The Perfect Cruelty of the Hunger Games

*note: I'm aware I misspoke saying the number of children--it is 23, two from each district minus one victor. oops!

I will NEVER forgive the media for portraying these movies as "a love triangle for teens" instead of this complex and real look at empathy and politics

The moment on the tour in Catching Fire when the little girl says to Katniss "One day, I'm gonna volunteer just like you did" is fucking terrifying.

What always mystified me was how Capitol citizens could see children being murdered by each other as sport and entertainment but the moment Peeta announced Katniss was pregnant, that is where they suddenly grew a moral conscious and saw the deaths as inhumane.

I've always thought Effie's detachment and uncomfortable cheerfulness is, at least in part, a defence mechanism of sorts. I don't know how long she's had this job for, but surely meeting these kids every year, introducing them, guiding them in some way, and then watching them die has to affect her at least a little bit. So where Haymitch became an alcoholic and cynical to numb himself, maybe she dissociates and detaches herself, hides behind a bubbly and cheerful mask to make it less real.

I don't remember where I read it, but someone said " The Hunger Games showed an entire generation that the most revolutionary thing they could do was to to be compasionate."

There's a moment in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes that really stuck with me. In the arena, the main antagonist is Coral, one of the tributes from district 4. By all accounts, Coral is in the best position to win. She's strong, she's ruthless, we see her ending tributes mercilessley, even ones she has an alliance with. She seems completely devoid of empathy. UNTIL. It's only her and Lucy Gray left, being chased by the snakes and climbing the rubble. Of course the snakes won't attack Lucy Gray, but Coral doesn't know that, and Lucy is just a few steps ahead of her and the snakes. As the snakes are swarming her and biting her, she cries out in a high-pitched, childlike voice, begging for her life. She says, "It's not fair. It's not. It can't have all been for nothing." This literal child sacrificed her own empathy and humanity and turned herself into a monster, just as the Capitol demanded of her, because all she wanted was to survive. And at the end, she realises that everything she did was ultimately meaningless and she is going to be disposed of anyway, just because Lucy Gray was able to climb a pile of rubble just a little bit faster. She strangled her own soul for the Capitol, and the Capitol fed her to the snakes.

I really don’t think people pay enough attention to Katniss’ class at the beginning of the book. She’s in the lowest class of the worst district. She’s been her family’s primary protector and provider since she was 11, and knows what it feels like to starve. She’s had PTSD and attachment issues even before the games from her father’s deaths and mother’s depression (honestly, katniss’ relationship with her mother is one of the themes that I really wish could have been explored in more depths. Going from being a child to being a provider because your primary caregiver has just shut down and then having to go back to being a child due to a sudden windfall is a novel all in its own). If she was in the real world, she wouldn’t be an average suburban teen, she’d be a poor dropout in a poor area with a record as long as your arm doing 3 different semi illegal jobs to make sure her sister doesn’t have to. She’s not a middle class Everyman, she’s an EXTREMELY troubled youth who was doomed by the system even before she stepped into the arena. There are MILLIONS of Katnisses out there in the world that we’ve been conditioned not to empathize with. If the readers met someone like her in real life, they’d wrinkle their nose and hold their phones in a death grip.

The Hunger Games was in the school reading curriculum when my daughter was in the 6th grade. I was mortified. I read it first. Then we read it together, taking turns reading aloud. We discussed it thoroughly after each reading session including researching the author, political history and psychology of oppressive regimes. Other parents got the book removed to a higher grade level but, in the end, my daughter and I learned a lot. Now as an adult, she is a deeply critical thinker and social activist.

I like how also the empathy/care escalates. It's easier to care the closer we are to someone. Katniss does not volunteer for a stranger, she does it for her sister. Immediate family. When she becomes allies with Rue and mourns her, it is because she reminds her ofher sister. one step removed, but still somewhat tied to familiarity. at first she cares for the vulnerable, like Maggs and Wiress etc. then later she learns to empathize with people like Joanna too. there is a natural progression to it, from the most familiar to more and more abstract.

The scene where Katniss says “Panem today. Panem tomorrow. Panem forever,” while everyone in the district she’s talking to is screaming at them is so haunting.

My still favorite scene in the entire series is when Peeta takes the victor out to the water and tells her to look at the sky so she can focus on the colors while she is dying- he was already such an empathetic person to begin with but that scene was so well done because he gave her a last moment of true joy and peace before she died.

The beautiful irony that gaul is right: the games did reveal humanity's true nature. And it revealed that, no matter how horrific the circumstances, empathy always wins.

Got chills near the end when you were talking about compassion and love in the games being its own downfall. I read somewhere: "at the start of The Hunger Games, Katniss was terrified of Prim dying young and Peeta was terrified of the capital changing him. By the end, Prim died anyway and they changed Peeta in all the ways he was scared of" In the end nothing mattered. But it all did. Nothing was changed. Everything was changed.

Another way the dehumanize the tributes in the later games is that they wear a uniform. Lucy really stands out in her dress and it shows her personality. Also when they die the picture in the sky states only the number of their district and not their name.

Some food for thought: in the TBOSAS book, when the bell went off and the games started, there was no instant death, instant action like we saw in the movie; in fact, most of the tributes ran away. But of course, no violence is boring to watch, right? So that’s not the way it was translated into film. Oddly disturbing when you think about it.

I think the things that fuck me up every single time are the scenes where people make the handsign at Katniss during the victor tour. Those people know they're going to die- they know that they're sending a message that will get them executed. You can see it in their face. But also in their face is "I don't want to live having not said this. I would rather die letting them know that we aren't giving up either than live hoping they Just Know." And it shows during the rebellion sequences. Sure, they intended to take down the dam with 13- but singing The Hanging Tree? The lumberjacks using the trees as cover as they blew up the peacekeepers? It was a unified front with little to no proper back and forth not because they all hated the Capitol- though that was certainly part of it- but because they all loved eachother. Fucks me up man.

There’s also an interesting part of the books that explains that the ENTIRE district gets food parcels for a YEAR if one of their tributes wins to “reward them” for producing a victor. I think this is such an interesting detail because even if you’re entirely against the games, even if it’s someone you know or love in that arena, you can’t look away. You can’t help but root for them, because if they win, you win too. It’s such an interesting way to make those in the districts still want the winnings of the games, even if it comes at the expense of incredible violence. Because there’s always that chance that feeds on their desperation. That possibly creates resentment to those who weren’t “good enough” to win, and also that intense alienating idolization to those who DO win.

For me, the trafficking of Victors really drives home the fact that they didn't win at all- they just lived to see another day of being owned completely by the Capitol. (Also, it's definitely a tactic to keep the most popular Victors under control)

As a big survivor fan, I can't help but notice some parallels between survivor and hunger games. At one point in a reunion show, a survivor player said that the show might be entertaining to the viewers, but there's real people involved and real relationships ruined. And the audience booed her and she had to leave.