Includes spoilers for The Hunger Games trilogy.
When I was eleven years old, I read The Hunger Games for the first time and fell absolutely in love with it. For a long time after reading, this book was one of the few things I talked about. I read and re-read the trilogy, watched the movies countless times, and bought any merchandise I could. As years passed, however, I read new books and series, and although The Hunger Games always remained dear to my heart, I wondered if I would still enjoy the series now or if the love I had for it was simply nostalgia.
Late last spring, Suzanne Collins (author of The Hunger Games trilogy) released a prequel to the series, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and I decided it was the perfect opportunity to re-read the series and see how it compared to my glorified memory of it. To my surprise, not only did the series live up to my previous enjoyment of it, but I was able to appreciate so many aspects of it I hadn’t noticed before.
“District 12: Where you can starve to death in safety.”
– The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games series follows sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen after she volunteers to take her younger sister’s place in the annual Hunger Games, a competition where twenty-four teenagers have to fight to the death on live television. The first book of the trilogy was published in 2008, and its popularity caused a huge resurgence of the young-adult dystopian genre, with novels like Divergent, The Maze Runner, and Shatter Me coming out soon after. Eleven-year-old me loved how action-packed and fast-paced The Hunger Games was and how interesting the characters were. I enjoyed reading about Katniss and Peeta’s love story and the themes of oppression, power, and revolution. Nonetheless, as I re-read the series, I came to realize the actual depth of the story and how disturbingly relevant its themes of control and power are to our current society.
The Hunger Games is much more than a distant tale about a revolution: it’s a drastic reflection of our own world and what we could become. Collins doesn’t hide her anti-capitalist viewpoint in the novel, making the Capitol have more food and resources than they would ever need while letting the districts struggle to survive. Furthermore, the Capitol has a clear belief that the people in the districts aren’t like them, that they’re different somehow — a mentality that’s eerily similar to what so many upper class citizens in our society seem to believe as well. Even though Katniss is pitted against twenty-three other people who are trying to kill her, she is aware that they aren’t her real enemy, but rather the system and people in power who placed her in this situation in the first place.
And yet, when I read the series last summer, I realized that even when there’s the prospect of change in government at the end of the trilogy, not that much seems to be different. To-be President Coin displays the same problem that President Snow and so many national leaders in our own world display: the abuse and corruption of power. Throughout Mockingjay, Coin manipulates and uses Katniss as a symbol of the rebellion, but when Katniss’s job is done, Coin quickly realizes that Katniss is more of use to her as a dead martyr. After the Capital loses the war and Coin rises to power, she suggests doing a final Hunger Games, but with the children of the Capitol instead, showing how the “us versus them” mentality remains. Katniss recognizes this in the end, that Coin and Snow were never all that different, and when the time comes to kill Snow, she shoots the dictator — just not the one everyone expected her to.
“I’m not their slave,” the man mutters.
“I am,” I say. “That’s why I killed Cato… and he killed Thresh… and he killed Clove… and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the capitol. But I’m tired of being a piece in their games.”
– Mockingjay
One thing that definitely hasn’t changed in these eight years is my opinion on Katniss: she’s a fantastic main character. Katniss isn’t perfect, and she’s definitely not written to be likeable. She’s rude and selfish, but she’s also resourceful and intelligent, making her the protagonist the story needed. It’s never unbelievable that Katniss could win the Games; she proves time and time again that she knows how to survive, managing to provide for her family for years, even in their conditions of extreme poverty. Furthermore, like she herself understands, “no decent person” ever wins the Games. And yet, the reader roots for her regardless, because even though Katniss suffers and rarely has a choice in what happens to her, when the time comes, she always chooses to do what’s right.
Katniss also grows throughout the novels, her motivations changing from staying alive to protecting her loved ones to getting revenge on the Capitol. She isn’t invulnerable: Katniss’s mental health is clearly affected by her experiences, and by the end of the trilogy Katniss is struggling with PTSD, depression, and grief. And what eleven-year-old me considered a fairly happy ending now seems… sad. Katniss and Peeta never truly recover from the violence and torture they lived through; instead, they continue to suffer years after the revolution has ended. Still, the ending does bring a message of hope, as Katniss’s decision to choose Peeta is much more than a simple end to a love triangle.
“What I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.”
– Mockingjay
The reason I first read The Hunger Games was because I was completely enamored with the movie. To this day, I still love the films; they’re entertaining, well-written, and the casting is impeccable. However, these movies suffer from the same affliction that so many do in Hollywood: it’s a franchise first and art second. It’s ironic, really, how the movies become exactly what the book criticizes: the audience is like the Capitol itself, watching the tributes fight to the death for pure entertainment. The films reduce so much of Katniss’s character in order to focus on the love triangle, which is no longer about choosing peace over hatred, but simply choosing between two men. In the years after the movies have come out, that’s the aspect of them so many people remember. Now, The Hunger Games has become just another “teenage girl YA series” in our memories, so much that I had to re-read the series to remember if that was really all it was.
“We control it,” he said quietly. “If the war’s impossible to end, then we have to control it indefinitely. Just as we do now. With the Peacekeepers occupying the districts, with strict laws, and with reminders of who’s in charge, like the Hunger Games. In any scenario, it’s preferable to have the upper hand, to be the victor rather than the defeated.”
– A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Collins’ prequel A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes returns to Panem, but our narrator has changed drastically from defiant Katniss Everdeen to the calculating Coriolanus Snow, the main antagonist of the original trilogy. However, the novel’s protagonist isn’t the only change in the narration of the new novel. The Hunger Games was fast and entertaining, its anti-capitalist themes interwoven with the text, whereas A Ballad of Songbird’s and Snakes is a 500+ page, slow read that clearly and calmly makes its point. After watching The Hunger Games become misinterpreted and watered down by Hollywood, Collins writes a book that isn’t, nor is it meant to be, fun and easy to read.
Even from a young age, Snow is an ambitious and self-preserving boy who manages to justify any of his actions, no matter how malicious they are, with little to no remorse. It’s not enjoyable to read from his perspective, to be forced to understand his thoughts and ideas instead of simply observing his actions from afar. Snow’s disturbing narration creates a huge shift in the tone and atmosphere of the novel in comparison to The Hunger Games. Eleven-year-old me would have hated the new prequel. Nineteen-year-old me thinks it’s pure genius.
In the end, as much as my thoughts and views on the series have changed, at least one thing stays the same: The Hunger Games is one of the most powerful series I have ever read. If you haven’t picked it up, I highly recommend doing so. If you find yourself like I did, believing your love for it to be the remains of nostalgia, give yourself a chance to revisit this series and maybe have your eyes opened to the true depth of the exceptional story Collins has created.
You can find The Hunger Games at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and Audible.