Film Adaptation: The Hunger Games (2012)
The Hunger Games is a young adult dystopian novel by Suzanne Collins and the first in the Hunger Games Trilogy. It follows the main protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen-year-old girl who is forced to make the only choice she can when she steps forward to take her young sister’s place in the televised fight for survival, The Hunger Games. Twelve boys and girls have to fight against not only themselves but the game they were put in until one victor comes out alive. But Katniss has been living off of her flight or fight instinct for five years; she only knows the fight for survival, and she will not go down easily.
If there was one word to describe Katniss Everdeen, it would be survivor. She has had to be a parent, sibling, and hunter and gather; from a young age, she has had to teach herself to survive because if she did not, then her family would not make it. It is an awful lot of pressure. It has meant that she has had to internalise a lot of her thoughts, feelings, and trauma; she has squashed them right down so that she can think more methodically about what is happening around her and about what her next step is. She is always fighting for survival; she does not know another way to live, and that helped her in the games massively. But around people who are not her darling sister Primrose or her friend and hunting partner Gale, she can come off as cold. It is an easy way to live in a world where you are not important; the only important part of your district is the coal it provides the Capitol and the supply of two children every year for entertainment. Then you have Peeta Mellark, who is incredibly likeable and has been infatuated with Katniss since a very young age, an age when she was still allowed to be a child to a certain extent. Right from the reaping, you can see her fighting this feeling she had just as much as she tried to understand it, but it is very clear to the reader that she feels more for the boy with the bread than she can allow herself to admit.
Being in Katniss’s mind and seeing everything around her can make Peeta’s wide range of emotions, which he does not try too hard to hide, somewhat confusing. It was hard to tell when he was playing a game and when he was being honest simply because Katniss could not see why he would be so honest when his life was on the line. But that is just because she has to see the world separate from her own emotions. I loved that Peeta seemed to love Katniss so much that from the very beginning, he was pulling for her to win, trying dangerous tactics to keep her alive, risking everything for a girl who does not understand why he would try so hard to save her. It is sweet and heart-aching. I do not believe it is unrequited; I just think Katniss has a future set out, one that is solely alone except for the family she cares for, and that the thought of trying to love another would seem like a waste and would only hurt them both in the long run.
There is a lot of pain and anger felt in this book towards the Capitol, the creator of this horrendous game, not only from the children of District Twelve (Katniss and Peeta), but you get to know other characters and other children, and you get to see small glimpses of how they live in their district and how hard it is for all but those that profit from the games. Not that all the people from the Capitol are bad; for instance, I loved Cinna almost immediately, and I grew to love Effie. In a weird way, I even liked Caesar because he tries to coax, to help the children through the interview process, to make them likeable because if they are not, it is unlikely people will spend their money to send them gifts that are a matter of life and death when in the games. Then, when the games are over, you can feel the tension in almost every interaction after. I even found myself loving Haymitch, but that is because of the realisation Katniss has about him in the games. The games are not just tough on the children, not just their family, not just their district, but also on those who help them through the clothing, training, and interviewing process; they have to do this every year, and the victor is rarely outside of the first two districts.
I went through a real roller coaster of emotions reading The Hunger Games: first, heartache, then fear, then pain, and ultimately anger. Anger for the characters, anger against the torture they are put through just to live in the aftermath, and ultimately anger at those responsible for it all. I admire the strength in Katniss; all her life she has been surviving, and it was a small piece of luck that this year the games were set in a forest, the one place she knows how to survive, which certainly made that aspect easier if you forget the children hell bent on killing you or the game makers changing parts of the environment to make sure the viewers do not become too bored. And even with all the emotions I felt, even with all the tears and there were a lot, I would absolutely read it again.
Despite having watched the films almost every year since they came out, I have let the books gather dust on my shelves, and I was slightly annoyed at myself for having waited so long to read them, but I think it allowed me to feel the emotion that much harder. I have no doubt I would have cried if I had read it when I was younger, but it hit differently reading it as an adult because all I could think about was the children’s ages. I caught myself saying more than once, ‘They are so small.’. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that I loved The Hunger Games, so much so that I was considering writing this review another time so that I could dive straight into the next book of the trilogy. Katniss had me welling up more than once, and Chapter Eighteen absolutely destroyed me—I was a sobbing mess—so it is safe to say there was not a single thing that I disliked about it, and I am rating this book Five out of Five Stars.
Even though The Hunger Games covers themes such as physical and psychological trauma, power, survival, and a lot of violence, I would still recommend it to those in adolescence and older. The tension is ever-growing throughout the book; the death is not exactly gory, but the profound feeling of finality is still there, and nothing is overly described, but you still feel as though you are right there in Katniss’s boots. So I commend Suzanne Collins for being able to write in such a way that the reading is easy but the feelings are anything but. I need to read book two immediately, so if you love dystopian worlds, a fight for survival, action, and a main character grappling with her emotions as you cry, then pick this book up—you will not be sorry!
Favourite Quotes
“The awful thing is that if I can forget they’re people, it will be no different at all.”
page 48
“Cinna has given me a great advantage. No one will forget me. Not my look, not my name. Katniss. The girl who was on fire.”
page 85
““But I don’t want them to! They’re already taking my future! They can’t have the things that mattered to me in the past!” I say.”
page 142
“The ones that mean she’s safe. “Good and safe,” I say as I pass under its branch. “We don’t have to worry about her now.” Good and safe.”
page 287-288
“And it’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. It’s him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread.”
page 362
““You’re not leaving me here alone,” I say. Because if he dies, I’ll never go home, not really. I’ll spend the rest of my life in this arena, trying to think my way out.”
page 417
Finer Details
Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Pages: 453
Publisher: Scholastic Ltd
Publication: 2009
Language: English
Rating: 5/5