I read the first two sections of the first book of the trilogy in a state of nausea, repelled both by the psychological violence of this YA fantasy fiction and the knowledge that it’s viral and enormously popular.
The first book presents thin historical context in prelude to “the games”. Set in a futuristic dystopia on what is left after natural disaster, famine, and wars have shrunk and ravaged the North American continent, “the games” mimic a malevolent Olympics. The totalitarian regime of the country of “Panem” requires an annual “reaping” in which two children are "harvested" from each of twelve “districts” and cast into what amounts to a war reality show broadcast on television. (The country is famine stricken but still has TV.)
Like the citizenry we the readers experience “the games” in which the children brutally murder one another. Through the adolescent female protagonist, we experience the gruesome deaths of the other children, including, for example, a wisp of a girl who flits through tree tops until she gets snared in a net and dies an agonizing death from a spear to the abdomen. Meanwhile, the citizenry are placing bets on which child will survive, pretty much like readers keep reading to find out if the girl protagonist will emerge alive.
I understand some people, some well-read in YA literature, approve this book for its socially redeeming message, which I assume the author eventually delivers—an implicit statement, that is, against totalitarianism and mind control arising out of wars caused by scarcity of resources, and on a personal level young people can relate to, a message about empowerment, never giving up, competing with compassion, fighting for freedom.
Personally, I can’t stomach the murder, vengeance, and sheer terror of this trilogy long enough to go there. Not when the first book reads like a violent video game of children dressed up in avatar personae sic-ed on one another like predatory beasts. This fast read that invites kids to identify with the girl protagonist in a fight to the death is extremely immediate, and for me this tips more toward entertainment that exploits our societal fascination with violence than toward anything with a socially redeeming message.
It surprises me not at all that kids have flocked to this trilogy. After all, the media industry continues to ramp up the violence in their media and entertainment. Some people say it doesn’t matter what young people read as long as they read. What this says to me is that we are desperate to get children to read, a sad state of affairs. With some 4,000 YA books published each year there are lots of alternatives to a viral psychological-violent thriller.
It seems publishing and marketing capitalizes on any and all hot sellers, including stuff that is downright repugnant. Plenty of parents don’t read and so don't know what their kids are reading. So it is, educators and children themselves decide what children read. But something is seriously wrong in education when we're just glad if kids will read anything at all. And increasingly, due to a combination of marketing, herd mentality, digital media, and a dearth of critical thinking and personal discretion, we are opening flood gates for children that lead into realms that ought to be really terrifying even, no, especially, to adults.
The only thing truly interesting about this trilogy to me is that people, readers, including lots of kids, including me, have succumbed to promotion, a feverish following, and finally, a fundamentally violent and horrific plot in much the same way the fictional citizenry of the futuristic dystopia of the book succumbed to “the games”and the entities controlling them.
We are what we read.
I acknowledge I based this commentary on a partial read. Last evening in conversation with a writer friend who has read all three books, I asked to guess what happens in books two and three of the trilogy. I had heard no synopsis of the books or the movie, only a comment by a YA lit specialist the books should be read for the underlying message. Well, I speculated that after the young female protagonist and the boy from her district emerged from “the games” victorious they somehow bring about a societal transformation with the help of their closest alliances. This, my friend said, is where the plot goes, though it takes many a twist, turn, and hairpin curve at breakneck speed, and includes a lot more violence, too. Alas, I haven’t seen the worst of it and right now, I don’t want to.
