The Hunger Games

Well, I'm starting living in a new house with new housemates and starting a new job with new coworkers and starting a new blog (semi-new, I have used this page before, as you can see by the 09 blogs), and if I'm starting a new blog, it should be about stuff that other people are interested in... If I was going to blog for myself I would simply write in my journal (which I do more and more, but it's stuff I write for me or for God, and even telling you that feels a little out of my comfort zone). No, I want to share thoughts I have with you, my reader, and thus I choose a safe topic: the Harry Potter / Twilight novel / movie set of this year, The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. If you have not read it / see it, I will try not to spoil it for you, but I do have to reveal a couple things, so don't read on if you hate spoilers.

Do I recommend it? Yes and no. It's fascinating as a novel, you can't put it down, you have to make sure the characters you care about are alive. The plot, to be brief about it, is that in a post-apocolyptic world, post-rebellion Panem where the US used to be, once a year Hunger Games are held and televised. The Games pit 24 youngsters (teens) against each other, two from each District that surround the Capitol (the ruling district). They must destroy each other until one remains alive, as a reminder to all involved that the Capitol will never forget the rebellion held against them. The main character, Katniss, takes her sister's place in the Games to save her from certain death. The Games are bloody and awful, but there is a lesson to be learned here: watching violence is as condoning of it as if one was there participating in the gore one's self, and a world ruled by such entertainers is an immoral and evil world. We in the US, the book seems to be telling us, need to be on constant vigil against our own country becoming such a place.

So, yes, the book has a point, and is hard to put down. But I feel like the whole point of the book is ruined by the creation of a movie about the book. The lesson of the book is that watching humans kill for sport is a type of entertainment best left to those of ancient Rome watching sports in the Colosseum. And my thought is, here's a Catch 22: if you watch the movie and all that violence, are you really any better than the people in the Capitol or the Districts that support the Games? And the answer to that, I feel, is emphatically NO. I think even me finishing the book felt a little hypocritical on my part. That said, the end of the book being unfinished, there being two more books and me wanting to see the Hunger Games stopped for good, I may actually read the second two novels as well. But let me just say, I enjoyed the Traveling Pants novels by Ann Brashares much better as a book option for teens and adults. They may not be thrillers, but it's nice to read a book without violence.