Continued from Pt. 1
So where is literacy in the Hunger Games? It is clear that the people of Panem are literate. There is education in all of the districts, though Katniss gives a hint of what that schooling is like: in District 12, everything is coal-related. I imagine their curriculum being like Abeka books for homeschooling, in which everything is Biblical. The math problems are about tithing. In my mind, I substitute coal-related word problems for District 12. The history of Panem is included for purposes of indoctrination--to make certain that the school children grow up knowing their inferior position in relation to the Capital. And while limited information is given about the districts, it is not information that conveys the reality, as Katniss discovers when she visits the vast, firmly controlled District 11 during the victory tour.
There is a very small, isolated example of literacy in The Hunger Games (the novel rather than the series) that I am choosing to ignore for the moment. It is both utilitarian and heartening. It demonstrates both the ability to read and command of writing, and how those things relate--in a tangible way--to the ability to cope. But I plan to come back to it because it is easy to miss the importance when reading the first novel.
Let me, instead, jump into Catching Fire. There are a couple of very striking references to literacy in the beginning of the novel. I am still double-checking, but I think that there are only two books in the entire Hunger Games trilogy, and one of them is wielded by President Snow. When he visits Katniss in order to intimidate her into helping him to pacify the districts, Snow is reading a book. "He holds up a finger as if to say, 'Give me a moment'" (17). Katniss is expected, so she does not surprise him in the act of reading. Reading is either something he routinely does to pass the time, or it is a pose, indicating his relative importance. After all, he has to finish his reading before addressing her. Or perhaps simply possessing a book indicates his relative importance, since we are not told that the house in Victory Village has books. This is the single time that someone is shown reading in such a way that attention is drawn to the act of reading--the deliberateness of the act of reading--and to the book itself without any indication of the subject or purpose of the book. (Perhaps if the Slate article that uses statistics as a substitute for analysis looked up occurrances of the word "book," it would have been useful!) The book itself becomes an object of note in the scene. Although we lose sight of it in the exchange between Katniss and Snow, he "places his book on the corner of the desk" when Katniss's mother brings tea (22). When he leaves, he "retrieves his book."
One of two books mentioned specificially in the entire series (if I find another, I'll blog it--I promise!), and we don't know anything about the book. The book must, then, tell us something about the reader, just by its very presense. We know very little about Snow, but we know that he wants to be seen reading. A book accompanies him, whether he reads it or not. This is very little to go on, but it does call to mind another--perhaps more benign--dystopian dictator, Mustapha Mond in Brave New World. Apart from the fact that the populace tends only toward context-specific, utilitarian literacy, and the dehumanization common to all dystopias, the societies of the two works are vastly different. The only similarities between the governments are the desire to keep order and the presence of a single president. In the case of Brave New World, the president is Mustapha Mond--the only character in the novel who is, in fact, highly literate, possessing both the ability to read and process at a high level, and also the access to books and knowledge gained from books. He can read them because he has chosen to value order above ideas; in widespread literacy, he sees the dangers of disorder. In higher-level literacy, he sees the potential for competition between the most intelligent citizens. In Brave New World, the reader is given these insights when Helmholtz Watson discusses these things with Mond--before being banished because he strives for greater art than his society can provide, or finds useful and safe. In the Hunger Games, we are given no such insights because Katniss is given no such insights. Snow is not so forthcoming, and literacy is not an obvious primary concern in the novels. However, by placing a book in the hand of President Snow, against the backdrop of a functionally-literate society lacking in literary pursuits, or the opportunity to pursue reading and writing for pleasure, the novels are setting up an image of a dictator who is, perhaps, highly literate--perhaps the only highly literate member of the society. It is not too difficult to imagine Snow as controlling all literacy--whether for pleasure or for a purpose--to his own ends, since he certainly controls all information. In addition, his use of the book is deliberately calculating. He reads it in order to show his ease; he will not be called out of it until he is ready. Even in this, higher-level literacy makes one calculating. And it is hardly a leap to say that this is a man who lives in his own mind.
In a narrative that is not only told by a single character, but by a character whose perspective is limited by her own tendency to live in the moment, by her own lack of introspection, and by her own lack of importance (she does not merit the kind of talk that Helmholtz Watson gets as high-level Alpha in Brave New World), a book--even one without a title--says something about a character who wields it. It also says something about the link between literacy and power. Those who have literacy have power. Those without power have more limited literacy--or perhaps those with more limited literacy have limited power. Culturally, we no longer question what the specific link is between literacy and power, because it is almost a trusim that literacy empowers. What the actual link is between literacy and power is discussed most often in reference to new media, which gives a venue to basically whomever wants one and is willing to court an audience.
Might there be an underlying distrust of literacy in the Hunger Games? Literacy is not, in fact, the means to undermining the society. Action--often unpremeditated--seems to assume that role. Snow's use of the book actually suggests literacy as a cloak for insecurity--a guise of control rather than control itself. Literacy has an important higher-order function in the novels (TBA). But it is not intimately connected to maintaining political power.
After all, we don't even know what book Snow is reading.
To be continued in Pt. 3
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
The Question of Literacy in The Hunger Games (Pt. 1)
It's been a while since my Hunger Games posts, but after seeing Catching Fire last night (it was good; go see it!), and after reading an essay on Neville Longbottom that typifies the kind of literary criticism I want to do, I want to return to my final commentary on the Hunger Games trilogy.
The topic here is literacy, and originally I saved it until last because at first glance, there doesn't seem to be much to say about literacy. But that, in itself, is highly significant in children's and young adult literature, genres which never quite get themselves away from asserting the importance and significance of reading. It's as if they're still aware that their primary audience is in school, and might need encouragement to read. With female protagonists in particular, it is a sort of young adult trope (since Anne Shirley, perhaps--or maybe Jane Austen or Jane Eyre) that the female character is unusual for being a reader, and consequently for being introspective. But the primary reason that I think writers who stress the importance of reading do so is because writers tend to be readers, and so they are fully aware of the benefits and joys of reading in their own lives, and want to share these with their own readers--much as I do. It is also always in a writer's best interest to stress the importance of reading, is it not? So when a young adult author seems to neglect this message, it can register as significant, particularly when the heroine is neither introspective, nor a reader.
The other reason an absence of literacy is suspicious and worthy of further investigation is that Hunger Games portrays a dystopia. And like utopian literature, dystopian literature always treats literacy in some way. I need to double check C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, but science rather than government is the primary danger in that novel, which calls into question whether or not it is a dystopia--but that is a different topic entirely. Take the two most prominent examples: 1984 and Brave New World. In both cases, literacy is strictly regulated if not forbidden outright, because ideas derived from reading pose a thread to the State. In both cases, this fact is played out in the text. Not so in the Hunger Games. Why? And where is literacy?
Well, let's look at the first question first. The question of Katniss. I have said before that as a character, I was not drawn to identify with her. I did come to admire her, for some of the same reasons the other sympathetic characters admired her--her strength, her loyalty, her ability to act, often without thinking. One of the reasons that I was not drawn to her is that I felt, as a reader, like I was kept at arm's length by the narrative voice. She is not an introspective character. In fact, we get the action as it happens. There is no reflection in part because the narrative forbids it--it is first person present tense. But as the story progresses, this becomes more natural. Katniss doesn't ruminate. She's not that kind of personality. But what if she did?
Returning for a moment to the character of Anne Shirley--it has been decades since I read Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, and I didn't particularly like her character. But she typifies, first, the slightly odd literate heroine--perhaps a bit more odd than some, since authors seem to be trying to make the reading heroine seem unique, special, normal, and popular all at the same time. I'm thinking here of Cassandra Clare's Tessa Grey in her Infernal Devices series, who, we are told, is very unique, interesting, and bookish, but who is actually just an empty brown-haired shell who likes books; the books supply the personality, in fact. But Jo March is another slightly odd literate female protagonist... and the list goes on... So Anne of Green Gables thinks and dreams about everything. In some ways, she is a female Don Quijote. She thinks about everything because she has read, and read, and read, and because she sees herself as living her own story, akin to the story in a book. And sometimes, for fear of what will happen next in her story, she becomes paralyzed, and unable to act. This typifies a character who is not only literate, but hyper-literate. A character for whom life is something to ponder, and to analyze, and in some ways, to construct. Such characters are also highly self-conscious. Early twentieth-century British literature has notable examples: J. Alfred Prufrock. Gabriel Conroy in "The Dead." They are dreamers and ponderers--over-thinkers, and they don't function terribly well in the real world. Both of those examples are men, as is Don Quijote. Looking back to Jane Austen, you have Mary Anne Dashwood the Romantic. While literate, Margaret Dashwood is more practical, as is Jane Eyre. When constrained by their social situation, it was perhaps difficult for female characters to be swept into inaction by introspection as the men were, or as Ane Shirley is; however, novels were often described as dangerous for other reasons, as in Louisa May Alcott's works, in which they were potentially a path to immorality for boys and girls.
This little survey is meant to illustrate that for a female (or male) protagonist, reading about life tends to skew one's impression of life, and to cause one to analyze, ruminate, and philosophize about the meaning of life, sometimes to the point of inaction. Immediately, it should become clear that Katniss cannot operate in the typical mode of a highly literate or hyper-literate character. Her circumstances require quick and decisive action. She is strategic, so there is no quesiton as to her intelligence. And she is capable of analysis, but not for the sheer sake of analysis. Analysis, for her, is a means to an end--to the specific end of deciding what to do next in order to survive. Survivial is her life, so in a way, she doesn't have time to read for its own sake--for pleasure, or for the development of her mind. And in a very real sense, because she has to survive, she doesn't necessarily want to analyze, to philosophize, and to ruminate, either on the purpose of her existence, on her past experiences, or on what she has to do to survive. She doesn't want to analyze the situation in District 12. Literacy doesn't offer a path for improvement. She doesn't want to kill the other tributes, but she has to. So she does what she can to keep herself from analyzing the problem of the Games. They are inescapable. It won't help her to dwell on them. And caught up in the problem of survival, there is neither the need to consume art, nor the leisure to create it.
Having said this, Katniss is literate. She and Prim go to school. Like the castes in Brave New World, their education is utilitarian and appropriate to their district's particular trade. But literacy neither defines her nor helps her. It is a very minor, utilitarian part of her life--for the most part.
To be continued in Pt. 2
The topic here is literacy, and originally I saved it until last because at first glance, there doesn't seem to be much to say about literacy. But that, in itself, is highly significant in children's and young adult literature, genres which never quite get themselves away from asserting the importance and significance of reading. It's as if they're still aware that their primary audience is in school, and might need encouragement to read. With female protagonists in particular, it is a sort of young adult trope (since Anne Shirley, perhaps--or maybe Jane Austen or Jane Eyre) that the female character is unusual for being a reader, and consequently for being introspective. But the primary reason that I think writers who stress the importance of reading do so is because writers tend to be readers, and so they are fully aware of the benefits and joys of reading in their own lives, and want to share these with their own readers--much as I do. It is also always in a writer's best interest to stress the importance of reading, is it not? So when a young adult author seems to neglect this message, it can register as significant, particularly when the heroine is neither introspective, nor a reader.
The other reason an absence of literacy is suspicious and worthy of further investigation is that Hunger Games portrays a dystopia. And like utopian literature, dystopian literature always treats literacy in some way. I need to double check C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, but science rather than government is the primary danger in that novel, which calls into question whether or not it is a dystopia--but that is a different topic entirely. Take the two most prominent examples: 1984 and Brave New World. In both cases, literacy is strictly regulated if not forbidden outright, because ideas derived from reading pose a thread to the State. In both cases, this fact is played out in the text. Not so in the Hunger Games. Why? And where is literacy?
Well, let's look at the first question first. The question of Katniss. I have said before that as a character, I was not drawn to identify with her. I did come to admire her, for some of the same reasons the other sympathetic characters admired her--her strength, her loyalty, her ability to act, often without thinking. One of the reasons that I was not drawn to her is that I felt, as a reader, like I was kept at arm's length by the narrative voice. She is not an introspective character. In fact, we get the action as it happens. There is no reflection in part because the narrative forbids it--it is first person present tense. But as the story progresses, this becomes more natural. Katniss doesn't ruminate. She's not that kind of personality. But what if she did?
Returning for a moment to the character of Anne Shirley--it has been decades since I read Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, and I didn't particularly like her character. But she typifies, first, the slightly odd literate heroine--perhaps a bit more odd than some, since authors seem to be trying to make the reading heroine seem unique, special, normal, and popular all at the same time. I'm thinking here of Cassandra Clare's Tessa Grey in her Infernal Devices series, who, we are told, is very unique, interesting, and bookish, but who is actually just an empty brown-haired shell who likes books; the books supply the personality, in fact. But Jo March is another slightly odd literate female protagonist... and the list goes on... So Anne of Green Gables thinks and dreams about everything. In some ways, she is a female Don Quijote. She thinks about everything because she has read, and read, and read, and because she sees herself as living her own story, akin to the story in a book. And sometimes, for fear of what will happen next in her story, she becomes paralyzed, and unable to act. This typifies a character who is not only literate, but hyper-literate. A character for whom life is something to ponder, and to analyze, and in some ways, to construct. Such characters are also highly self-conscious. Early twentieth-century British literature has notable examples: J. Alfred Prufrock. Gabriel Conroy in "The Dead." They are dreamers and ponderers--over-thinkers, and they don't function terribly well in the real world. Both of those examples are men, as is Don Quijote. Looking back to Jane Austen, you have Mary Anne Dashwood the Romantic. While literate, Margaret Dashwood is more practical, as is Jane Eyre. When constrained by their social situation, it was perhaps difficult for female characters to be swept into inaction by introspection as the men were, or as Ane Shirley is; however, novels were often described as dangerous for other reasons, as in Louisa May Alcott's works, in which they were potentially a path to immorality for boys and girls.
This little survey is meant to illustrate that for a female (or male) protagonist, reading about life tends to skew one's impression of life, and to cause one to analyze, ruminate, and philosophize about the meaning of life, sometimes to the point of inaction. Immediately, it should become clear that Katniss cannot operate in the typical mode of a highly literate or hyper-literate character. Her circumstances require quick and decisive action. She is strategic, so there is no quesiton as to her intelligence. And she is capable of analysis, but not for the sheer sake of analysis. Analysis, for her, is a means to an end--to the specific end of deciding what to do next in order to survive. Survivial is her life, so in a way, she doesn't have time to read for its own sake--for pleasure, or for the development of her mind. And in a very real sense, because she has to survive, she doesn't necessarily want to analyze, to philosophize, and to ruminate, either on the purpose of her existence, on her past experiences, or on what she has to do to survive. She doesn't want to analyze the situation in District 12. Literacy doesn't offer a path for improvement. She doesn't want to kill the other tributes, but she has to. So she does what she can to keep herself from analyzing the problem of the Games. They are inescapable. It won't help her to dwell on them. And caught up in the problem of survival, there is neither the need to consume art, nor the leisure to create it.
Having said this, Katniss is literate. She and Prim go to school. Like the castes in Brave New World, their education is utilitarian and appropriate to their district's particular trade. But literacy neither defines her nor helps her. It is a very minor, utilitarian part of her life--for the most part.
To be continued in Pt. 2
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