The Hunger Games

[sawyl]

Although it's marketed at teens — and really, post-Harry Potter, does anyone care about this sort of thing any more? — Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games actually a deeply classy piece of distopian fiction featuring wonderfully real characters, historical allusions and genuine nastiness.

The book is set in Panem, a post-apocalyptic version of the US with strong classical overtones. The nation is ruled from the Capitol where life is frivolous and easy and the citizens have all that they could ever want. But the majority of the population live in the twelve districts, where they are kept short of food and forced to work to keep the Capitol in luxuries, with each district specialising in a particular industry.

In addition to their everyday privations, the districts are also required to provide two representatives, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 selected at random, to compete in the Hunger Games. Intended as punishment for the districts' last great uprising 75 years before, the games are essentially an extended televised fight to the death for the entertainment of the Capitol's citizens and the edification of the provinces. The participants in the games are treated like stars in the Capitol and provided with the finest publicity teams and stylists available. They are encouraged t o sell an image of themselves to the public, in order to gain sponsorship monies that can be used to provide them with life saving gifts once they enter the arena.

The allusions here are fairly obvious. The Capitol and the districts are clearly modelled on Rome and the Empire, with the games standing in for the bloody horrors of the circus. Collins underscores the allusion by giving the Capitol's citizens latinate names, such as Claudius and Octavia, which contrast with the more common place name of the characters from the districts. The selection of the sacrificial victims from the provinces, however, owes much to the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Both stories involve a ruler demanding a blood sacrifice as a right of victory and both, as will become apparent, also feature a hero who volunteers to take the place of another.

The plot of The Hunger Games begins in District 12, a mining area in the Appalachians, on selection. Sixteen year-old Katniss Everdeen is appalled when her beloved younger sister is picked and immediately volunteers in her stead. Katniss quickly finds herself on a train, speeding towards the Capitol with Peeta, the quiet son of the local baker and her fellow candidate, and District 12's last victor in games, a cunning alcoholic called Haymitch Abernathy.

Although ill at ease with much of the publicity and unsure how far she can trust either Peeta or Haymitch — especially after Peeta announces, in the middle of a television interview, that he is hopelessly in love with her — Katniss is reasonably confident about the practical side of the games. For, having lost he father in a mine collapse and having effectively lost her mother to catatonic depression, Katniss has spent the last few years illegally honing her foraging and hunting skills in the woods around District 12 in order to keep her family alive. Consequently she has a detailed knowledge of plant lore, a way with snares and traps, and, best of all, she has become a brilliant archer.

Collins is particularly strong when talking about Katniss' survival skills. Despite not knowing anything about hunting, the details felt real to me, especially once Katniss had entered the arena and her skills shifted from something that helped to keep her alive to being the only thing keeping her alive. Because real survival is difficult, it's hand to mouth, it's knowing that if you don't find clean water, don't set a trap, don't dig up the right sort of roots, you won't be strong enough to keep ahead of the things that will kill you given half a chance.

But what really convinces is the character of Katniss, who can be terribly insightful about the complex intentions of some people whilst being completely unable to comprehend the most obvious of motives in others, including herself. Thus she immediately understands the implicit statements communicated through Haymitch's gifts to her, whilst being almost completely unable to understand her own reasons for her behaviour despite sharing many of the same characteristics as Haymitch. She is also unable to step outside herself and see what others see when they look at her, so she can't begin to understand that, yes, perhaps Peeta is in love with her and always has been, and that the people that she thought were indifferent to her back in the district were actually going out of their way to help her.

And it is this uncertainty over who Katniss is and what she feels that gives the book pace and urgency, because it means that you're never really safe and never quite sure how you want the book to end. Do you want Peeta and Katniss to cheat the rules of the arena and both survive to live happily ever after? Or do you want Katniss to survive and a go off in to the sunset with her hunting partner and potential boyfriend Gale? In which case, would Peeta have sacrificed himself or would Katniss have to fight him to the death? I was never really quite sure what I wanted until I got to the end, when I realised that what I'd been given was exactly what I would have wanted if I'd have known what I wanted.

Highly recommended.