acts like herself, things might actually be better for her. We see glimpses of a
lighter and bubblier Katniss when she is with Gale, in the Hunger Games’
opening parade, and during interviews with Caesar Flickerman. Katniss might
argue that this is not her true self, but I would disagree. Whenever she lets
down her defenses, I find she can be quite charming. I like her better when she
is relaxed and comfortable. I even like her better when she is panicking over
the prospect of getting killed because it shows she is human. I don’t see why
or how being her charming self might impede on being the street-smart and self-sufficient
girl that she is. If anything else, consciously being stoic makes her come off
robotic and not at all likeable to anybody.
This makes me question why Cinna is so fond of her.
What bothers me most of all is that the
narrator’s language clearly demonstrates how little the author knows about the
third world. District 12 is a third-world region. Poverty and hunger prevails,
and people are compelled to seek illegal means to survive. There are clear
distinctions between classes, and there are known clashes and discriminations
between them. This is actually an accurate depiction of the third world; what
is actually wrong is the disposition of a person living in it.
In December last year, Gallup listed the
happiest and saddest countries in the world. The ten happiest countries
included eight Latin American countries and two Asian countries. As many people
know, Latin American countries tend to be impoverished due to corruption in the
government and the disorganized transition from simple rural life to fast-paced
urban living. This is also a serious problem in the Philippines, actually
number 8 in the list of happiest people in the world. Coming from the
Philippines, here is what I gather and which also Suzanne Collins completely
fails to understand: even with every reason to complain, poor people choose not
to.
Here in the Philippines, people have been
photographed grinning ear-to-ear while wading in waist-deep floodwaters.
Recently, a young couple was photographed on their wedding day waist-deep in
the flood. We are always reluctant to spend money on luxuries like some gadgets
and travel expenses; even those who can afford it would be happy to spend the
next year or so saving; but even then, we never fail to have a good time with
friends, or at least have a good laugh, especially snarky jokes against the
government. I don’t know how it is in Latin America, but I am guessing it is
similar, considering we are all former Spanish colonies: as my History teacher
said once upon a time, the secret to our happiness is “prayer and laughter.”
People who are well off may see some poor
people looking contented with their lives and think that poor people do not
know better. Well, I think they do know better: Poor people have every reason
to complain, but they realize it is a waste of time and energy to moan and
groan about things they know they can’t have. Poor people try to find ways to
find beauty and happiness around them because there is nothing to gain to keep
yearning for things they can want but will cost them too much. Staying positive
is the only way to survive. As Helen Morgendorffer of Daria put it, “It never is under control. We just tell ourselves
otherwise so we can function.” Poor people are satisfied that they manage to
get by, day by day. They might want to be rich, so they can afford to be fresh
and clean and beautiful and financially successful, and even famous, but they
are grounded enough to realize how little they can gain from dwelling on their
wants than anything they already have.
This is exactly what Suzanne Collins
doesn’t understand about living in the third world. Yes, I suppose any such
optimism can automatically be brought down several notches when there is a
clear threat to your life, but considering that Katniss points out that the
Peacekeepers in District 12 mostly leave the people alone, Katniss would
probably not dwell on her troubles that much.
Perhaps the poorest demonstration of this is
when Katniss scoffs at Rue’s love for music. She describes music as “as useful
as ribbons and rainbows,” meaning to say that she finds no real purpose for
these things at all; ergo, she has absolutely no appreciation for either music
or rainbows. It distinctively reminded me of Bella Swan saying, “Ew, snow,”
when taking a walk with her ‘friends’ in the first Twilight book. I really felt
like tearing the book apart when I read this line. It made me very angry
because I don’t understand how anybody
would not like music or rainbows. It’s
just not believable; it’s not natural; it’s not human. And Katniss being like
this destroys the purpose of her being the instrument of giving insight to how
horrible the Hunger Games is.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/159254/latin-americans-positive-world.aspx
