This blog post is replacing Slaughterhouse 5 because I don't remember ANYTHING about it but it never got a blog post, leaving me in a hopeless situation at best.
The Hunger Games is the trilogy that everyone is talking about, it is about as popular as Harry Potter was, or it'll get there soon at least. I know this because I read the series when it was just a regular series of books that nobody really appreciated, I read it, loved it, and then moved on. Then a year later my mom starts reading it, my friends are all reading it, my friend's dad is reading it, there's a movie coming out for it, etc...
The books are great, and the movie boosted their popularity to incredible levels, but not everyone realizes the deeper qualities in the book. Most people probably just enjoy the cool scenes and romance stuff, which is fine, but those aren't what I'll be blogging on, my apologies to any Hunger Games fanboys/girls who wanted another outlet to talk about that stuff, I'm not doing that here.
There are a few things that strike me about the book, but I'm going to start with one of the big ones.
There is a striking similarity between the relationship between the districts and the Capitol of Panem and the relationship that is becoming more and more pronounced between the rich and poor of the USA. The whole rich vs poor thing is about how the rich are using their wealth to influence the government and gain more wealth, almost always at the expense of everyone else. In the Hunger Games the Capitol has complete political, economic, and military control over the districts, and it uses that control to exploit them and live in perfect comfort while everyone else lives on the brink of starvation.This ringing any bells for anybody?
Of course this is an extreme example of the situation we put up with now, things aren't really that bad yet. The question is if things could get that bad at some point in the future. With the government steadily taking away our rights, what is stopping them from setting up this situation for real? I don't know, maybe nothing, in the books one of the 13 districts was said to have rebelled, and they got bombed into nothingness, making the common belief that nothing was left there but radioactive ruins. If the situation in the trilogy were replicated in real life, would out government hesitate to bomb or otherwise slaughter any of us middle/lower class people who didn't like what was happening? I don't think they would, in that situation I think we would be given the choice of eternal poverty or death, and this situation might be becoming reality sooner than we think, what with all of the corruption and the complete lack of anything we can do about it.
Another thing to consider is Katniss's internal conflict about her decision to substitute for her sister. Most people who have only read the first book probably view her decision as selfless, but in the next books it is revealed that her decision might not have been as selfless as it seems. Katniss does a lot of things to save people because she can't bear to live without them. She herself questions her actions and wonders if they were really meant to save the people she saved, or if they were to spare herself the pain of losing those people. It's an interesting question to debate, whether or not Katniss is selfish or selfless, I'm not sure which it is myself. I think it's a bit of both, her desire to not lose people stems from her feelings for those people, so her decisions to protect them can't be entirely selfish, because she does care for them. On the other hand the feeling that drives her to act is not one of selflessness, but one of selfishly trying to avoid the pain of loss. So in the end her actions are both selfish and selfless, which is why she can't decide for herself what they are.
Those are the two most striking themes for me, there's also one more thing that when I think back might have had a deeper meaning, but I'd need to re-read the books to evaluate it and add it to the blog post if it actually did have a deeper meaning.
That's all I have for now, after I'm done with the 52 books I may go back and look into the possible addition, or I might not, but for now I'm moving on.
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