Like the rest of the people in the United States, I saw the
movie The Hunger Games. Like the rest
of the people in the United States, I loved The Hunger Games. Then, like all
the people who hadn’t already, I read the book, devoured the second book, and ravaged
the third book. By all accounts, this series is special—how could it not be
when the stories stand for something so strong, which I will come to
momentarily. Katniss is set apart from other series protagonists like Harry
Potter, the Pevensie Children, and Taran (from Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles
of Prydain). First, perhaps, because she is a young woman, and secondly because
her realm is totally devoid of the magical. The issue of magic perhaps makes my
comparison to these series seem off the mark; however, they are the most logical
comparison to me, because these are all series that have excited in me a
similar passion for stories, adoration of adventure, and sense of personal loss
when the series has reached its culmination—it is a rare treat to be presented
with the work of an author who has achieved something akin to erasing the boundary between a fictional
reality and a reader's reality. I think the allure, for me, of The Hunger Games trilogy, is even
stronger in some ways than the other series I mentioned because the dystopian
setting is a much easier reality to insert one’s self into than the magical;
hunger, war games, survival: overcoming these are universal triumphs of the human spirit, and while Hogwarts, Narnia, and Prydain include similar profound qualities, they will
always fail to exist outside of the confines of our imagination. The themes of
social justice, the blurred line between right and wrong, and ideas of
political unrest all serve Susan Collins’ work well. Even better, the
trilogy has rekindled in me an insatiable desire to read that had recently been
waning.
