She Don't Put On A Show, For Nobody, Not Even You, She's Gonna Sit Alone, Why Would You Ever Make Her Feel So Small She'd Just Disappear?

--"Little Rosa", Letters to Cleo

I recently purchase Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games and read it the same day. I had been getting recommendations over the last few months from various acquaintances, but didn't believe it was going to be something I would enjoy.

Was I ever wrong.

For those of you who don't know The Hunger Games is:

a young-adult science fiction novel written by Suzanne Collins.... It introduces sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where North America once stood. This is where a powerful government working in a central city called the Capitol holds power. In the book, the Hunger Games are an annual televised event where the Capitol chooses one boy and one girl from each district to fight to the death. The Hunger Games exist to demonstrate not even children are above the Capitol's power.

The entire novel is violent, disturbing, and quite often shocking in its brutality. I mean--I wouldn't blink an eye if the same plot elements concerned adults, but the fact that the violence described often involves children as young as twelve it really made an impression on me. Like Lord of the Flies before it, there's something truly fascinating about stories concerning what happens when children are left in an environment where there are no consequences; where, indeed, violence is not only okay, but encouraged. It gives you an idea what society would be like if a semblance of order were not maintained.

Various critics have flocked to the novel's anti-war and anti-government bent, but for me I came from the novel that it was more speaking out against any situation where the strong oppress the weak. Granted, that's a huge spectrum of society to be criticizing, yet the author does a great job of personalizing the theme. When you read about the stronger districts' candidates banding together to deny the weaker districts' candidates food, tools, and much-needed medical supplies simply because they can you feel the injustice in a system where inequality is the law of the land, even if it is only in a game show/reality show packaging. When you read about how some kids due to their personality and social connections are granted boons like water and shelter from generous sponsors during the games, and how other kids hailing from the poorer districts receive no such gifts, it make you want to scream out in frustration at a system that is rigged to make the supposed rich get richer and the poor even poorer.

But I think the gravest message the novel gets across is the strong will always dominate the weak simply because they can. When twelve-year-old Rue, the youngest of competitors, is run through with a spear by one of the stronger competitors, you don't feel sad because she deserved to die any less than any of the competitors. You feel sad because she is described as the smallest competitor, as the youngest competitor. You feel sad because there was that skulking suspicion that she never had a prayer from the very beginning. You feel sad because you feel the inevitably of her demise strictly due to her physical stature and experience.

We've all been bullied before. We know how the drill works. However, that doesn't change the fact it feels amoral in some way. Personally, I know what it's like to feel that feeling of helplessness when somebody more aggressive or more willing to push their agenda upon you decides to torment you. More importantly, I know what it's like to impose my will on somebody weaker-willed than myself. In either case it's always the same; you're either the guy climbing over somebody to stay on top or you're the guy being climbed over. At that age there is no such arrangement that a stronger individual will assist a weaker individual if the two of them aren't already friends. In high school the order of the day is to constantly assert your authority by showcasing your competitiveness and your willingness to belittle someone.

However, I believe the book would lose a little something if the characters were merely a few years older. Bullying still happens once you reach your twenties, but I think it's less prevalent. People at that age learn to assert their authority in other ways. In most cases it isn't as important to raise yourself up by putting others down. More often than not it's more of achievement to raise yourself up without limiting someone else. I think that takes real strength.

That's why I think the book's great for its intended audience. It really captures what it's like to want power, to use power without a thought to anyone else, and what it's like to be powerless--three conditions that every teenager goes through.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers