Discourse involved in the study of child soldiers is often centered around debates regarding issues of culpability and locating driving forces behind the recruitment of child soldiers. Behind the conflict, bloodshed, and debate there are often figures who benefit from sustaining conflicts for their own gain on the backs of these children who are indoctrinated into war efforts; a type of hidden wealth in their shadowed and moraless economy and who often continue to do so without any repercussions. The Hunger Games, despite being fictional, manages to portray the effects and scope of the issue of war profiteers who gain from these children, whether that be entertainment, power, or money.
As state before The Hunger Games, at least its first book, is not about child soldiers. However, The Hunger Games does present many tropes present regarding child soldiers in literature. The book opens with main character Katniss and her friend Gale illegal hunting in order to prevent her family from starving to death, her district has conditions that constitute a failed state and no one is guaranteed to eat. Her only ‘help’ from the Capitol which portrays itself as a benevolent force is putting her name in multiple times for the Hunger Games for a small supply of grain and oil.
If we examine the
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We see it in their mentor Haymitch Abernathy who turns to Alcohol to dull the PTSD associated with taken part in the Hunger Games. Examine the line at the very top in the context of the book, a boy no older than 16 and he’s being mauled to tortuously by mutated dogs, his death isn’t allowed until the Capitol and gamemakers can squeeze every last bit of gain and entertainment his body can provide while Katniss watches and is consumed by it most likely for the rest of her