I haven’t seen nor read The Hunger Games–haven’t seen it because I haven’t read it, and it’s going to be tough to get it from the library until the movie furor dies down, so I don’t expect to do either for awhile. However, I gather it’s about a government that compels young people to fight each other to the death, even if they have no personal animus and might even respect and care for each other.
This does not sound like fiction to me. It sounds like real life. It sounds like war.
Well, that’s why I read scifi: to hold up a mirror to our world and maybe notice something there that hadn’t seemed as clear before. As Ursula LeGuin wrote (in her excellent introduction to the 1976 edition of her even more excellent novel, The Left Hand of Darkness), “Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.” If the Hunger Games trilogy suggests to the teenagers for whom it’s written that their government also threatens to conscript them into a fight they don’t want engage in and can’t win, no wonder it is so popular. I hope it gives them, and the rest of us, some ideas about how to change the situation.
Sermons in Stones 
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April 12, 2012 at 7:55 am
mdillof
Amy,
I think that you are very perceptive in your analysis of “The Hunger Games,” but if that is the message of the film, it is a misleading one. I do not know about the military of other nations, but America’s is all volunteer.
In addition to being all volunteer, it is not comprised of the poor and oppressed. A significant percentage of soldiers come from middle class and even affluent families. I know because I taught for two years at a military university. That is why I suspect that “The Hunger Games” is disingenuous and little more than a propaganda piece. As I said, I haven’t read nor seen The Hunger Games. I have lived in a militaristic country, however, and I have observed that there are many ways other than force to compel people to serve in the military. I am glad to hear that the young people you taught had other options. –AZM
April 26, 2012 at 2:33 am
MJ Burr
Amy, the fact that our Army is all volunteer does not detract from your point, actually it rather heightens it! Our “volunteer” army is staffed by those who enter the lottery of losing their life in exchange for a job and/or the promise of an education. the fact that so many young people coming out of high school have no hope for either job or college on their own forces the choice upon them. Not exactly like Panem, but close enough to make the point. MJ, that’s what I was thinking–and also the fact that we, all of us, young and old, repeatedly choose war as the way to “resolve” our problems, even trivial ones like how to keep United Fruit’s profits up, and one thing that enables us to do so is an endless supply of teenagers who will take most of the risks. We could teach peacemaking, but we don’t, not even in most of our churches.
April 5, 2014 at 9:44 am
Cynthia Landrum
Keep reading past the first book, because it’s the third book where the author really explores the horror of war and its effects on those who fight it. The series holds up a mirror to society in a number of different ways, and each book with different emphases.