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
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