The Hunger Games

By Author: Tracy carter
Total Articles: 101
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Mix one part Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," two parts Reality TV, three parts American Idol, and four parts heroic quest (as described by Joseph Campbell and others) and you might come up with something close to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. While this dystopian story is set in the ruins of a place that used to be known as the United States of America, it has an old-fashioned and primitive feel to it.

Each year, a lottery is held in which 24 young people—12 boys and 12 girls—are chosen as tributes to participate in an ordeal of survival known as the Hunger Games. The games end when only one of the 24 tributes is left alive. Since no food is provided, death might come through starvation, but that would not make for exciting television (hidden cameras have been planted throughout the area) and so the producers of the games come up with creative ways to provide unusual Tag Heuer Replica weapons as well as "natural" hazards. The entire populace watches the televised games and the participants have no way of knowing ...
... exactly when they are on-camera. In the scary lottery that takes place in Chapter 1, Katniss—the 16-year-old heroine of the book—does not actually have her name drawn. She gets into the games because when her little sister's name is drawn, she pushes the ten-year-old behind her and says without even thinking, "I volunteer! ... I volunteer as tribute! The rules allow for such volunteering, but in the history of the Games it had never happened before.

Katniss comes from the poorest part of the poorest district. It is called The Seam because it is in the center of the coal-mining area where, five years earlier, Katniss's father had been killed in a mine explosion. Since then, Katniss's mother has eked out a living for her family by providing natural medicines and herbs and caring for the injured. When the family was desperate for food, Katniss took up her father's illegal "hobby" of hunting wild game in the forbidden forest and trading with Greasy Sae, an old woman who makes her living by selling hot bowls of soup. Katniss's "partner in crime" has been an 18-year-old boy named Gale. She met him in the forest as he hunted to feed his own family of five, and over the years they became friends and hunting partners.

One of the boys chosen in the lottery turns out to be the baker's son, Peeta, who Katniss remembers from a kindness he extended after her father's death. But still she holds back from him because she does not want to kill—or be killed by—someone she has grown close to.

Many of Collins's human characters have old-fashioned names, while the common names given by the central government add a sense of menace. A young woman who in the capitol cares for Katniss's needs is an Avox, a person "without voice" because her tongue has been cut out as punishment for an act of rebellion. The central government also displays its power through breeding dangerous animals. Tracker jackers are yellow-jacket wasps that not only inflict poisonous stings but Omega Replica Watches also hunt out their victims, while muttations are the spirits of killed tributes who come back as horrible dogs to renew their fight against those still alive.
Readers who have come to know and love Katniss, and to a lesser extent Peeta and Gale, will be pleased to read the last words on the last page: "End of Book One," which implies that the story is continuing. (APN)