Comparing Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four And The Hunger Games

“…and without victory.” Featuring ceaseless battles and senseless slaughter, Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Hunger Games trilogy are works inspired by, and defined by, warfare. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell introduces a world in which “war is peace,” the fight is never-ending, and the enemy is ever- changing. “Winston,” the novel reads, “could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war...” In Oceania, war is woven into the fabric of everyday life to control the populace and ensure patriotism to the Party. As a result, the government is both omnipresent and omnipotent. The government, in fact, has even displaced God. “We are the priests of power,” declares O’Brien as he tortures Winston inside the Ministry of Love.

In fact, although her trilogy is marketed for a YA audience, it has a surprisingly mature premise. Violence is programmed—quite literally—into Panem; an annual reaping sends twenty-four children to slaughter, as per Capitol order. “I don’t write about adolescence,” Collins told New York Times Magazine. “I write about war. For adolescents.” And she has good reason to do so. In 1968, when most children her age were coloring pictures and playing make-believe, Collins was learning the truths of war. Her father, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Collins, had just left to serve in Vietnam. Though Mrs. Collins tried to shield her children from wartime TV coverage, six-year-old Suzy would catch snippets of the news and think, “My dad is there.” Gone were the lush jungles of childhood cartoons, replaced with the dark and disturbing landscape of the Vietnam War. “How,” asks writer Laurie Adams, “could a six-year-old verbalize the intricate mix of love, fear, loss, and doubt to explain how having a deployed parent and confronting the specter of his possible death had affected her? The words to fully iterate the journey would have to