Why I like The Hunger Games (Pt 1)

I finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy for the second time over the weekend, and I have been wanting to write something since I finished rereading the first book, but it just hasn't happened.  Part of the reason it hasn't happened is because, while I did know what I wanted to say when I finished book 1, I wanted to read the next book--and the next--more than I wanted to sit and write about the first one.  That happens sometimes.  Also, it is summer, and for me, that means less time for writing--apparently.  In the fall and winter, I found time to blog in the mornings while on break and on weekends, at lunch when I was back at work, and in the evenings after work, which was, frankly, exhausting.  Evenings are meant for reading, not writing necessarily.  (And I used to be a night person.  *sigh*)  Right now, however, my weekends are filled with packing, organization, and sometimes birthday parties.  My evenings are spent combating the plague of flies visited upon us by the nearby sewage plant.  My lunch hours are spent picking up my daughters from their summer program.  And my work has taken more of my creative energy than usual, which is good because it prevents boredom, but bad because it takes my creative energy!  And yet, somehow, when I woke up this morning, I couldn't stop thinking about a post--or a series of posts--about what The Hunger Games does well.

Why is this post necessary, you might ask, since the books are wildly popular?  Well, first of all, I liked them very reluctantly myself.  I am that person who avoids things that are popular simply because they are popular.  It was after a friend (Hat tip, Rochelle of The Bradley Clan) invited me to go with her to see the film that I became intrigued and read the trilogy.  And even then, I was reluctant at first because frankly, I wasn't in love with the narrative voice.  The first person, present tense narrative that ran throughout simply did not make sense to me.  Because how can analysis and evaluation, contemplation and assessment, occur while the events of a story are taking place?  That, and in the beginning, and in certain places thereafter, it is awkward to read a narrative written in present tense.  I stand by that, though I have made tentative peace with the present tense, and well, first person is not my favorite mode, but it's functional, and by giving voice to a character that isn't necessarily introspective, and by resisting that analysis of past events, the novel almost subverts the first person and the present tense, though I risk attributing a degree of artfulness to a device that might have been a product of the author's "wouldn't it be cool/a challenge if...."  But more on that later.

The other thing is that I have friends who love the novels, and some who do not care for them, or do not consider them worth considering.  In the second (or third?) category is Darwin, who, if memory serves, found the novels a bit facile.  Because this was a concern of mine--okay, so you make these kids fight to the death. That's original.  Didn't Star Trek do that at some point?--and because I think my initial impression was unjust, I sort of feel the need to write through that because I don't think that's what's going on.  There is also the argument that The Hunger Games world, novels, etc., do not belong in the ranks of dystopian literature because there are bigger, better dystopias out there, like Brave New World, which I love, and Darwin does not. Or 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and most notably for its potential parallel, Lord of the Flies.  I will say that The Hunger Games is different from these dystopian visions, but deserves its due.  I will also hold it up as far superior to The Giver, which is simply a catalog of hot-button issues for elementary school students.  The Hunger Games does not have direct, one-to-one correspondences to news items, and that's fine.  And if it borrows tropes from other dystopias, it is bound to do so, given the rich tradition of the dystopian novel.  I see it as a welcome addition to the genre--if dystopia is, indeed, its genre (more on that later).

The novels aren't terribly quotable, though they are highly readable.  And I find that interesting as well.  They're not quite novels of ideas the same way as other dystopian literature, and I still maintain that the first person present prevents the reader from finding the answers in the cleverly constructed maxims.  Indeed--that is another point of the novels:  that overwrought language is overrated (and maybe there will be more on that later, too).  So this will not be a series of "notable moments" the same way as my Gabaldon series.  Rather, it will be organized according to the features of the novels that I find compelling.

One last note.  It is a convention of writing titles that when referring to the title of a novel, you italicize.  When referring to a series, you do not.  So The Hunger Games the novel, vs. The Hunger Games trilogy.  Just like The Chronicles of Narnia vs. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I will try to do this as I remember to distinguish the book from the trilogy, but I might slip up.  Because really?  These are not three distinct books.  Not really.  What we have is a single book that was split into three for purposes of a publishing contract and length.  There is only one story, and the events take place in a very short time frame, as a series of novels goes.  It very nearly observes the unities (okay, maybe not, but there you have it).  And so I will often treat it as a single whole, and sometimes might forget that I'm discussing three distinct volumes.