The Hunger Games review

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 74^th 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