The Hunger Games: A Literary Analysis

The first novel written for a young adult audience on record is the Swiss Family Robinson, written in 1812 by Jonathan David Wyss. This charming novel documents the adventures of a family stranded on an island, fight pirates, and exploration of the island. This genre had been slowing climbing its way up the genre ladder for popularity among readers with some major hits being the recent Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games trilogy. This genre covers several topics, in several different subgenres, but they all have one element in common, a main character is growing up. This concept of the “bildungsroman” or coming of age story has graced the pens of famous writers such as William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain, and yet, young adult books still get flack for being too “mainstream” or shallow. As a
Two series I mentioned earlier, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, are driven by the connection of relationships. “But know this; the ones that love us never really leave us. And you can always find them in here”(Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Potter’s entire purpose for fight the Dark Lord is to save his friends. Every time Potter looses a comrade, readers ache with him. The series gives room for Potter to grow with those around him, and very much like Cora and Bryce, those relationships change. In the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen’s rise to revolution begins with an act of sacrifice for her sister. This moves the entire story from an arena of children killing children, to a journey of love and sacrifice. Following this blueprint, young adult stories are not made to simply us emotion as a cheap trick to draw in readers, but to give another level of depth within the story