The Hunger Games Book Review

The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” is more than just a best seller. It is a vortex into a futuristic United States that offers morals and themes that can relate to today’s society. Collins contrasts the poverty-stricken, subservient world of main character, Katniss, with the affluence and power of the people of the governing Capitol. Collins descends into the abuses of government control, and explores the importance and hope of individuality in a totalitarian society. Katniss is a survivor, able to hunt to keep her family from starving. However, she is thrust into a world where she is hunted and must kill her peers to survive yet struggles to remain the girl she was in the past. Collins strings together the actions of the characters to show the chaos that overpowering government can cause in her breathtaking novel. One of the reasons that “The Hunger Games” captured my attention from the beginning was the world Collins created. In the beginning of the novel, the reader is introduced to Katniss, a girl who has to hunt in order to provide food for her mother and sister. The people of this time are continually punished for a rebellion that took place generations ago. To exercise their power and humiliate the defeated regions, they annually force each of twelve districts to send one boy and one girl to fight to the death in a televised arena. The winning district is pampered with food and supplies for a plentiful year, while the other districts are left to starve. Collins weaves a brilliant plot, with a tunic-clad and Roman-named ruling elite and their lust for gory entertainment, echoing themes of Roman gladiators. In one scene, Katniss and the people of her district are referred to as barbaric because of their poor table manners, but she must stifle her desire to exclaim the true barbarism of forcing children to kill each other for sport. The novel shows how a ruling and all powerful government can also rule and suppress the hearts and minds of