Last
week I was compelled to post something about the recent ***Hunger
Games*** movie by the teenagers
who were making lots of noise in our tv room. The next morning, the
teenagers who stayed over the night are raiding our kitchen for
breakfast, I was compelled to think about the bigger-picture issues
that are brought up in the Hunger Games trilogy.
I
found this series to be well done from a bigger-picture perspective.
See, when I read the trilogy, I noticed the inequality between the
districts and the capitol. However, I experienced the first book (&
film) as more personal stories.
Through the first book, I found myself preoccupied with Katniss,
particularly with regard to how she would:
- navigate her relationships with Peeta and with Gale;
- experience the scarcity of the life she's accustomed to in District 12 compared to the extravagance of the capitol; and
- conduct herself during the games.
The
global issues of hunger in the face of plenty, of comfort in the face
of struggle, and of obliviousness to injustice were there in the
story, but weren't center-stage for me.
The
second and third books, though, move Katniss and the reader beyond
the personal and into the universal/global. It's almost as if the
characters are being forced to mature – to grow up – right in
front of us. Which, in itself, is another reason that this is a
great series for teenagers to read. Hopefully, in addition to the
personal struggles we all face(d) during adolescence, they see that
part of themselves mirrored in their reading.
The
ideas and the imagined reality presented in the books certainly are
disturbing. And at the same time, I feel like they reflect the
realities that high-school-aged people struggle with. For instance,
we see the political reality that some people are oppressed by those
in power. We see that sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice
something of ourselves for the benefit of those we love. And every
so often, it becomes necessary in life to leave everything behind in
order to move on with our life … and when we do that, we often
discover what's actually important and worth working to hang on to.
At the
same time, what's in the books and films are real life in caricature.
But issues presented cartoonishly large give young readers
permission to see their own struggles mirrored in literature in a way
that takes them seriously.
Which
makes the books and films worth the time, at least in my opinion.
$0.02