Thoughts on the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo (with a note on God in fiction)

Last night I finished, for all practical purposes, the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo.  The third book, Ruin and Rising, came out on June 17, and I bought it on Kindle the same day.  The books are compelling--interesting, and to me, different.  For one thing, the female protagonist has three potential love interests! Okay, I'm kidding.  Mostly.  I found the characters well developed and the writing lucid and un-self-conscious.  I was not burdened, as some readers were, by the Russian-sounding names, wondering whether they were accurate.  It was simply a different approach to fantasy naming conventions.  I particularly liked some of the snappy dialog in the third book, which really brought the personalities of the characters to the forefront.  And I liked the character of Nickolai, the bastard prince/pirate/potential love interest.

I may at some point go back and reread them, but even though some of the names of places were getting fuzzy, I don't feel the need to revisit the stories yet.  (I also won't be reading the extensive extra-novel material that sells for $0.99 a short story.  That's cheating, in my book...) For one thing, I technically have 9 minutes left in the book, according to the Kindle.  There's a loooong denouement.  I guess something significant could still happen.  But I rather doubt it.  It will be interesting to see the "After" chapter--each book has started with a "Before" that was written in a more formal storytelling voice, meant to mimic something like a "Lives of the Saints" prose style, if I'm reading it correctly.

But when I reread, I do it for two reasons:  sheer enjoyment, and analysis.  If I badly want to relive something, I reread it.  If I want to delve further in, I reread it.  I did enjoy the books, but I'm not captivated by the world.  It's an ugly place, and not a place in which I want to spend more time.  I'm also not convinced that there's anything for me to analyze.  The themes are large and hard to miss, and the literacy is not tied to theme in a significant way.  There is, however, one thing that fascinated me that seems to need to be addressed before I can move on--or back--to the Hunger Games article that I've been trying to write since February or March (and then ultimately to Lord of the Rings):  religion.

This ties in a strange way to the Hunger Games.  When critics of the Hunger Games go searching for religion, they come up short, here and here and here and here and here and here... and so on.  The "spiritual but not religious" claim is the one that makes me chuckle.  I would venture to argue that the critical perception of how religion and God can be manifest in literary texts is extraordinarily narrow, and that there are enough very small hints to betray a rather sophisticated religious sensibility--what, after all, is all that bread doing there?  And what do we make of the fact that along with the bread, the marriage rituals maintain the flavor of the districts?  There is a sacramental subtext to the Hunger Games that has, as far as I know, not been mentioned outside of this blog and one of my Facebook threads.

I bring this up because the presence or absence of "religion" or "God" in a text has nothing to do with explicit reference to religion or the trappings of religion, which becomes clear in The Grisha Trilogy--and in Ruin and Rising in particular.  One of the things that intrigued me early on--but not what kept me reading, by any means--was the mention of Saints. There is a book of lives of the Saints, which the priest-figure, who is himself a creepy, opportunistic, exploitative figure, gives to the female protagonist, Alina.  There are churches and icons and miracles, and at the center, a mysterious Sankta Ilya, as well as the adoption of Alina as a saint becuase of her powers, and the potential she has to act as a deliverer for Ravka.  There are also throngs of believers. THRONGS of faceless believers.  But there is, ultimately, no God.

While faith is not actually condemned--it is occasionally useful, and two of the more important characters are devotees of the novel's religion--the narrative leaves no room for God to exist.  In fact, the religion is saint-based rather than God-based, which is interesting considering the Russian influence on the setting.  It also has nothing to do with morality.  Alina has a strong ethical sense, and she is unique because of her capacity for mercy and forgiveness, and she happens to be chaste until a pledge that substitutes for a wedding-that-can-never-be before battle, but there is no moral code.  The treatment of sexuality is occasionally blasé, but not in the way you might think with Young Adult fiction.  It is also not subject to morality or ethics of any sort.  Promiscuity sort of... happens.  But again, it's not really a big thing, and it's not a central part of the novel.  In fact, it's rather a mistake, if a slight one that doesn't hurt anyone too much.  It rather reminds me of how I felt about sex as a teen.

Beyond the "no moral code" thing, I would say that I just kept waiting for religion to be developed.  It was there, but it was wholly a construction of people--mortals. Specifically, mortals who are either pathetic and desperate, or opportunisitic and manipulative. The immortals in the story are either completely corrupt and cruel or cruelly bitter.  Alina is different, and it is hinted that she, too, is immortal, but we never get to see that for certain.  But where the life is sucked from religion is in the treatment of saints.  They are not holy.  They are not even good, necessarily.  They are simply presumed to have been Grisha whose powers to manipulate the elements--or, really, the particles of creation--were used in service to humanity in some way.  It is almost an atheistic vision--we are all there is.  And so I wonder whether that is why I am not rushing to reread.  For all of its outcome, there is still an absence of hope or substance.  There is dark.  There is light.  There is struggle.  But ultimately, we are all there is.

**It is interesting to note that the author was born in Jerusalem.  I don't have any basis for knowing what cultural influences might have contributed to the worldview of the novels, but that might be an interesting question to explore.

The Question of Literacy in The Hunger Games (Pt. 3): Scripted or Unscripted?

Continued from Pt. 2

It is Catching Fire that introduces the reader to one of the grand literacy themes in the Hunger Games trilogy, which can be best summed up in the question:  scripted or unscripted?  Up to this point, we have become acquaited with the artiface of the capital in The Hunger Games, and we have learned, in particular, of the artiface of the games, which require the tributes to play to the audience, deliberately providing the grand entertainment in order to have their efforts to engage the Capital rewarded in the form of help in the arena as the citizens throw support behind their favorite tribute by buying gifts to help that tribute survive.  However, the artificiality very deliberately does not translate into something that is scripted.  Unlike in Brave New World, in which the "feelies" are scripted (by such as Helmholz Watson), the entertainment in the capital seems reality-based, like the games.  Other events in support of the games are televised, including, significantly, interviews with Caesar Flickerman, which are not scripted, but are the result of coaching from the District mentor and Effie Trinket (in the case of Disctrict 12), who is a kind of escort to the tributes.

That entertainment is artificial, but not script-based does not seem to have much to do with literacy--after all, we have reality television, and though the games are extreme, there is an element of familiarity to the genre of television portrayed.  It is in Catching Fire, when Peeta and Katniss are given scripts, and when Katniss tries to write for herself a memorial of Rue that the script--or lack thereof--becomes important.  During the victory tour, Peeta and Katniss are expected to follow a set routine, which Katniss describes:

Peeta and I will be introduced, the mayor of 11 will read a speech in our honor, and we’ll respond with a scripted thank-you provided by the Capitol. If a victor had any special allies among the dead tributes, it is considered good form to add a few personal comments as well. 

Her dilemma is that though she knows she should add a personal statement about Rue and Thresh,  she faces what one of my English teachers in high school would call the "tyrrany of the blank page":  "every time I tried to write it at home, I ended up with a blank paper staring me in the face."  (56-57).  However, as the narrative stresses over and over, Katniss cannot perform by creating or recreating context in her mind alone.  She can not fool herself into acting--or in this case, writing--as if the contrived or imagined situation is real.  By contrast, she is able to deliver a speech to District 11, following Peeta's gift of one month of their winnings every year--once she is actually present in the moment:

“Wait, please.” I don’t know how to start, but once I do, the words rush from my lips as if they’ve been forming in the back of my mind for a long time. “I want to give my thanks to the tributes of District Eleven,” I say. I look at the pair of women on Thresh’s side. “I only ever spoke to Thresh one time. Just long enough for him to spare my life. I didn’t know him, but I always respected him. For his power. For his refusal to play the Games on anyone’s terms but his own. The Careers wanted him to team up with them from the beginning, but he wouldn’t do it. I respected him for that."  

. . .  

I turn to Rue’s family. “But I feel as if I did know Rue, and she’ll always be with me. Everything beautiful brings her to mind. I see her in the yellow flowers that grow in the Meadow by my house. I see her in the mockingjays that sing in the trees. But most of all, I see her in my sister, Prim.” My voice is undependable, but I am almost finished. “Thank you for your children.” I raise my chin to address the crowd. “And thank you all for the bread.” (60-61)

Katniss's struggles with writing her feelings, contrasted with her ability to speak in context, stresses one of the essential properties of writing.  It is decontextualized.  Usually, this observation is made of writing itself--that it is, as Walter Ong noted, "separate from the human life-world."  The book is decontextualized; the reader has to recreate the context from the available clues.  However, the writer is often separate from the context as well.  Katniss's difficulty stems from that decontextualization, and recalls Wordsworth's description of poetry as the "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion recollected in tranqility."  Clearly, Katniss is not a poet, since even when she feels "powerful emotion," her recollections, which cannot really be said to take place "in tranquility," do not translate into words.

When the Quarter Quell is announced, and Peeta and Katniss are reaped and then, without being allowed to say goodbye, taken to the Capital, Katniss actually muses on the limitations of literacy, and specifically, its removal from the immediacy of real life as it is happening:

I sit on the bed, knowing I will never write those letters.  They will be like the speech I tried to write to honor Rue and Thresh in District 11. Things seemed clear in my head and even when I talked before the crowd, but the words never came out of the pen right. Besides, they were meant to go with embraces and kisses and a stroke of Prim’s hair, a caress of Gale’s face, a squeeze of Madge’s hand. They cannot be delivered with a wooden box containing my cold, stiff body.  (188-189)

Writing lacks immediacy; it is decontextualized, cold and impersonal.

Although Katniss can conjure words when she is moved, Peeta is represented in the novel as being particularly good with words, particularly as compared to Katniss, and by Katniss in particular.  The difference is that Peeta is able to perform on command, to play to a crowd, and that he can lie--he can "make anyone believe anything" (346).  In short, Peeta has a natural gift for rhetoric.  Nevertheless, on the victory tour, he is also scripted, with a speech prepared by the Capital.  In Distrct 11, he deviates:

Peeta had his personal comments written on a card, but he doesn’t pull it out. Instead he speaks in his simple, winning style about Thresh and Rue making it to the final eight, about how they both kept me alive — thereby keeping him alive — and about how this is a debt we can never repay. And then he hesitates before adding something that wasn’t written on the card. Maybe because he thought Effie might make him remove it.  (59)

Peeta's addition is the offer of one month of their winnings each year, which prepares the way for Katniss's speech, which in turn incites defiance in District 11.  The result for Peeta and Katniss is that, seeing how easily they can cause a crisis, they resolve to stick to the script:

Listen to a speech in our honor. Give a thank-you speech in return, but only the one the Capitol gave us, never any personal additions now.  (71)

Katniss's commentary is telling, and reveals another weakness of writing:  it can be discovered, and censored.

There are a few other interesting literacy moments in Catching Fire:  Snow reading the card with the Quarter Quell challenge, supposedly written 75 years before, but clearly altered; Madge's access to capital newspapers by way of her father the Mayor of District 12;  Peeta making notes on the other victors, then tearing the pages of notes from his notebook of victors who were not reaped.  The idea of being scripted continues into Mockingjay--the artificiality of the Capital and Katniss's inability to conform to others' expectations is a major theme in the book, and the "Propos" in District 13 further develop the theme and help the reader to discover Katniss, and Katniss to discover herself.  The underlying point, however, is that literacy has limitations--not everyone can use it to their advantage, as Katniss certainly is unable to command written language.  Literacy is risky, since it can be discovered.  And if she can't be scripted, Katniss can't easily help the rebels by being their mouthpiece in Mockingjay.  Literacy carries very little power in the Hunger Games Trilogy.

What, then, is its power?  I think the answer is something much more akin to the power of Peeta's painting.

To be continued in Pt. 4

The Question of Literacy in The Hunger Games (Pt. 2): Snow as Literate Dictator

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

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

Why I like The Hunger Games (Pt 4): It's not all about Katniss

So having discussed Katniss and her relationships at length here and here, I must say that from the beginning what impressed me is that, first person narrative voice notwithstanding, the trilogy wasn't about the perils of one young woman.  That's pretty important if, as a reader, you feel like you're held at arms' length from the character's experience of the action, or if you aren't particularly drawn to, or can't quite relate to the consciousness of the main character herself.  And in fact, other characters frequently draw attention (in the second and third books) to the fact that--though Katniss is, in fact, the center of a rebellion, it isn't about her.  And she has to come to terms with that--or else just play it out while staying alive.  Meanwhile, for the political players, it really is all about Katniss.  It's sort of convoluted, and that's what's interesting, but it's certainly not a typical coming-of-age novel or a romance.  It's not even a journey of self discovery.

As much as they are about anything, the novels are about subversion.  And about how an act of self-preservation becomes an act of subversion.  It is about refusing to play the game on someone else's terms--and how an individual struggle can take on political significance.  When Katniss refuses--quite literally--to play the game, she unwittingly subverts the authority of the Capitol.  Katniss and Peeta work their own brand of subversive magic on their tour, particularly in District 11, and every costume that Cinna creates is a more "Capitol glam" model of subversion.  Cinna, frankly, is an amazing character.  But Cinna's character in particular contrasts intentional and artistic subversion--priviledged subversion--with artless, spontaneous subversion, which Katniss's particular talent (not fashion design).  And for the other players, Katniss is the canvas or clay--a medium for their art.

It's difficult to write about the subversive elements in the abstract, which is, in part, why this post has taken longer to write than the others on Hunger Games.  But there's more to the way the novels represent oppression and resistence than a series of identifiable subversive acts.  There are the acts of complicity with the oppressive system as well.  And again, Cinna is key when, in The Hunger Games, he regards Katniss and says simply, "You must hate us."  The Hunger Games illustrates, better than anything I read in graduate school, Center-Periphery theory, and echoes other postcolonial theorists (Homi Bhabha comes to mind) rather nicely.  It's sweet, really.  And if you missed it, it's central to Catching Fire.  Literally.

The dominant image in The Hunger Games and Catching Fire (though not immediately apparent) is a clock--as we learn as the tributes unravel the mystery of the Quarter Quell arena.  It could register as clever or simplistic, depending on whether you are predisposed to grant the novel its artistic due.  I side with clever--and here's why:

In the arena, each hour represents a punishment that the tributes must endure--or die.  The cornucopia--the symbolic (and highly ironic) generosity of the Capitol--is the center, and the point of radiation, and, when the tributes have become too adept at navigating the arena, the point of rotation and disorientation.  The Center and the Capitol are linked by the Head Gamemaker's control over when the clock spins to confuse the tributes, who represent the Districts.  It doesn't matter that Panem doesn't seem to be arranged in a true circle--or at least, that this reader doesn't have a clear sense of its geography.  (I'm sure there are official and unofficial maps online.)  The position of the Capitol as the Center, with the Districts occupying the Periphery, is a structure of power rather than geography.  The image is also Foucauldian.

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault cites the Panopticon, a prison model developed by utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, as the epitome of the modern means of using discipline as a means of control and coersion to normalize wayward elements within society.  The visual image is a circle with a central vantage point from which prisoners might be observed at all times.  Here are two images of Bentam's Panopticon, which also bears a resemblance to a certain  Flavian Amphitheatre--look! An arena.

Interestingly, in addition to sounding rather like "Pan-American," Panem shares the "pan-" root with "Panopticon" as well.  It might be a stretch, and I have a nagging feeling that I'm overlooking the obvious "Panem" reference.  But certainly the Capitol also has a panoramic view of the Districts.  All related linguistically.

Consider, also, District 13.  It doesn't exist.  It can't exist.  A clock only has 12 hours.  So the existence of District 13 spoils the perfection of the clock--and defies the image of the Capitol's control.  (Subversion!)

Related to the relationship between the Center and Periphery, on the other hand, is the old adage "Power corrupts."  Though I can't find the precise theoretical reference I'm looking for, consider this quote from The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965) by Albert Memmi:

"It is no exaggeration to say that, just as the colonial situation corrupts the European in the colonies, the colonialist is the seed of corruption in the mother country."

This theory forms the basis for much postcolonial criticism.  And if the relationship between the Capitol and the Districts isn't precisely Colonizer and Colonized, it is as good (bad?) as a colonial relationship.  The Districts are, in fact, made "Others" by the rhetoric and practices of the Capitol, which occupies the priviledged "Center" of colonialism--evoking another key postcolonial theorist, Edward Said, of Orientalism fame.

But how does the Center-Periphery power relationship corrupt the Capitol?  First, let me be clear that the relationship between the Center and Periphery in postcolonial theory has a lot to do with replication.  In the Districts, you don't see little models of the Capitol.  The subjugated is not trying to be the oppressor--not really.  Except the Career Tributes, perhaps.  The Districts don't even have the ability to follow fashion trends.  But the power of the Capitol is replicated in the Districts as the people internalize their oppression.  The subversive element in Center-Periphery theory is that the oppressed/colonized "Other"--whoever is set apart as "different" in relation to the dominant power--also influences the oppressor. In this case, the corruption isn't to destabilize the identity of the colonizer because the colonized "Other" is encroaching on the oppressor's identity (which is part of the argument in Declan Kiberd's Inventing Ireland as to why the Irish had to be guarded more fiercely than the colonies that were further away, and had a more physically identifiable "Other")--except that Katniss does sort of become "Capitol-ized," if you will.  (As have the other tributes.)  The citizens of the Capitol begin to feel that she is one of their own, which does destabilize their own identities as it influences their ability to "enjoy" the Quarter Quell.  But more clearly, the Capitol--and, by implication, each Capitol citizen--is corrupted by the act of oppressing other people.  It makes them monsters, as Cinna recognizes.

The Capitol is the center of corruption.  And not only political corruption--all things that are good or pleasurable are found in immoral, ostentatious, and degenerate form, from the purgatives at the banquet to the fashion extremes represented most devastatingly by Tigris in Mockingjay.  The closer one gets to the Capitol--Disctricts 1-3--the greater the corruption, with youth training for the slaughter of the Games (and the resulting glory).  All of the Districts have internalized their oppression--the "Careers'" Districts have simply internalized them more--proactively, one might say.

Meanwhile, in the Capitol, the people have internalized the decadance of power.  Their lives are degraded, and the level of degradation becomes most apparent in their highest form of entertainment--the Games themselves.  And ultimately, the Games--also the most visible sign of the Capitol's control over the Districts--become the Capitol's undoing.  Turning the means of control back on the oppressor:  it's almost a dictionary definition of "subversive."

Why I like The Hunger Games (Pt 3): The love triangle that wasn't

Twilight and Cassandra Clare's Infernal Devices are prime examples of the angst-ridden heroine tormented by her attraction to, and need to choose between two equally compelling alternative potential lovers.  As Candace in Disney's Phineas and Ferb puts it, "Imagine if you had to choose between a bloodthirsty undead walking corpse and a slobbering lupine man-beast as a boyfriend...."  What girl could resist that?  (To be fair, that is not exactly the choice in Clare's novels.  In those novels, you have two angel-spawn demonfighter boys who are closer than brothers.  Yeah.)  But in spite of the presence of two boys, and of fans who want to belong to "Team Gale" or "Team Peeta," there is no love triangle in The Hunger Games.  Yes, I stand by that assertion.  In fact, the novels sort of subvert the love-triangle trope in Young Adult lit by pointing out the "young" part of the equation--without being condescending or reductive about it.  This is a bold move considering that this stuff does sell to the intended audience, but it is also a clever move, considering that The Hunger Games trilogy is about subversion, as much as it is about anything else.  It practically gives kids a handbook explaining what political subversion is (more on this later...)

So when I say that there's no love triangle in The Hunger Games, I am not ignoring the fact that there are two boys who seem to be more or less in love with the heroine.  Nor am I failing to acknowledge the affection and the sense of obligation that Katniss feels toward each one.  However, I am starting from the premise that when you're talking about a "love triangle," it's not really about him, it's about her.  How is she going to act, whom is she going to choose? The exception might be Marion Zimmer Bradley's portrayal of Lancelot in The Mists of Avalon. In that novel, it really was about Lancelot for the reader, who probably came away wanting Lancelot, and if not Lancelot, it was about Morgaine (Le Fay--remember her?), who wanted Lancelot not to want Gwenhwyfar.  In the usual convention, the two men are there. They compete--and exist--for her pleasure.  Or torment.  Whatever.  The existential dilemma belongs solely to the female, who no doubt ponders it incessantly.  But we already know that Katniss is not the pondering type. So what are those two boys doing there?

First of all, Gale and Peeta exist--as literary devices--in order to evoke the love triangle.  I did have a student in my college-level children's lit course tell me that The Hobbit was a "boy book" because it didn't include a love interest.  So perhaps if it is to be a novel directed towards girls of a certain age, there has to be a love interest or particular love interest in addition to the female protagonist?  I'm going to leave that one up in the air.  It is certainly true that the expectation is out there.  But in The Hunger Games, the purpose of evoking the love triangle seems to be entirely different.  Is there jealousy on the part of the boys?  Yes, but it's understated.  Does Katniss wonder if she is betraying one or the other of them?  It comes up every now and then, but it is not her central focus.  Frankly, it can't be.  There are more important things to worry about.

Katniss's approach to both boys is very practical.  She is also loyal to each one.  Both of these are traits associated with ISTJs, if you were curious!  So in fact, the boys are there to show Katniss's key character traits in their best and most troubling light.  Her inability to "choose" between them is not a product of her feminine weakness and vacillation, or indeed, of her introspection and self-doubt.  Rather, the choice between them is not an immediate need, and since she feels affection of a sort (albeit a sort that is secondary to affection for her sister) for them, and since these boys are boys to whom she feels a sharp loyalty, she resists the choice.  If this were Lord of the Flies--and it might have been--her loyalty to Peeta would have dissolved in the arena.  But it isn't.  And it wasn't.  And that is a significant commentary on human nature by way of Katniss--and might also represent a sort of footnote to Lord of the Flies.

On the other hand, both male characters serve to instruct the reader (if not necessarily Katniss) on some of the deeper issues involved with male-female relationships.  By eschewing the typical roles into which novels place boy and girl, we are able to get a more sophisticated portrait of interpersonal relationships than is common in Young Adult novels (I am not partial to that designation, but a friend has convinced me that "teen literature" is an inferior term).

So what about Gale?  Gale shows the reader that a boy and a girl can be friends... except when they're not.  Okay, maybe they can't be, unless both are asexual.  And Katniss, let's face it, is fairly asexual.  She is completely chaste--without meaning to be.  This is a point that is made explicit in Catching Fire, when she is mocked both by Fennick, the exploited and oversexed, and by Johanna, tree girl.  Gale grows to feel that way for Katniss, but they begin as rivals, then hunting buddies with an almost brother-sister thing.  He is already grown up--in a way--when they meet, and as she grows up, he sees her differently.  It's a little creepy when you think of it--and isn't there something like this in Twilight?  But he's not really on her radar.  Because she doesn't have that sort of radar.  She's only 16.  She's not ready to marry.  She may never be ready to marry.  But more on that in a minute.  The complexities here are when romantic awareness and attraction enter into a male-female friendship, and when the two friends have different intentions or goals.  Gale's and Katniss's goals are very different, though Gale assumes they see eye-to-eye.  And don't underestimate the "challenge"--Katniss is, for Gale, close and yet unattainable, and as he is something of a charmer, well... he's a pretty realistic character himself.

Peeta, on the other hand, is hers to lose from the beginning.  Literally.  But he won't go away.  He represents a courtly lover.  He has been content to watch and admire her from afar.  But sometimes, in such circumstances, interaction is necessary.  Or forced.  Or in this case, potentially deadly.  So maybe not a terribly realistic scenario... and yet...  Lizzie doesn't like Mr. Darcy very much, but he grows on her.  Their love begins as animosity and blooms into a love that is like friendship.  And this is a trope in its own right--and one that Jane Austen even mocks on occasion as she employs it.  Lizzie is no coquette, and neither is Katniss.  But both experience complex feelings ranging from resentment to affection that are difficult to understand.  And perhaps because it is a contemporary representation rather than an 18th Century courtship, or a novel with all of the conventions of the novel--like, say, dialogue--that I have come to expect as a contemporary reader, I find Katniss's evolving non-relationship with Peeta more realistic.  As futuristic alternate-reality dystopian adventure novel relationships that mean life-or-death go.  Treading lightly to avoid hurting someone is a common--and complex situation.  Casting off the person because you just can't deal with their affections--also realistic.  And having the person persist.  And persist.  And persist.  Well, that can happen, too.  And if their love is unconditional, and is willing to wait and let you be who you are--then, wow.

Brokenness is real, too.  And Katniss, Peeta, and Gale are each, at one point or another, studies in brokenness.  And how relationships can heal--or else, can heighten--that brokenness.

Finally, the love triangle isn't a love triangle because it's not all about sex.  After all, it wasn't an issue that Lancelot was in love with Guinevere until they consummated their desire.  Before that, it was courtly and proper.  So when teen novels have "love triangles," even when the love is supposedly chaste, it's all about sex.  Specifically, it's about when SHE is going to have sex and WITH WHOM.  Because we all know the boys are ready and willing, right?  Well, maybe not specifically.  Rather, it's like sex is this inevitable... ahem... black hole that the heroine is drawn toward (wait, shouldn't that be the guy?  never mind...) and the reader is dragged along for the ride because all of this is dreadfully important.  Even Regina Doman's Shadow of the Bear captures this notion that sex is inevitable, if for the purpose of presenting a chaste model.  And well, yes.  It does feel that way to a teenager sometimes.  And sometimes to a young adult.  And sometimes to a single adult in a bar.  Every road leads to sex--but when?  and with whom?  Enter the love triangle.  But that is something that is largely a construction--albeit an old construction.  Paolo and Francesca.  Lancelot and Guinevere.  Tristan and Isolde.  But The Hunger Games acknowledges that the love triangle and the inevitability of sex are constructs by completely failing to play along.

And why is it not about sex?  It could have been.  Anyone who has read my posts about Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series knows that I have no problem with sex.  I don't object to reading about it, even in fairly graphic terms, and I'm fine with writing about it.  Just don't get me started about Fifty Shades of Gray, because it won't be pretty....

Frankly, it was quite restrained of Collins not to have The Hunger Games include rape.  After all, there's cannibalism in past Hunger Games.  I'm trying to think if there's something that could be considered symbolic rape in the way tributes were killed in The Hunger Games, and I don't think so... although somewhere, at some academic conference or in some academic journal, some graduate student or terribly, terribly clever professor (who doesn't actually read children's literature, but is smugly dabbling because Hunger Games is a popular culture phenomenon) has made exactly that argument--possibly involving a dark mine shaft or Peeta's oven.  But folks--it's Simply. Not. There. Not even there as it is in Lord of the Flies.  Not even like that.  But it could have been.  The "career tributes" might have raped their victims first, and the Capitol might have liked the extra entertainment.  And then the books really would have been sordid, as some people still believe them to be.  And I will never, ever read Hunger Games fan fics.

Sex is not on Katniss's radar because hers is a hard life, and there are more things to think about than sex.  It is not on her radar because her own survival and the survival of her family are uppermost in her mind.  She can't take on the responsibility of a new family--her own family--because her current responsibilities prevent it.  She can't conceive of having children because she already has dependents, and also because children are the Capitol's means of control.  So not having children would be her act of self-preservation--her means of not allowing herself to be hurt by the political situation in which she lives.  So not having children is, quite literally, an act of subversion, though Katniss is not able to articulate it as such.

And sex, to her, is not recreational--it is procreative.  The union of man and woman produces children.  Period.  And quite definitely only happens within marriage.  Even Peeta's bluff presents sex as happening within marriage.

Sex--especially recreational sex--is (implicitly) the province of the Capitol, along with all things glittery and corrupt.  It is in the Capitol that sexual exploitation occurs--to others.  Katniss is not corruptible, because her loyalties are too solid to allow for infiltration.  Even when she is caught up in the Capitol glam, and made to seem a sex symbol of sorts, it is not really sex that she projects.  She is almost too good to be true--except for her complete lack of awareness of her own virtue.  All she sees is what is in front of her, and that something is survival--always.

So to borrow a quote from Miss Piggy in The Muppet Takes Manhatten, "But what about the huggies?"  There are moments on the train.  With Peeta.  They do sleep together.  And it is never sexualized in any way.  They sleep together in a completely chaste manner--suggesting, perhaps, that a boy and a girl can sleep together in a completely chaste manner.  Even when he loves her, and wants her.  In fact, their nighttime interaction even suggests that man and wife--or an engaged couple--or two pretending to be man and wife--can be chaste.  And there is so much more that is unifying and life-affirming in their embraces, to borrow the language of Theology of the Body, than there would be in the sexual act.

And so the novels, which represent sex, marriage, and procreation as things to be feared in certian contexts, do, after all, find their way to affirmation of life--and to a much more profound place than the center of a love triangle.

Why I like The Hunger Games (Pt 2): Katniss

Starting with the main character is as good a place as any, and is perhaps an obvious place to start.  But let me say that I'm not in love with Katniss.  I don't relate to her particularly well, and I think that the first-person, present-tense narrative keeps the reader at arm's length in a counter-intuitive sort of way, preventing the reader from getting in her head.  But all of this is why the construction of her character is so intriguing to me.

First, her personality.  I have this one figured out.  She's an ISTJ to my INFP.  From Wikipedia:

ISTJs are faithful, logical, organized, sensible, and earnest traditionalists who enjoy keeping their lives and environments well-regulated. Typically reserved and serious individuals, they earn success through their thoroughness and extraordinary dependability. They are capable of shutting out distractions in order to take a practical, logical approach to their endeavors, and are able to make the tough decisions that other types avoid. Realistic and responsible, ISTJs are often seen as worker bees striving steadily toward their goals. They take special joy in maintaining institutions and are often highly religious. Despite their dependability and good intentions, however, ISTJs can experience difficulty in understanding and responding to the emotional needs of others. 

Although they often focus on their internal world, ISTJs prefer dealing with the present and the factual. They are detail-oriented and weigh various options when making decisions, although they generally stick to the conventional. ISTJs are well-prepared for eventualities and have a good understanding of most situations. They believe in practical objectives, and they value traditions and loyalty.

If I am slightly uncomfortable with analyzing a character according to the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, I am buoyed by Freudian analyses of characters, and by the very fact that, in this particular case, it makes so much sense!

So what does this mean?  In terms of the narrative voice, the emphasis in the ISTJ description on "the present and the factual" in conjunction with focus on the individual's "internal world" justifies the slightly irritating first person, present tense narration.  In fact, it's a little too neatly packaged. In terms of audience engagement, and I can only speak for myself, we have a character who is opposite from me in every possible way--except introversion.  So having figured out intuitively (INFP) why I can't find myself in the character, suddenly I can see it in concrete terms. Katniss resists introspection.  An INFP would reflect back--almost incessantly.  Katniss lives in her mind, but in the moment.  For whatever reason--personality or circumstances--she easily leaves the past behind (at least, when she is operating from her conscious mind--and trauma notwithstanding).  She is living in the moment--because she has to.  And because she lives in the moment, she survives--or, because she is a survivor, she knows to live in the moment.

Katniss is not a reader.  Literacy does not figure prominently into The Hunger Games (more on this later), but even in its absence, literacy is conspicuous.  In the children's/young adult genre, female characters are readers.  In the development of female characters, there seems to be an unspoken, unwritten, but understood rule that girls need smart characters who read to teach them that reading and being smart are okay.  The exceptional, very bright, slightly odd, female reader is such a commonplace motif as to make claims to the exceptionality of such a character hollow.  Consider, for example, the very mundane female protagonist of Cassandra Clare's Infernal Devices series.  Every now and then, the narrative shows Tessa with a book to remind the reader that her literacy is one of her distinguishing features, when otherwise, she is pretty bland.  So Katniss's very difference from these supposedly extraordinary female characters is refreshing.

So why do I like Katniss?

Although I am not particularly engaged by being able to relate to Katniss's personality--so different from my own--my own personality type causes me to read empathetically (I'm hammering the Meyers-Briggs, but it's sort of fun from a "rhetoric of reading" standpoint, because it can explain, to an extent, why certain readers engage with texts and characters the way we do!)  So I am sympathetic to Katniss's circumstances, and more sympathetic to her manipulation by those around her, when that comes to light in Catching Fire.  In fact, it was while reading Catching Fire that I really started to like the books and Katniss's character.

It is easy to understand Katniss's motivations, given what the reader knows about her character and her circumstances.  She is exactly what she should be, given what the reader knows.  And as a reader, I don't like to be unfairly manipulated by an author into feeling something I don't want to feel (as in The Giver), or thinking something that is untrue.  Katniss is satisfyingly well-constructed as a character.  And above all, what is predictable are her convictions.  There is a moment in book 3 when she votes in favor of "one last Hunger Games," and I wonder, as a reader, if this is an inconsistency in her character.  But then, I wonder whether that vote is sincere given the subsequent turn of events.

It her predictability (another ISTJ quality) as enacted in the novels that makes her vulnerable to manipulation--and having one's values subject one to manipulation is something an INFP can understand.  So there's a connection after all.  As a person of action rather than contemplation, Katniss acts from her convictions.  When she acts, she makes it count, as in volunteering for Prim in the Hunger Games, or survival in the games themselves.  Haymitch recognizes this trait throughout, and uses it for various purposes--most notably the revolutionary propaganda in book 3.

But finally, I come back to that narrative voice.  When the author's choice of a technique is so obvious as to register as a little bit wrong, there should be a definite reason for drawing attention to that choice.  I learned this from Robert Browning's verse, though Robert Frost has moments as well (Something there is that doesn't love a wall - one of the clunkiest lines in iambic pentameter).  As she moves through the events of the three novels, Katniss resists contemplation, even as she tries to work out what's happening to her.  She focuses on details rather than abstract concepts.  The narrative reinforces the sense of moving forward rather than looking backward, and does not give the reader advantages over the character's self-awareness, or lack thereof.  Rather, the reader experiences how baffling it is to be living one's own coming-of-age.  I can't speak to how it would have been to read this as a young adult.  I likely would have been more frustrated by the lack of introspection, because I wanted to figure out what was happening, or what had happened, and theorize about it.  I still do.  But looking at The Hunger Games, I can read the narrative, and live with the character, and think--yeah, it was exactly like that.  So at the end of the day, Katniss's narrative feels authentic.  And so does she.

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.