Analyzing Collins The Hunger Games

Decades after she first witnessed war on television, an adult Collins was channel surfing between Iraq War footage and reality TV’s Survivor—carnage and entertainment—when she was struck with the idea for the Hunger Games series. “I was tired,” says Collins, “and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way, and I thought of this story.” What if the lines blurred a little more? What if war truly were a game? Accordingly, the Hunger Games trilogy presents Katniss Everdeen: a sixteen-year-old girl thrown into a bloody arena to participate in the Capitol’s twisted game show—a child soldier who is forced, all too soon, to learn the harrowing truths of war. And we, as readers, are left to watch the gruesome spectacle unravel before our eyes—forced,

Surrounded by death in the arena, she begins to recognize that her true enemies are not the tributes against whom she fights, but the people who forced them to fight in the first place. In the beginning of the Games, Katniss is convinced that Peeta is an enemy. In reality, however, Peeta has forged a false alliance with tributes from rival districts as a means of protection: he stays with them only to ensure that they stay away from Katniss. When Katniss finally learns this fact—and realizes how close she came to hurting an ally—she is transformed by the reality that the enemy is not always who it appears to be. Another striking moment of awareness arises in Chapter Eighteen, when a boy from District 1 kills Rue, a fellow competitor—but more importantly, Katniss’s

As demonstrated in the Hunger Games trilogy, strength lies in numbers. In order to lead a successful rebellion against the Capitol, Katniss must transform into a symbol of insurrection and convince the citizens of Panem to stand beside her. She must become “the Mockingjay.” In Collins’s world, mockingjays are emblematic of rebellion. Mockingjays spawn from the jabberjay, a species of bird created by the Capitol to eavesdrop on rebels during the Dark Days. Jabberjays had the ability to memorize and repeat back entire conversations, making them the perfect spies. Once the rebels recognized this fact, they thwarted the Capitol’s efforts by feeding the birds constant lies. When the Capitol learned that it was receiving false information from the districts, it released its failed creations into the wild. Instead of dying off, however, the jabberjays mated with mockingbirds, creating a new species altogether—the mockingjay. And so, mockingjays became the ultimate symbol of uprising: creatures that turned against their creators—beings beyond the Capitol’s control. “A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist,” says Katniss. “They hadn’t anticipated its will to live.” Accordingly, the final book of the trilogy adopts the name Mockingjay as Katniss rallies the districts for rebellion. Katniss’s anthem, “Hanging Tree,” becomes the song of the people as, one by one, Panem’s