In a post-apocalyptic North America, the state of Panem consists of a Capitol and 12 Districts. 70-odd years ago, the Districts revolted against Capitol rule. Capitol won the war. And as a humiliating punishment, they instituted the Hunger Games. Every year two representatives from each District – one boy and one girl, aged 12 to 18 – are obliged to participate in a fight to the death in a televised spectacle. This year Katniss Everdeen is determined to win. She needs to, because otherwise there is no one to take care of her family: with her hunting skills, she is the main breadwinner.
It will come as no surprise to you that the book is full of violence, a lot of it pretty graphical. There’s everything from being stung to death by swarms of mutant hornets, to being hit with a rock. At first I thought it odd that such a bloody book would be marketed as young adult literature, but then I remembered what I read and watched when I was thirteen (Stephen King and Friday the 13th) and reconsidered. Today’s teenagers can be pretty unmoved by blood and gore.
The book was hard to put down while I was reading it, but left no real impression afterwards. It was thrilling but shallow. The book is about death as televised entertainment. From such a setup I would expect the book to rise a step above its contents, to take a critical view of what is going on, to reflect, to comment. Now it felt like we just got a written version of the TV show.
Katniss was all set up for us to like and feel sorry for and root for, but I found her character unconvincing and inconsistent. She hardly reacts to the deaths around her, only feeling sorry when her ally (a sweet young girl) is killed, but otherwise she’s unmoved. Her own likely death doesn’t seem to worry her much, either.
The writing was pretty dull and uninspired, in the journalistic style that I so hate in the detective stories that abound in Sweden. Things are described in a minimal, impersonal manner, giving us no real feel for the places or the people. There is no metaphor, no colour in the language.
One thing that really annoyed me from the beginning was the ridiculousness of the whole setup. A capital city of magnificent wealth, endowed with technologies such as hovercrafts – kept alive and afloat by the productive forces of 12 small, poor districts with backward technologies? One of which focuses solely on coal mining, and another on fishing? Yeah right. And 74 years of hunger games, of parents giving up their kids to near-certain death each year, and no one rebels? Yeah right. And a supposedly demoralizing punishment that involves making celebrities out of the punished, dressed and made up by top stylists, interviewed live on TV? Yeah right.
The whole setup only made sense when I read The New Yorker’s review:
If, on the other hand, you consider the games as a fever-dream allegory of the adolescent social experience, they become perfectly intelligible. Adults dump teenagers into the viper pit of high school, spouting a lot of sentimental drivel about what a wonderful stage of life it’s supposed to be. The rules are arbitrary, unfathomable, and subject to sudden change. A brutal social hierarchy prevails, with the rich, the good-looking, and the athletic lording their advantages over everyone else. To survive you have to be totally fake. Adults don’t seem to understand how high the stakes are; your whole life could be over, and they act like it’s just some “phase”! Everyone’s always watching you, scrutinizing your clothes or your friends and obsessing over whether you’re having sex or taking drugs or getting good enough grades, but no one cares who you really are or how you really feel about anything.
Cheap thrills for a day or two, good to have read so you know what the hype is about, not worth buying book 2.
I just reserved it from my local library yesterday, can’t wait to read it.